Usually the narratives depict anything as an Israeli/Jewish conspiracy. But whose conspiracy Israel itself is? The official story talks about the mandate, the Balfour Declaration and various boring UN documents. But before all of that, there was a conspiracy, which occurred in… Romania. Specifically in places like Focșani, Iași, Cernăuți (now in Ukraine) and Chișinău.

Let’s go down the memory lane through a lesser known series of events that point to Israel’s Romanian roots.

First World Zionist Congress – Focșani 1881

Some 16 years prior to Theodor Herzl’s congress in Basel, delegates representing about 70,000 Jews from 33 places in Romania’s old kingdom, convened in Focșani and decided and managed to organize the first group of more than 200 emigrants to the Holy Land.

It was at this congress where Hatikvah was first sung.

This was happening in the closing days of 1881. No, seriously!

The venue was the Jewish Boys’ School in Focsani, built by banker Wilhelm Schleir who paid for everything from the construction itself to chalk and blackboards. The designer of the building was Ion Alexandru Davidescu, who designed most of the cute buildings that can still be admired today in Iași, Galați and Focșani.

Sadly, this particular building was demolished by the communists and replaced with a Brutalist/Soviet-style school which today serves as School number 9.

The Anthem of Israel is Romanian

Hatikvah, which today serves as Israel’s national anthem, is based on a Romanian folklore melody called Cucuruz cu frunza-n sus. Moreover, the lyrics were also written in Iași in preparation for the Zionist congress mentioned prior.

The author of the lyrics, Naftali Hertz Imber, remained in Iași for several years after fleeing Galicia in 1876 and was among those 200 who performed aliyah just a few weeks after the Focșani congress.

The final version of Hatikvah as we know it today, credited to Samuel Cohen, also happened in Iași and Mr. Cohen used as guidance a Romanian folklore book collected by Guilelm Șorban (1876-1923), a Jewish-Romanian composer with a Bohemian lifestyle.

We know all of these from his son, Raoul Șorban (1912-2006) who was a longtime art critic, painter, historian and memoirist. Yours truly had the privilege of knowing him in person in 2004.

The language issue was decided in Romania

If you visit the Museum of Bukovinian Jewish History and Culture in Chernivtsi/Cernăuți (today in Ukraine) you’ll find out several interesting things about the history of Israel.

Online you can find plenty of information about the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference (דער קאָנפֿערענץ פֿאָר יודישער שפּראַך) in Chernivtsi/Cernăuți which gave rise to the flourishing of literature written in Yiddish and ultimately to preserving the Yiddish language to this day.

However, there were other three Language conferences held in the 1920s in Cernăuți (then part of Romania) where the debates were less friendly than in 1908. The stakes were high: It was to be decided whether the Eastern European Jewry (which was most of the Jewry at the time) would join the idea of rebuilding the Hebrew language or stay out of it. The audio guide of the museum talks about getting the most stubborn delegates drunk in order for the motion to pass.

If that motion hadn’t passed, modern Israel may have ended up speaking Yiddish or Russian. In a way, that still happened, though.

Romanian language in Israel

Besides Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish and English, there are two other languages that can frequently be encountered in Israel: Russian and Romanian.

Officially, there are about 100,000 Romanian speakers in Israel, but that figure only counts those who have or have had Romanian citizenship in the past. It does not count the descendants who routinely do speak Romanian as well, usually well-preserved with all of the archaisms that were typical when their (grand)parents left Romania. Former president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, offered in 2021 the figure of 400,000 Romanian speakers in Israel which, although still under-counting, it’s closer to the truth, for sure.

It’s quite a pleasant surprise (for a language nerd like me) to talk to a 20 year old in 1920s Romanian – including phrasings that would be politically incorrect in present-day Romania – but those people don’t know that because while they’ve learned the language, many of them never visited Romania, let alone live here.

Also, given the consistent (and consistently growing) commercial and political ties between Romania and Israel, there is also a not-negligible number of Israeli citizens who speak some Romanian for these reasons.

