Romania’s dance with the flames by Edoardo Moretti

It seems history is not just repeating itself; it’s auditioning for a reality show in Bucharest. George Simion, the poster boy for Romania’s modern-day far right and self-styled MAGA acolyte, didn’t just throw his hat into the presidential ring; he lit it on fire and danced around it while yelling nationalistic slogans. And, disturbingly, the crowd cheered.

Simion’s rise isn’t some isolated populist blip. It’s a tremor from a fault line Romania has never truly sealed. For all the talk of EU integration, democratic reform, and the triumph of liberal values post-1989, Romania’s political psyche has always kept a spare seat for authoritarian nostalgia and Simion, with his blend of anti-EU rhetoric, Orthodox theatrics, and dangerously simple solutions, fits right in. He is less the political outsider he pretends to be, and more the embodiment of a Romania that never fully exorcised its ghosts.

Let’s not forget: this is the country that once birthed the Iron Guard, a far-right movement so obsessed with ethnic purity, religious symbolism, and death cult aesthetics that even Hitler raised an eyebrow. A movement whose legacy was only partially buried under decades of communist rule, only to reemerge now, cleverly repackaged in a tricolor flag and a smartphone livestream.

George Simion is no Iron Guards—at least not in uniform. But the language, the ideology, the sense of divine national mission? All present. All applauded.

He’s tapped into a deep well of disillusionment. Post-communist Romania was promised prosperity. What many got instead was corruption, austerity, emigration, and a sense that decisions were being made somewhere far away, in Brussels boardrooms filled with men who can't pronounce "Timișoara." And in this cocktail of betrayal and bitterness, Simion found fertile ground.

He didn’t need detailed policies, he needed enemies. Brussels. Immigrants. Intellectuals. Journalists. Minorities. He pointed fingers, wrapped himself in the flag, and smiled for the cameras. It was politics by scapegoat, and it worked. Massively.

Now, the support he’s garnered is not just troubling. It’s a flare shot into the night sky warning that Romania’s democratic foundation, like so many post-Soviet constructions, may have been built with faulty cement.

It’s easy to dismiss Simion as a caricature, a man who mistakes shouting for strength and tradition for truth. But that’s what we said about other strongmen before they won. And when the far right begins winning hearts with appeals to “lost greatness,” it’s usually minorities, dissenters, and eventually the nation itself that ends up lost.

Romania is not alone. From Trump to Orban, Meloni to Wilders, the far-right toolkit is depressingly universal: create a myth of national victimhood, weaponize identity, and sell fear as patriotism. Simion’s particular genius lies in his ability to mimic this strategy while pretending he invented it.

But here's the twist worthy of Balkan irony: Romania fought for decades to escape the grip of Soviet-style authoritarianism, only to now flirt with a homegrown, selfie-savvy version in a nationalist suit. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

So what now?

The danger isn't just Simion. It’s what his rise says about Romanian society’s unresolved trauma. It’s about a democratic culture still too fragile, too shallow, too easy to hijack. It’s about voters who’d rather believe in a strongman fantasy than confront the complexities of real reform. And it’s about a European Union that’s been asleep at the wheel while its Eastern members slip toward illiberalism.

In the end, George Simion is not Romania’s problem. He’s the symptom. The fever. The signal that the illness was never cured, just hidden beneath polite democratic rhetoric and the occasional Eurovision participation.

If Romania wants to prove it’s truly turned the page, it needs more than new leaders. It needs civic education, media independence, economic inclusion, and, above all, a reckoning with its own uncomfortable past.

Because if it doesn’t, the far right won’t need to sneak in through the back door.

They’ll walk proudly through the front, waving the flag and claiming they’re the only true Romanians left.