A couple of weeks ago, in his address to the annual Munich Security Conference, JD Vance included these remarks:

[T]he threat that I worry most about for Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values that are shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

… 

… we’re at the point, of course, where the situation has gotten so bad that, this December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.

Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections.

But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective.

You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections.

We certainly do.

You can condemn it on the world stage, even.

But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with…

The candidate whose success caused the Romanian PTB to annul the election in question is a gentleman by the name of Calin Georgescu. In a piece published just a couple of days ago, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who knows a thing or two about how things go when the PTB train their sights on you, provides a very good overview of the situation. Excerpts:

Romania scheduled elections across three consecutive weekends: the first round of the presidential election was held on 24 November, parliamentary elections on 1 December, and the second-round presidential runoff was supposed to take place on 8 December. However, the first-round result confounded expectations, with independent right wing candidate Călin Georgescu winning 22.9%, followed by the pro-EU Save Romania Union (USR) candidate Elena Lasconi (19.18%) and current Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu (19.15%) from the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Another hard-right candidate, George Simion, trailed in fourth with 13.86% support.

Just before the second-round run-off against Lasconi, the liberal conservative candidate, one poll had Georgescu leading with 58%. This was a political earthquake, and on December 8th he might well have been elected president of Romania. But two days earlier the country’s constitutional court annulled the election and instructed that it be run again.

Controversy mounted as the authorities, in a series of inconsistent and poorly justified decisions, approved a recount requested by a minor candidate, despite no evidence of fraud. The recount confirmed the initial results, which the constitutional court validated. However, the election’s annulment was triggered days later after a meeting of the Supreme Council of National Defence and the declassification of secret files in which Romanian intelligence services claimed that Georgescu’s campaign benefited from illegal campaign financing, illegal use of social media, and “Russian hybrid actions” against the country’s internet infrastructure.

The constitutional court, which on December 5th had given the go-ahead for the second round, reversed itself the next day. The justices said they were now annulling the election because voters were “misinformed” and that the candidate had benefited illegally from “the abusive exploitation of social-media platform algorithms”. His campaign materials were not properly labelled, and the will of the voters was “distorted”, though the court did not explicitly rule that Russia had interfered. There was no evidence the Russians had directly tampered with the vote totals, in other words, but because pro-Russian social media accounts may have influenced the minds of voters, their ballots should be disregarded.

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The Romanian coup represents the most brazen assault on democracy in recent times in Europe. But less dramatic violations of democratic norms have become widespread across the West as the progressive elite seek to crush the growing influence of populism on the right and left. As Igor Bergler, a bestselling Romanian novelist and political satirist said approvingly of the court’s decision, Sometimes you have to sacrifice democracy to save democracy”.

A comprehensive review of all the techniques involved in this endeavor would require a book, but the progressive party-state’s primary weapons to thwart or oust democratic populists are lawfare and censorship of supposed “disinformation”, especially of the Russian variety. Both techniques were on full display in the annulment of Romania’s election.

The annulled election was rescheduled for mid-May. No doubt that the Romanian PTB, along with their European “colleagues”, had hoped that that would temper the Romanian people’s enthusiasm for Mr. Georgescu, and would cause him to drop out. That didn’t happen. Quite the opposite turned out to be the case, as per this reporting a month ago:

Călin Georgescu, the far-right candidate who emerged as the favourite at the first round of the annulled presidential election in December, is leading in an opinion poll based on him running in the vote rescheduled for May.

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Three options have been explored for a second round, and Georgescu has the lead in all of them.

In a scenario where he would face Antonescu, 39% say they will vote for Georgescu and 38% for the ruling coalition candidate. In the scenario where Georgescu would face Lasconi, 44% say they would vote for him, against 31% for the USR candidate.

If he faced Nicușor Dan, 43% would vote for Georgescu and 32% for the mayor of Bucharest.

Regarding trust in politicians, Georgescu leads again, being the only one who crosses the 50% threshold, reaching 51%. …

Which brings us to today, when this happened:

“Far-right populist Calin Georgescu, who came from nowhere to win the first round of last year’s presidential election, has been detained by police and is facing criminal proceedings on a series of charges.

Georgescu was stopped in traffic in the capital, Bucharest, on his way to register as a candidate for new elections in May, after last December’s second-round run-off was annulled by the constitutional court.

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The severity of the indictment could jeopardise Georgescu’s bid to run in the presidential election on 4 and 18 May.

He has been placed under judicial control and told not to leave Romania, according to reports. As he left the prosecutor’s office, Georgescu told supporters he would continue to fight and that there was “no difference between the communist mentality and system [that collapsed in 1989] and now”.

Later in her piece, Ms. Ali wrote:

This will all sound suspiciously familiar to American readers. The original disinformation operation of the modern era, the Russia-collusion hoax, hijacked the American political system for years. The false claim that Donald Trump was a Kremlin agent and that Russia “hacked” the 2016 election was itself disinformation, injected into the nation’s political culture by Obama and Clinton officials, working with top U.S. intelligence figures, including former CIA chief John Brennan.

Yes, Ms. Ali, it is suspiciously familiar indeed.

PS, in the interest of full disclosure (and as an explanation for why this story is of particular interest to me):

I grew up in Romania, under the Ceausescu regime. Spent several summer vacations in Constanza on the Black Sea coast, not far from which construction began last year on what is intended to become NATO’s largest military base in Europe (yes, larger than Ramstein), the future of which might be affected in the event of Mr. Georgescu winning the presidency.