Let’s put it this way: the president of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance is born in Târgu Mureș. Her husband is King Bibi’s personal physician and is born in Târgu Lăpuș. Ariel Sharon spoke very good Romanian, having been married not once, but twice with Romanian women (two sisters from Brașov, seriously, look it up). The current minister of defense, Israel Katz, is, legally speaking, eligible for Romanian citizenship (both of his parents were from Maramureș).

Once you look into low-level politicians, there’s even more Romanian connections. The “early life” section of Israeli politicians almost always has either a Ukrainian or a Romanian connection. Which also explains the next one.

Uninterrupted recognition and diplomatic relations

After it turned out that Israel would not be a communist state, the relations between the USSR (and consequently the Warsaw Pact countries) and Israel got colder. And in 1967 the USSR ordered that everyone breaks diplomatic ties with Israel because the Israeli committed the unspeakable atrocity of not losing when all of the Arab world attacked them all at once. Even “worse”, they committed the sin of winning the Six Day War.

The Politburo thought this was absolutely haram and ordered that the Comecon (Warsaw Pact and friends) break diplomatic ties with Israel. And all did,… except Romania. Why would we break economic ties with our conspiracy?

Incidentally, this refusal in itself led to more antisemitic conspiracies in the USSR itself. Which led to more Soviet Jews wanting to leave but who now couldn’t leave because the destination, Israel, was no longer legally recognized by Moscow.

This state of affairs, of having only one communist state in Europe that recognized Israel, led to a de facto situation in which almost all negotiations between Israel and the communist world had to take place in Romania. And they did. This served Ceaușescu’s political goals and magalomania, but also served the diplomatic interests of both Israel and Romania (and still does, to this day).

Today, there is effectively one EU and NATO country that offers some recognition to “Palestine” while also not being at odds with Israel. Specifically, Romania recognizes the PLO as the legitimate representative of the philistines, but not any of their maps. It’s a classic Romanian diplomacy move of attempting to have the cake and eat it too – except in this case it’s been working really well.

There’s a Palestinian Embassy in Bucharest and most of the negotiations with “Palestine” effectively end up taking place in Romania, and in the process strengthening the case that Israel is a Romanian conspiracy since neither the West nor the philistines are happy with this arrangement, while Romania and Israel are okay with it.

Military, intelligence and commerce

The situation described above also allowed for a flourishing commercial and intelligence relationship between Romania and Israel.

Israel get to test a lot of the new toys in Ukraine by making them in Romania, with Romanian contractors. Legally, everyone gets what they want: Ukraine gets its weapons, Romania gets technology and a revived manufacturing industry and military industrial complex, Israel gets to play “neutral” and the Russians get blown up. Oh welp, I guess not everyone gets what they want, but still.

The largest arms exporter in Romania is Elbit, legally a Romanian-Israeli conglomerate, which owns 5 manufacturing facilities in Romania. Getting more accurate statistics is difficult because most Israeli investors do qualify for Romanian citizenship (as explained above) and they usually go for it in order to avoid having to comply with the increasingly onerous and anti-Israeli EU regulations.

In addition to military and intelligence, a lot of shekalim (literally, in this case) go through energy and tourism. It’s hard to explain to those not from around here just how big tourism is between Israel and Romania. There are more flights between Romania and Israel in most weeks than flights between Romania and France.

But no, seriously

While the claim in the headline is obviously tongue-in-cheek, the information provided above is also absolutely true and easily verifiable. And the information above is a big part of the explanation as to why you don’t get Israel obsessed weirdos in Romanian politics. Even the “far right” likes Israel here.

That’s not to say there isn’t legit antisemitism here. But even the local antisemitism is way different than the terminally online westoid version. This may sound like a joke, but in Romania even the antisemites are Zionist. Local antiemites are usually deeply religious and, as such, they do pilgrimage to the Holy Land (as do tens of thousands of Romanians every year) – and they prefer to visit the Holy Land as part of a safe and relatively civilized country, rather than one of the worst iterations of dar al Islam.

