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Standalone articles

“They all are the red plague”: anti-communism and the Romanian radical right populists

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Pages 150-169 | Received 29 May 2021, Accepted 26 May 2022, Published online: 14 Jun 2022
 

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how a radical right populist party uses anti-communism to produce an anti-establishment discourse and consolidate ultra-conservative political values. At the end of 2020 The Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) entered the Romanian Parliament, taking many by surprise. We indicate how they have capitalised not only on the “normalisation” of radical right themes, but also on pre-existing anti-communist discourses. After demonstrating how anti-communism has structured the post-socialist Romanian politics, we reveal how it was used as an identifier of the political establishment and how AUR operated a gradual replacement of “communism” with “neo-Marxism” in their discourse.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to the editors of the East European Politics for their careful reading of the text and for generously offering important suggestions for improving the paper. We also thank Elisabeth Gheorghe for her valuable support in proofreading the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liliana Popescu

Liliana Popescu is Professor Dr. Habil. at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA) Bucharest, in the Department of Political Science and European Studies. She teaches international relations, Russian and Eastern European politics, and foreign policy. Her publications are related to gender politics and political evolutions in the post-soviet region. As a feminist activist and scholar, Liliana became increasingly involved in activities and writings to counter the current wave of encroachments on women’s rights.

Lucian Vesalon

Lucian Vesalon is Reader in Political Studies at West University of Timișoara, Romania, in the Department of Political Science, where he teaches courses on international development, globalisation and political ideologies. His research interests are related to the politics of development and political ideologies in Eastern Europe. He has published articles on environmental movements, politics of natural resources and urban development in Romania. Current work is related to the study of populism in the region.

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