Comment by aleph_minus_one

for example?

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EU did not force Romania. Romania itself annulled them because Russian intervention happened.

Didn't like the candidate? Half the country (or perhaps more) didn't even know the candidate. He was pushed with the help of Russia/China via Tiktok and that's about it. He declared 0 (z-e-r-o) campaign expenses. Delusional!

What actually happened was that former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton publicly stated on French TV in January 2025 that if the AfD won in Germany, elections there could also be annulled by the EU "as was done in Romania". That was a stupid thing for him to say, but he is a private citizen, he did not represent the EU in any capacity, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the EU pressured Romania. Of course, post-truth political movements run with a distorted version of this story to play the victim.

Romania's Supreme Court decision was based mainly on illegal campaign financing. The Constitutional Court noted that Georgescu had officially reported zero campaign expenditures, yet had an enormous social media presence. His TikTok account had over 646K followers and 7.2M likes. This was in the context of interconnected declassified intelligence. Around 25000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts became highly active in the two weeks before the first-round vote, with nearly 800 accounts created in 2016 that had remained dormant until the election. Activity was coordinated through a Telegram channel. Romania's intelligence service said there were signs of state-sponsored attacks operating in a hybrid manner, targeting critical infrastructure and shaping public opinion through misinformation. The campaign was said to mirror influence operations conducted by Moscow during elections in Ukraine and Moldova.

Romanian prosecutors later charged Georgescu with involvement behind cyberattacks targeting Romanian electoral systems.

Russia has been systematically attempting to interfere with EU elections, and anyone who argues otherwise in the face of mountains of evidence is either being naive or disingenuous. Post-truth political parties such as the AfD are funded and supported by the Kremlin, which is interested in sowing division and wished the collapse of the EU for a long time. Unfortunately, the current US administration is also ideologically aligned with the Kremlin and also wishes the collapse of the EU, as is explicitally stated in the recent strategic document published by the Trump administration. These are the actual facts, that are easy to verify if you are actually interested in the truth.

I didn't say the US is finished, I said it was finished as a liberal democracy.

It's already slid in to 'electoral democracy' instead of 'liberal democracy' the difference between the two is how 'rule of law' is prioritised and the balance between checks and balances between institutions is enforced.

https://www.v-dem.net/documents/60/V-dem-dr__2025_lowres.pdf