And therein lies the rub for the purveyors of anti-Israel narratives: Even the weirdest and most hateful Romanians are still Romanians – which means most will still ultimately prefer pretty much anything to dar al-Islam. The more enlightened of us also prefer our conspiracy to their conspiracy.

Last week Israel celebrated 77 years of existence, which I’m sure it has some spiritual meaning for the 37% of Europeans who affirm in surveys that they believe in numerology. Compared to numerology, Israel being a Romanian conspiracy is a far more reasonable belief. So, with this occasion, the Sofa wishes our conspiracy Israel a long and prosperous life! Maybe with better economics, at some point too 😀

Next time someone brings up Israeli conspiracies, let them know who’s really behind all of this. Naturally, we should share the “fault” with Ukraine and Poland, but that’s a story for another day when we’ll explain how you’re all living in Eastern Europe but you don’t know it yet.

I just finished watching the Grand Final of Eurovision 2025, held in Basel, Switzerland. I can’t write about politics today because the Romanian law says you can’t campaign in the day of the vote. But since Romania did not attend this year’s Eurovision (Mashallah we never do ever again 🙏🏻), I can tell you about how bad Eurovision was, obviously, with no connection to the election going on right now.

So, the “competition” took place in Switzerland because this guy won last year. If you are a normal person, you probably have no idea what that flag is. And that’s a good thing. The trouble is that the European Commission really wants you to know.

Why does this matter? Well, because if you live in a country of Europe, it is very likely that your taxpayer money funded this crap.

For decades, this was acceptable because it wasn’t too expensive and it scratched several itches. It kept a part of the culture busy, it allowed for friendly multiculturalism, it provided a good yearly proxy to grok the geopolitical mood of the establishment in each country and, occasionally, gave prominence to either a good song or some comedic or epic moment.

Since 2004, however, with the advent of Youtube, things have started to change while ESC, like any pan-European state bureaucracy, was slow to adapt, to put it mildly.

The model is passée

ESC is organized by something called the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which unites all of the State broadcasters from Europe, including transcontinental countries like Türkiye, Azerbaijan, russia or Armenia (but not Qazaqstan!) plus three non-European countries – Morocco, Israel and Australia.

All of this may have been a good idea in 1950 when broadcasting was a highly expensive affair, but in 2025 technological change and (geo)politics are slowly, but surely, rendering the model obsolete. And not just when it comes to ESC, but generally, the very idea of EBU is very much passée.

You see, because it’s organized by what is effectively a State organization, the “competition” has to follow a centrally-decided model that is also at the same time compliant with all of the national rules and regulations of TV broadcasting in all of the 57 member countries (or 53, or 54, depending which week we’re talking about). Again, this was possible in 1950, but in 2025 it’s increasingly untenable.

And since 2014, when the “bearded woman” “won” the “competition” – this became self-evident for more and more people. One by one, countries started withdrawing from this because, again, if it’s State funded then it also means it’s accountable to normal politics and, ultimately, to the taxpayers.

Here’s a nice little table for you:

Country	Last participation	Reasons
Andorra	2009	Financial
Belarus	2019	Political
Bosnia	2016	Political and financial
Bulgaria	2022	Political and financial
Hungary	2019	Political
Monaco	2006	Political and financial
Montenegro	2025	Did not participate in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Morocco	1980	Political
North Macedonia	2022	Financial
Romania	2023	Political and financial (missed several in the 2010s as well)
russia	2021	Political
Slovakia	2021	Political and financial
Türkiye	2012	Political

As you can see, the list has gotten pretty long in the last 5 years. And it’s very likely next year will be even longer than that.

And it’s not just the agenda driven nonsense (more on that later), but the model itself is now outside reality. Almost every year the most popular song does not win (2025 is the exception). Every single year (no exception at all), the final hierarchy is heavily influenced by nameless and faceless weirdos. And while that fact was well hidden in 2005, it’s impossible to keep it hidden in 2025.

It also doesn’t help that due to technological change, the most popular artists don’t need ESC, thus further deepening the crisis of the model itself. In 2025 it is simply weird to think that a bunch of has-beens from the 1980s (or even older!) can have a reasonable opinion on what is popular and good in terms of music for a diverse continent like Europe in 2025. Ain’t no-one buying that!

