Calin Georgescu: Romania’s latest Medical Populist

By Jack Dean, PhD candidate

With the first round of the election having been explored on the SSEES Research Blog, the question that stood out to me was “Who is Calin Georgescu?”. Whilst most discussions in the media thus far center around the pro-Russia stances offered, it is worth exploring the Georgescu’s rhetoric relating to conspiracies and healthcare. I argue that Calin Georgescu is the latest Romanian political actor to utilize medical populism in the years since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic and suggest that Georgescu represents the latest iteration of a post-Pandemic, post-fact norm for the country.

Medical populism is a concept developed by Gideon Lasco and Nicole Curato, who define it as “a political style that constructs antagonistic relations between ‘the people’ whose lives have been put at risk by “the establishment”.  The COVID-19 Pandemic proved fertile ground globally for such a style – from the illusion of technocracy attempted in some European countries, to the nationalist or conspiratorial approaches put forward by Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. This features three elements:

• simplification of scientific or medical knowledge,
• a ‘performance’ of health policy,
• and as with other definitions of populism, construction of an establishment or elite that are antagonistic towards the people they should be protecting.

Georgescu is not the first Romanian politician to use a medical populist style. Post-2015, this began with his old party, AUR. The Alliance for the Unity of Romanians had positioned themselves initially as defenders of the public health. This stance was to change greatly as time went on, with AUR radicalizing in this aspect of their rhetoric throughout the pandemic. The party was greatly interlinked with the growing protest movements in Romania, particularly those relating to vaccine and mask mandates, embracing public stunts such as the wearing of plastic masks rather than medical ones in the Romanian Parliament. These debates and protests increasingly began to be linked to more ‘traditional’ populist fare – the alleged imposition of measures by a pan-European elite, and a growing prominence of alternative news sources by the party including those pushing ideas of a ‘plandemic’ engineered by the Hungarian businessman George Soros.  This, whilst not limited to Romania, does have further significance in a country where both antisemitism and anti-Hungarian views have long been espoused by those on the right. Being both Hungarian and Jewish, George Soros finds himself to be a uniquely strong target for medical populism, as it is allows for the narratives to be built around prior discourse and prejudice.

Despite the growing radicalism of AUR in health matters, they were to expel a senator who had proved particularly outspoken – Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă. Șoșoacă’s move to SOS Romania gave her a more individual platform, and this was to lead to an embrace of medical populism. With Șoșoacă accused of imprisoning a journalist investigating the anti-vaccination movement, she would also criticise those who took the vaccine in the strongest terms yet in one of her many tirades posted on Facebook- “You went to the vaccination centers like lambs to the slaughter”. This was to be accompanied with a number of stunts aimed at those sceptical of the pandemic, such as wearing a muzzle to protest mask mandates. Whilst Șoșoacă would have stood in the Presidential elections, a ban from the constitutional court on her standing seemed like it was to hand the far-right vote to George Simion, the leader of AUR.

Instead, what happened was to prove a shock to the pollsters, and to a substantial proportion of those watching. Rather than Simion entering the second round, another of those formerly affiliated with AUR was to prosper – Calin Georgescu. The party had separated itself from the newly independent Georgescu in 2022 due to his comments praising the interwar Iron Guard. A former UN official, Georgescu began to embrace many of the symbols associated with the radical and far right in Eastern Europe: promoting his status as a martial artist (similarly to Putin); riding white horses (commonly associated in Romania with the interwar leader of the far right Iron Guard -Corneliu Zelea Codreanu; historical revisionism, including alleging the 1989 Romanian Revolution was a coup organised by those in the West.

Yet one feature that I suggest is not getting enough media attention, is his embrace of conspiracy theories. From suggestions of water being a means through which information can be spread (prior to the advent of plastic bottles) to that those in the Marshall Islands lived to 180 years old prior to nuclear testing, Georgescu is no stranger to views outside of those in the norm. What accompanies all of these views is an underlying distrust of conventional science, and nowhere is this better illustrated than Georgescu’s views of COVID-19, vaccinations, and healthcare.

