Russians? Not anymore, now the LGBT is your enemy!

The right-wing rampage continues in Eastern Europe. A few weeks ago, a truly weird scandal played itself out in Romania. Some crazy right-wingers in Romania dressed in what they perceive to be a typical gay outfit, pretended to be LGBT activists and marched through the streets of a small village trying to (succesfully by the way) scare the local population. This grotesque action was part of a campaign before the local elections scheduled for September 27th. 
“This is a level of political theatre and insanity which is very hard to match. Posing as your opponent and trying to link them to the LGBT community is ridiculous!” states Maria Cernat. 
The event, absurd as it is, is a rather poor cover for the fact that in the ongoing election campaign, no candidate or political party is offering anything new. The well-known pathology prevails. The Social Democratic Party candidates for Bucharest’s mayor office are retired celebrities from the 90s. They have, of course, nothing to do with any left ideas. The other political parties are conglomerations of neoliberals who see the state as a corporation and would like to outsource its governance to the private sector. Meanwhile, the organizations and people that claim to represent the independent left are weak, divided, and conflicted to the extent that they were not even able to collect the minimum number of signatures which is the basic requirement to take part in the election. 
“Our societies live in constant fear. Let’s take these few people in a village, dressed in a weird way by the villagers’ standards. OK. What is the danger that they actually pose to anyone? But it is enough that they just walked there [and it] spread panic,” says Boyan Stanislavski. In his view, the right exploits people’s fear: “They do that, just like Law and Justice does in Poland — because they have nothing else to offer.” 
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Photo: Pixabay, CC0
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