Nobody is watching it

All of the above would’ve been excusable if the line went up. Any line, really. The show is not profitable, it has declining audience numbers (even as EBU fudges with the statistics), and it’s increasingly too expensive even for richer countries.

In 2022, 2023 and 2024 it barely cracked 160 million viewers and in 2025 I’d be honestly surprised if it surpasses 150 million viewers. And this is with EBU’s way of counting which effectively adds up all of the viewers “across all ESC content leading up to and over the event weeks”. So, in reality, there’s barely 30 million people that watch this.

Romania not only didn’t attend, but didn’t even broadcast the thing in 2025. So I watched it on Youtube. At the peak there were 1.4 million people watching live. That’s slightly more than the total number of people watching a Turkish TV show last night just in Romania alone. The difference being that zero taxpayer money are being spent on that.

Meanwhile, organizing this thing costs around €50 million – and that’s just the contribution of the organizing broadcaster (the host country) and the city hall of the city (Basel in the case of 2025). Add to that the lodging costs of all delegations (paid by each individual member organization – which is also taxpayers’ money), plus the cost of organizing a “national selection” (also taxpayer dough) and you’re climbing really fast to over €100 million in taxpayers’ money for this thing.

Sure, €100 million across 37 countries may not seem much, but €100 million means almost the cost of a brand new stadium, or the operating costs for several big hospitals for a year, or even the construction of a brand new smaller hospital (no, I’m not joking – there’s a public bidding right now for a €70 million contract to build a new hospital from scratch). €100 million is a lot of money given the negative value that ESC now offers.

There is no core audience anymore

Until 2019 (at the latest) the core audiences were nostalgic boomers and people tuning in for the cringe. But, in the last 6 years, ESC managed to alienate those as well.

The “no politics” rule means the Israeli competitor doesn’t get to talk about how she survived October 7 by literally hiding under corpses, but that suddenly doesn’t apply to the endless stream of LGBT-ist propaganda. Why? Because in Europe, LGBT-ist propaganda is legally not a political point of view (even though it absolutely is), but “human rights law” (as if “human rights” isn’t in itself a mere opinion like all others).

By tradition, the last year’s winner is invited to perform. This is how he showed up. This doesn’t break the “no nudity and sexual innuendo” guidelines, according to EBU. Neither is his celebration of Hamas break the “no politics” rule, apparently.

In an attempt to please everybody, EBU is in fact pleasing nobody and thus sealing the fate of the whole project. And it’s unlikely that this will be turned around under the current constraints.

What can be done

After watching yet another dogshit show, I sincerely believe the Romanian and Hungarian strategy is the best for all countries: Cite financial reasons and get the fuck out of this shitshow.

It’s not salvageable. The institutional resistance to reform is too great and no coherent argument is going to persuade them. We tried. The very idea of getting private partners on board and improve the management and the finances was received with shock and horror by the BBC, the Swiss broadcaster, France Médias Monde or TVE – and these guys’ opinion matters the most. I say: “Fine. Have at it and leave us alone.”

If the westoids don’t want to fix this money sink, then let them pay for it without the rest of us.

The most likely countries where you can have some success in the following years, politically speaking, to get them out are: The United Kingdom (if Reform wins), Poland, France (if Bardella wins), Italy (traditionally Italy stayed out more than it stayed in – so it’s worth a shot again), the ex-Yugoslav countries (especially Croatia after it was done to them in 2024), Cyprus (for financial reasons) and Albania (for their constant mistreatment over the last decade because they’re never gay).

Meanwhile, those in countries like Slovakia, Romania, Hungary or Bulgaria should continue to hold the line.

This beast needs to be starved. And again, since funding it is a political decision, don’t be shy to use hardline politics to push for its defunding.

Heck, I’m thinking we should get some MEPs on this as well.

If we’re paying for this, we want to have a say in how it’s run. It really is that simple.

Ideally, we take over it and turn it into a festival for the Europe of nations. But, in order for that to happen, the current crop of management has to go. And the fastest way to do that is to defund it, country by country.