Simplification of Health and Claims of Scientific Knowledge:

Whilst it may be tempting to suggest that Georgescu’s medical populism is linked just to COVID-19, as much of the Western media has thus far, this is not the case. In an almost textbook example of claims of scientific knowledge, in a conference in 2017 in Timisoara, Georgescu expressed doubts about chemotherapy, insinuating that the treatment option is for the purpose of profit – the establishment profiting from the illness of the people. This is couched in a simplification of scientific terms, discussing acidity, the pH scale, and allopathic medicine, to present these ideas in ways that appear grounded in fact. This is furthered by his later comments in the same conference that vaccines work to make a child sicker, that viruses are “artificially controlled”, and those who push such healthcare methods are guilty of a “crime against their peers”. Elsewhere, Georgescu has argued that Caesarean sections represent “a tragedy”, with the “divine thread” severed. Georgescu has not strayed from such inflammatory language, something commonly associated with medical populists. This is an interesting dichotomy – a career technocrat, shifted to the language and features of populism, including a rejection of fact.

Performance of Health Policy:

Despite not being in public office, Georgescu was no stranger to a performance of health policy during the pandemic. In 2020, in yet another seeming nod to Putin, Georgescu appeared bathing in cold water, suggesting this was far more effective a preventative tool than any vaccine that could be produced.

Later, the COVID-19 narratives were to take a distinctly religious turn, with the claim that not only had no one ever been able to see the COVID-19 virus, but that the only science needed was a belief in Jesus – continuing the nods made previously by those in both AUR and SOS to religion in their discourse about the pandemic. With many of AUR’s early objections relating to alleged restrictions on religion – such as guidance to avoid kissing icons in Orthodox churches, despite much of the Orthodox faith in Romania encouraging the following of guidelines in the early phases of the pandemic.

Creation of an anti-elite discourse:

In other online interviews, Georgescu has suggested the pandemic was planned – with links to Hilary Clinton and ‘the West’, to subdue global populations. In a link to the United States, Calin Georgescu also has written the introduction to the Romanian edition of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book about the pandemic. Kennedy Jr., the proposed Health Secretary for the incoming Trump administration, is a well-known health conspiracist, and has long promoted disinformation about vaccinations and healthcare.

This discourse has been used by SOS previously, and like AUR and SOS, Georgescu has largely shunned traditional methods of campaigning since declaring his candidacy. Whilst the two parties particularly concentrated on Facebook, often creating echo chambers allowing for quick proliferation of messaging. Georgescu has done similarly, using Tiktok heavily to publish short, punchy messages generating millions of views. This has fueled concerns about the role of the controversial social media platform in the election, and it has allowed Georgescu to quickly generate viewers even among those who did not follow him originally on the app.

Why is this important, and why Romania?

In a country with pre-existing healthcare challenges even prior to COVID-19, including low vaccination rates, low trust in healthcare, and underfunded hospitals, Georgescu, I suggest, is not a flash in the pan. 65% of Romanians in one survey showed support for the idea that COVID-19 was used to control people on behalf of a greater elite, with 28% suggesting it was used to implant a ‘chip’ into those who received the vaccine. Disinformation has never been limited to just health, but this is an area where fake news has seen great success. When discussion of the United States refers to Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style, with its embrace of conspiracism, it is hard not to see parallels to Romania.

Years of a technocratic approach employed by president Klaus Iohannis and prime minister Dacian Ciolos have offered little consolation to the population. Voters looking for positive, effective governance have been disappointed, with poor handling of healthcare and crisis, both before and during the pandemic. With widespread disaffection, it is hard not to see the appeal of an outsider, who offers alternate explanations and perspectives. This is not a uniquely Romanian phenomenon, with similar examples in Italy and Germany in recent years. It is clear that without genuine progress in health, these voters are likely to be satisfied, and this fuels further medical populist narratives. The great irony is thus, an unhealthy healthcare system leads to healthy support for medical populists – a lesson that may be worth heeding in Berlin, London, and Warsaw.

Georgescu is the latest iteration of medical populism in Romania, and this repeat presence distinguishes Romania from many of its neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe. Whilst his powers may be limited depending on the outcome of the parliamentary election and any subsequent coalition talks, the ability for a medical populist in such an office to influence public debates should not be understated. With migration, tourism, and Romania’s possible ascent to Schengen, any worsening of health raises concerns for both Romania and Europe more broadly.

Jack Dean is a PhD candidate at UCL SSEES. He is working on his thesis ‘Medical Populism in Modern Romania’ supervised by Professor Anne White and Dr Dan Brett.