The Triple Sacrilege
Written by: Golan
The story goes like this: Romania is captured by technospectacular multiplicities as informational mystification and political appropriation lock into failed privatization take-off. Logistically atomizing technospectacular interactivity crumbles social order in self-vindicating infornographic runaway.
Timisoara, Romania, December 16th 1989. Protests break out. What was at first a collective effort to defend Pastor Laszlo Tokes from the Securitate would soon become the most important series of events for contemporary Romania and the only violent anti-communist revolution in the Warsaw Pact. And despite its importance, it is one big tower of Babel in Romanian society. It was a Revolution of the people, but the political appropriated and tainted it.
The Romanian Revolution, when it started in Timisoara, could only be known by the Romanians directly, via rumour or illegally through Radio Free Europe. It would be only on December 20th 1989 that it would be acknowledged publicly by Ceausescu in his televised speech, in which he presents it as a bunch of hooligans, terrorists, reactionaries and imperialists that threaten the independence and integrity of Romania. It could not be further from the truth, and Romanians would soon find out the next day on the 21st when the spectacle ritual in which the dictator hoped to summon the abstract spirit that was popular support was disrupted. A few suspicious actors in the crowd. Random, clueless securist throws a flashbang. Panic ensues. Other clueless securists start shooting, spreading the panic. Others try to evacuate the Square with a low-frequency sound meant to mimic the sound of war. However, the situation was quickly calmed down and Ceausescu got to finish his last speech. This is a very interesting Mandela effect: many people think it was at Ceausescu's last speech that people started booing and protesting, but actually the protesting started later and people were not booing, but screaming and panicking. Alas, I'm not here to talk about this one.
Bucharest, Romania, December 22nd 1989. Revolutionaries are doing an insurrection on the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, sick of all the hunger and terror the regime had brought. Ceausescu flees with a helicopter, marking the fall of socialism in Romania. Revolutionaries and various cultural figures appear live on national TV, announcing the victory of the Revolution. However, in the evening mysterious shooters (securists) start causing chaos and even causing soldiers to shoot each other. Such was the beginning of the terroristic diversion lasting for weeks. It was all being done in accordance with Ceausescu's plan, "Lupta de Rezistenta pe Teritoriul Vremelnic Ocupat de Inamic" (The Struggle for Resistance on the Territory that is Temporarily Occupied by the Enemy). It not only included shooting, but also misinformation via the press (spectacle sorcery). There were even audio systems that mimicked shooting, RADAR disruptors, fake news about tap water having been poisoned and much more. It even led to innocent civillians and soldiers being arrested or killed for suspected acts of terrorism. The centralized spectacle, combined with real planned attacks of coordinated individuals became powerful weapons. On Christmas day, the trial and execution of Ceausescu was broadcasted on national TV.
The post-revolutionary period (December 25th 1989 - June 15th 1990) was characterized by the abuse of the spectacle, done by former Communist aparatchiks. It was done to not only silence the revolutionary opposition, but also to denigrate them and misrepresent them. And when it comes to the Revolution, the obfuscation of which continues even in the present day, it seems they have done efforts to "erase" Timisoara from the history of the Revolution and to also give people amnesia with regards to the post-revolutionary period. With this, the former securists managed to create multiple, even conflicting theories, all of them having their own mythology, about the Revolution. That it was a coup d'etat, that CIA or KGB was at fault, that FSN was at fault, or if the Revolution was real, then it was simply anti-Ceausescu and not anti-communist. Basically, if you ask 10 different people about the Romanian Revolution, you will get 20 different answers.
But the Revolution was real, and though the truth about it is very hard to piece together, it is not impossible. Here are the 3 main ways in which the political appropriates the Revolution:
"The Revolution of Timisoara was ever since its first hours not just anti-Ceausescu but also decidedly anti-communist." - Proclamation of Timisoara, Article 1
1. Left: This one is the oldest and most important. The ex-communists' (FSN) original plan was to make a Gorbachev-style socialist regime. These plans were replaced when it became clear this would not work in the long run after the Golaniad and June 1990 Mineriad. The FSN claimed they were "emanated" from the Revolution. They are also the reason why there is so much confusion on the subject. The truth is, people did not die in December 1989 for some anti-Ceausescu dissidents to rise to power. The FSN had basically nothing to do with the revolutionaries except for the temporal context. They and those who believed their lies are guilty of taking the Revolution in vain, and they caused Romania to become bankrupt on so many levels.
"Even though we are fighting for the re-Europeanization of Romania, we do not wish to copy Western capitalist systems, that have their own drawbacks and inequities." - Proclamation of Timisoara, Article 10
2. Center: Neoliberals and capitalists who make it seem like the Revolution was started for capitalism, or conflating freedom with the current capitalist order. Neoliberalism, while having brought much freedom in Romania compared to socialism, is in no way the full ideal of it and was definitely not an ideal of the anti-communist revolutionaries. Because neoliberal capitalism leads to the abusive centralization of property, it lends itself to a new kind of totalitarianism and centralization. The revolutionaries were not communists, but neither were they in favor of capitalism or neoliberalism. The Proclamation says in article 10: "Additionally, the stocks of an enterprise are to be given first and foremost to its workers.". And in the next article: "Timisoara is determined to use the principle of economic and administrative decentralization.". Thus they didn't want to see the centralization of private property, as is the case with both socialist states and neoliberal corporations, but the decentralization of it and a movement towards greater economic democracy. For this reason, the Proclamation of Timisoara can be read in a Distributist key, though I will abstain from doing so.
"...the spirit of tolerance and mutual respect, the only principles that will reign in the future Household of Europe." - Proclamation of Timisoara, Article 4
3. Right: The Romanian far-right has a very schizophrenic relationship with the Romanian Revolution. There are some who admire it, seeking to appropriate it for their own message, which is mostly to denigrate certain minority groups in the name of anti-communism or to dismiss the entire left and to conflate it with "Neo-Marxism" or with totalitarian socialism. There are others who seem to adhere to the securistic mythology that the Revolution was a coup. This might also be because far-right organizations are controlled by former Communist aparatchiks or people that are somehow tied to the Romanian status-quo which can be traced back to them. Alas, political pluralism was held sacred by the revolutionaries, as well as mutual respect between people regardless of their traits or affiliations.
One can thus see the sacrileges committed by the political against the image of the Revolution, this being only one of the thousand screens on which it has been projected throughout the years. This post is being written at a time of deep geopolitical unrest in Romania.
Spectacular sorcery in Romania continues.
See also: Proclamation of Timisoara - Golan's English Translation (GET)