You may not think this is important enough to be worth the energy, but please do keep in mind that ILGA-Europe (the main pusher of LGBT-ism in Europe) has a budget of just €5m/year these days. Down from tripple-digits a decade ago. They themselves are complaining.

LGBT-ism exists as long as there’s funding for it. Eurovision is just one giant LGBT-ist operation at this point. A €100m/year operation, to be more precise. Taking it down (or taking it over, if possible) would be a huge win for subsidiary purposes. The cultural relevance of Eurovision is gone, but the resources it still redistributes to LGBT causes are still immense and continue to have negative consequences on our cultures and our societies. And if you don’t control those resources, then by definition the enemy does.

Call your MP. See who you know inside the public broadcaster. You’d be surprised how easy it can be in most countries to gather the critical institutional support for a reduction or withdrawal from this shitshow.

Let the lefties fund it with their own dough if they want to continue this. Get your tax shekalim out of this mess!

And if you’re in Poland or Romania, please do think about this today as you head out for a vote 🙂

 

I’m writing this before the results of the German general elections are known. This needs to be mentioned because the tendency these days is to always assume that any argument is made with electoral purposes in mind, or to justify (positively or negatively) the results of an election. That is not the intention here.

Whether AfD gets 51% or 5% in the general election this Sunday, the following lines do apply. This will get lengthy (by today’s low-attention span standards) so grab a cup of coffee.

Alright so, as you might know, the Vice President of the United States of America, His Excellency James David Vance was invited as a keynote speaker at the annual security conference in München six days ago. All of the “good people” expected the same boring speech about russia and China and maybe the 50th reiteration of the standard US plea to European NATO members to increase their defense spending.

For those for whom history started on January 21st, it is necessary to remind everyone that this discussion is not new. George W. Bush, Hussein Obama, Trump 1.0 and Hussein Obama 3.0 the Biden Administration have consistently asked European NATO members to increase their defense spending. This discussion started in 2006 (or 2004, or 2008 – depends on who you ask). It’s been around 20 years (give or take) since this very legitimate demand has been on the agenda. Of course, nothing happened. Au contraire, European NATO members continued to decrease their defense spending all throughout this period.

So in 2025, a week ago, Vice President Vance decided to flip the script and, in doing so, unleashing a preference cascade in Europe that will ultimately do a lot of good – even though the transition period is clearly very bumpy. You really should watch the whole speech if you haven’t done so already. It’s just under 20 minutes long.

The reactions to his speech are precisely those that people like me have been waiting (and some of us planning) for about 15 years. It would’ve been great to have this conversation in 2019, rather than in the tumultuous geopolitical context of February 2025 but, ultimately, no moment is perfect and the conversation(s) must happen at all costs, no matter how inconvenient it is for one side or another.

What do we defend? What is “the free world”?

Vice President Vance effectively questioned whether (most of) Europe is still part of the free world. And, in doing so, forced the Pavlovian reaction from the usual suspects who, much to nobody’s surprise, rushed to answer. And the answer is simple: NO.

You may not like the answer, you may think the answer is being misinterpreted or you may be one of those people who think JD Vance is correct but, even so, he shouldn’t have said it or, he should’ve been more polite or just wait for the right context – but none of that changes the reality.

In Europe the peoples are simply not free. And the difference between russia and a worryingly high number of countries of Europe is now negligible. Take Germany and russia for instance. Both:

• want Nordstream in defiance of the strategic interest of most of NATO
• jail people for political reasons
• rig elections both at home and abroad (see Germany’s huge propaganda budget into the medias of countries like Poland and Romania)
• lack basic freedoms
• have a laughably biased judicial system
• instrumentalize mass migration to harm other countries (both targeting Poland the most)

Other than the umlaut, the difference between russia and Germany is hard to assess because there isn’t much. Older people may say there isn’t much left, thus insinuating that once upon a time this was the case. I’m from JD Vance’s generation so I’ll be skeptical of this.

Throughout the entirety of my lifetime Germany has just been the other russia not just when it comes to geopolitics, but general philosophy too. Always out to ban, regulate and control things. Always, without exception, against the liberties and freedoms of my people.

