Romanian 'TikTok Messiah' presidential candidate embodies hybrid war with West, say experts

euronews (in English)

Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu has millions of likes on TikTok and hundreds of thousands of followers. He ran a successful social media campaign to emerge victorious in the first round of the country's presidential elections.

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00:00Romania is reeling from the unexpected rise of far-right extremist Kalin Georgescu, who

00:08won Sunday's first round of the presidential elections as an independent.

00:13His come-up went unnoticed by the political system, with his victory representing the

00:17first time a fringe candidate won a national election solely through a sophisticated media

00:23campaign.

00:24Georgescu wrote a wave of public discontentment with the political establishment, combined

00:29with an intensive, years-long social media assault filled with anti-Western rhetoric.

00:35He is selling an utopic story.

00:37He is selling a dream for conservative Romanians as an opposite to the classical politicians

00:45that are very transactional.

00:47We have now a TikTok messiah or something like that, very successful, and we are not

00:53sure if he will be able to win in the second round.

01:00Georgescu captured the protest vote against the mainstream political parties and their

01:05economic performance, using a well-oiled social media machine, propagating extreme nationalist

01:12and pro-Russian messages to devout followers.

01:16A very important thing is this idea of viralization, of propaganda and the use of hashtags, which

01:26somehow presupposes some effects of people, this time I am not talking about bots and algorithms,

01:35which are somehow extremely activated, so to speak, and the pseudo-messianic discourse

01:43of Kalin Georgescu, with the way in which it was presented, made more or less followers

01:49win, rather than, as we have in other parts, rational supporters.

01:56Bordering Ukraine and on NATO's eastern flank, Georgescu's statements have all the hallmarks

02:01of a hybrid war against the West, following the same narrative which can be seen in other

02:06European countries.

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