“The revolution born out of a swear”: populist humour, carnivalization, and mass protest in Romania

ABSTRACT

This article aims to make two contributions. First, at a theoretical level, I briefly outline an embedded narrative approach to populism, which is critical of treating it solely as an ideology or ontologizing it. This alternative approach provides a better understanding of the connection between populism, humour, and insults. Second, at an empirical level, I argue that the 2018 mass protests against the political elite in Romania were unique in that they turned a gendered and violent insult into a guiding political slogan, reiterated across both high and popular culture. Influential intellectuals, such as Gabriel Liiceanu, the most reputed public philosopher in Romania, proclaimed that this was a “swear (înjurătură) that unites us all” inspiring a new anti-communist “revolution”. By examining both the political imagination of the “institutional intellectuals” and popular artefacts (from T-shirts to popular songs), I interpret the Romanian protests and the role of “bad language” and populist humour as an expression of the carnivalization of politics and the intensification of antagonism in post-communist Romania.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• populist humour
• carnival populism
• anti-communism
• social movements
• protest movements

Acknowledgement

I thank Delia Dumitrica for her critical remarks on a previous version of this article. All errors are mine.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The wording pertains to the Romanian philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu (2018). In Romanian: “Revoluția născută în jurul unei înjurături.” In this context, înjurătură can also be translated as “slur,” given that it targets a specific group (the hegemonic political elite).

2. “S*** my d*** PSD.” All translations from Romanian are mine.

3. On slogans and social movements in Romania, see also Cărăuș 2016 and (Dumitrica 2021).

4. Here I deal with a case of a verbal act and its proxies. Non-verbal acts can also be insults.

5. In the following, I rely on Ungureanu and Popartan (2020). Note, however, that by an embedded narrative turn, I do not support a discourse-centric view of the current populist surge. Populism includes narratives and practices embedded in material and power dynamics; currently, the dominant authoritarian type of populist narratives and practices tend to work as the 'latest ruse' of capitalism (Popartan and Ungureanu 2024). By populist practices, I refer to types of behaviors and actions (from the use of direct action to dress and hairstyle codes) that nourish a specific narrative and way of doing politics centered on the antagonism between people and the elite.

6. This applies not only to Trump and Milei but also to leaders of different stripes such as Volodymyr Zelensky (current president of Ukraine), Jimmy Morales (president of Guatemala, 2016–2020), Jón Gnarr (mayor of Reykjavik in Iceland, 2010–2014), and Beppe Grillo (founder of the populist Five Star Movement).

7. I take language in a broad sense, as referring to visual and body language as well. By the generic “communicative acts,” I refer to both verbal and non-verbal acts, without assuming a Habermasian view of communicative rationality.

8. Occupy protests occasionally resorted to insults as well (The Guardian 2011). As The Guardian reports, “(i)n Santiago 25,000 Chileans processed through the city, pausing outside the presidential palace to hurl insults at the country’s billionaire president.”

9. Here, I am not dealing with the entire semantic field of muie. Muie is gendered, but it’s not just about man vs. woman. It can also have other connotations where gender is a spectrum and includes LGBTQ+ variations. The common denominator is that it refers to a relationship of dominance, where the subordinate is explicitly or implicitly defined.

10. The 2017 hashtag #puiemonta also anticipates this degradation of public discourse. The hashtag is a spiteful, humorous play on the words muie and “Ponta” (Victor Ponta was prime minister and ex-leader of the PSD).

11. The August 2018 “diaspora protests” were a continuation and extension of the anti-corruption protests that began in autumn-winter of 2017. These protests were in response to the PSD-proposed reform of the judicial system, which had the potential to reduce the capacity to prosecute corruption charges. The leader of the PSD was perceived as the primary beneficiary of this diluted anti-corruption legislation. The escalation of protest rhetoric and slogans in 2015, such as “their corruption is killing us,” provided a powerful emotional context for the 2017–18 protests. Along with the persistence of protest targets after 2013, which included the same or similar figures leading the PSD (Victor Ponta and Victor Dragnea), this continuity further underscores the concern with the corruption of the political class and the communist heritage. For an analysis of protest movements in Romania, see also (Abăseacă and Pleyers 2019, Cărăuș 2016; 2017; Mercea 2022); also (Ganev 2012), for the question of hooliganism).

12. This quote comes from my correspondence with Răzvan Ştefănescu (8 July 2022).

13. Interestingly, Ştefănescu is currently running for the European elections as an independent candidate.

14. At the time of the 2018 protests, the political cleavage around anti-communism was largely defined by the focus on (anti-)corruption. This is why “communism” is not explicitly present in the articles written by Tismaneanu and Liiceanu, who are otherwise long-term leading figures in anti-communist rhetoric.

15. Liiceanu does not use usual “Roma” (Roma) so that he cannot be suspected of political correctness.

16. In one of his texts, he goes as far as to claim that his communist enemies “are not human” (Tismăneanu 2015). Note, however, that I cannot provide an analysis of the complexities of the positions of these two representative intellectuals here.

17. On popular culture and sexuality and Romania, see (Roman 2007).

18. The demonstrations were marked by violence. According to official estimates, during the rally in Bucharest on August 10th, 400 people received medical assistance, and 43 were seriously injured (Adevărul 2018a).

19. For Bakhtin, “(t)he material bodily principle in grotesque realism is offered in its all-popular festive and utopian aspect. The cosmic, social, and bodily elements are given here as an indivisible whole. And this whole is gay and gracious” (Bakhtin 1984, 19). However, in this case, the rhetoric of inversion is generally more ambivalent (see also Conclusion).

20. The song refers to Laura Codruța Kövesi, former chief prosecutor of Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate.

21. Liviu Dragnea (former prime minister), Ion Iliescu (former president), and Victor Ponta (former prime minister) are prominent post-communist politicians in Romania.

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Notes on contributors

Camil Ungureanu

Camil Ungureanu is Serra Húnter associate professor of political philosophy, Department of Social and Political Sciences and coordinator of the MA in Political Philosophy at the University Pompeu Fabra (Department of Social and Political Sciences). He is interested in critical theory, art and political imagination and contemporary political thought. He is also a co-founding member of the Barcelona Network for Critical Thought and Social Research. Contact: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 8003 Barcelona, Spain. [email protected]