When the Soviet Union did this shit to my people, they were called Sov-Rom which were effectively an exploitation scheme by which russia extracted resources from here for the benefit of russia.

Present-day OMV in Austria in those years was called Sowjetische Mineralölverwaltung (the Soviet Mineral Oil Administration) and it was basically the same thing.

Everyone recognizes today that that was bad. But almost everyone loses their shit when one points out that that’s exactly what Germany is doing right now to almost all of Europe.

Vice President Vance rightly called the members of the EU executive by their proper name: Commissars. And reminded everyone that justifying censorship or cancelling elections by “combating disinformation” is itself a Soviet tactic and even the word disinformation is a Soviet one. That’s when all of the euro-fanatics lost their shit. Because no contemporary commie likes it when you show them the mirror.

The so-called transatlantic link always relied on both economic and ideological common interests. These two pillars meant that sometimes one yield in favor of the other depending on over-arching (geo)political interests. But what happens when both of these pillars are weakened? Because that’s where we are now!

At the introduction of the €uro, the USA and Europe were effectively peers in terms of economics. But it’s been 15 years since Europe has been lagging behind and routinely just straight up going backwards.

So… increasingly fewer common values and increasingly fewer common economic interests. Both of the pillars underpinning the transatlantic link have been weakened. And, overwhelmingly, the fault for this lies with the commissars and the overwhelmingly leftist governments of most of Europe. These facts are inescapable. There is no way around them and that’s what’s driving the eurocrats crazy. They can cry “populism” and “fascism” until they’re blue in the face. They can try to stall via election shenanigans or try to double down on the censorship but, ultimately, the jig is up.

The normative materialism that the managerial class cultivated has come back to bite them. For years, they were able to shove down social concerns (on immigration, free speech, Islam, genderism, etc.) under the excuse that at least the line goes up. Well, tough, now it’s time for the bluff to be called. Not even the line goes up now!

For over a decade (since 2013 in my case) we have been warning to whoever would listen and could change things that you can’t keep importing the third world, have neighborhoods that run on a parallel and foreign legal system (Sharia), demonize the natives (especially the young men) and pay no (geo)political consequences for this.

The response, from 2013 until December 2024 was always the same: “You’re imagining things. It can’t be that bad. Look, the line goes up. Nobody’s gonna sacrifice their standard of living just to fight transgender propaganda in schools. And, ultimately, what’s so bad about that anyway? Are you some kind of a Nazi?” – or… words to that effect.

In vain I (and people much smarter than me) tried to explain to these loons that this is not how this works. The camel’s back is not endlessly resilient and that it will break, eventually. Whether it takes 5 or 10 years, but it will happen. You can’t go after people’s children and expect no consequences. Well… eventually,… it did happen.

The cat is out of the bag. The paste is out of the tube. Pick your metaphor.

None of this is JD Vance’s fault (or the Americans’ at large). Heck, the Americans have had to hold this fight on their own soil as well, starting even earlier than Europe.

It just so happened that JD Vance’s drop ended up spilling the glass. It could’ve been the Brexit vote. Or the election of Giorgia Meloni. Or the first election of Donald Trump. Or the illiberal, illegitimate, immoral and useless abuses during the Pandemic Project. Or Javier Milei saying roughly the same things last month at the World Economic Forum. Or the wholly illegitimate annulment of the presidential election in Romania (more on that soon). There were multiple moments – large and small – that could’ve spilled the glass. It was bound to happen.

The critical mass is here. And the discussion must take place and it will take place, regardless of whether that’s convenient for you or not.

Now that doesn’t mean that my and most of this esteemed audience’s favorite side of the argument will win, mind you. But it does mean that the suppression of the argument is over. Truly over.

JD Vance happened to be the right man at the right place and at the right time. But then again, that’s how (geo)politics and the great (and not-so-great) deeds of the great men of history tend to happen. It’s a lot of random and chance involved.

Now what?

