{"id":77440,"date":"2025-05-05T21:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T21:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/77440\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T21:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T21:18:10","slug":"how-george-simion-became-a-right-wing-messiah-for-romanians-abroad-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/77440\/","title":{"rendered":"How George Simion became a right-wing \u2018messiah\u2019 for Romanians abroad \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHe is a TikTok product and launched his whole movement on the back of Covid disinformation, among other things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Simion\u2019s AUR party fanned conspiracies during the Covid-19 pandemic, opposing government measures to limit the spread of the virus and spreading falsehoods about vaccines to ride a wave of anti-science sentiment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause of TikTok basically, he kind of exploded during the pandemic \u2026 he does lives on TikTok all the time, he films himself every-fucking-where, so he kind of gives off this really kind of genuine persona that he built,\u201d Vlad said.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/13013976-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6558960\"  \/>Romania\u2019s election last November was annulled after the authorities uncovered a Russia-style influence operation on social media, specifically TikTok, in favor of ultranationalist C\u0103lin Georgescu. | Robert Ghement\/EPA<\/p>\n<p>Most Romanians living in the diaspora were not well-educated, he added, and susceptible to Simion\u2019s populist rhetoric and social media outreach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe vast majority of them, it\u2019s actually people who don\u2019t have such a high level of education, [and] work in really tough, menial jobs \u2026 we\u2019re talking about truck drivers, we\u2019re talking about construction workers, people who look after the elderly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were always kind of living in their bubbles in their communities, sending all their money they were making back home and \u2026 living fairly lonely lives,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Simion bypassed traditional media to speak directly to those disenchanted diaspora voters, promising to hear their concerns \u2014 and they returned the favor on Sunday, helping to elevate him to first place, and potentially all the way to the presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe is a TikTok product and launched his whole movement on the back of Covid disinformation, among other&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1789,2575,13071,2266,33,2000,299,5187,33113,1824,2440,2199,25809,2452,2597,13491,36829,7965,48,1438,35563,37994,35564,332,182,104,657,17288],"class_list":{"0":"post-77440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-corruption","10":"tag-disinformation","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-european","16":"tag-george-simion","17":"tag-germany","18":"tag-giorgia-meloni","19":"tag-italy","20":"tag-mayors","21":"tag-media","22":"tag-military","23":"tag-moldova","24":"tag-nicusor-dan","25":"tag-platforms","26":"tag-rights","27":"tag-romania","28":"tag-romanian-election-2025","29":"tag-romanian-elections-2024","30":"tag-romanian-politics","31":"tag-russia","32":"tag-social-media","33":"tag-spain","34":"tag-ukraine","35":"tag-vaccines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114457313668219717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}