Well, now it’s time to see who is who. The temptation to enjoy the schadenfreude (now there’s an interesting German word!) is immense. But, the fight is not over. In a way, the struggle so far was to actually start having the fight to begin with.

Until now, the “fight” was mostly by convincing normies one by one and sowing the seeds of doubt. A very important fight, as we can all witness these days, but for over decade it appeared hopeless. Now we know for sure it wasn’t hopeless but we should also know that the war is not over either, even if the tides have truly turned in our favor.

The Enemy is regrouping and trying hard to flood the zone (to borrow a phrase from Steve Banon). In case you haven’t noticed, the media space in Europe is choke full of discussions about Ukraine and as much irrelevant nonsense as possible. As I’m writing these lines, this is the 3rd most prominent news story on Reuters. Water conservation in Greece. Veeeery important topic, I’m sure. All 10 people living in Nafplion definitely appreciate it.

The reason the Enemy is doing this is self-evident: Damage control. You don’t want the plebs or the chattering class(es) to think too much at JD Vance’s speech, outside of the approved framework of Orange man bad.

The more people think at what JD Vance said, the higher the preference cascade to the disadvantage of the Regime in Europe. So it is therefore preferable (from the Enemy’s perspective) that the plebs talk more about vladimir putin, water conservation in Greece, Coca Cola’s sponsorhisp programs (4th most prominent news story on the frontpage of Reuters when I write this) and really anything except for the fact that the “free world” in Europe is indeed in remission and that the basic liberties of the peoples of Europe are starting to resemble russia a lot more than it’s comfortable for almost everyone to admit.

The more people talk about the content of JD Vance’s speech, the more people will inevitably see the legitimacy of the question. Which, again, is this: “What exactly are we defending?”

For far too many years we’ve been busy defining the enemy. And that’s important too, don’t get me wrong! But to capture the imagination and the passions of the public, you need a positive vision as well.

In 2014, the positive vision was still (somewhat) evident. But in 2025 it simply isn’t. And no amount of screeching can change that.

If the proposal is to fight for Greta Thunberg (energy poverty), Digital Services Act (technological poverty), GDPR (insanity), Green New Deal (more energy poverty), the Migration Pact (read mass Islamic immigration into East-Europe to relieve Germany) and leadership by illegitimate Germans such as Ursula von der Leyen then, with respect, the only correct answer is this: Go fuck yourselves! Yes, all of you.

It’s hilarious (but also infuriating) to see people like von der Leyen or NGO grifters talk back at JD Vance about democracy when, in reality, Vice President Vance has more votes on his name than the entirety of the EU leadership combined. And the plebs may be ignorant and routinely foolish, but they’re not all retarded.

You are not going to capture the imagination (least of all the admiration) of the people you spent 12-13 years calling them Nazis, xenophobes, Islamophobes (as if that’s a bad thing), sexists (as if that’s a bad thing) and a whole plethora of -phobes and -ists whose legitimacy nobody voted for and approximately nobody agreed upon.

And since in Europe there is no mechanism like in the US to repudiate these things at the ballot box (at least not a direct and effective one), we’ll have to make do with the imperfect ones – the soap box all the time, the ballot box wherever possible, the lobby box (as informal as it is) and, hopefully, we won’t need the cartridge box.

One side point for our American friends: While second amendment rights are rare in Europe, historically, when we decide to chimp out, we do it in ways that make the overwhelming majority of American chimp outs look like gay pride parades in comparison. The regular striking season in France (that takes place every month of May since the 1960s) makes the BLM riots genuinely look mostly peaceful. The riots in Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Prague or Belgrade during the Pandemic Project were far more serious than all protests in the US combined in the last 30 years.

Point being: NOW is the time to strike at the Regime in our countries. They’ve never been weaker and more scared since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Bury them in lawsuits, bury them in physical protests, vote out of spite with anyone but not them, convince others to do the same, purposefully increase the tension in society unidirectionally against them – the establishmentarians.

These people must lose. At all costs.

Will there be consequences for this approach? Yes, of course! And some of them may not be pretty at all! But, by the same token, there is simply no room left to fix anything with this current leadership. Not after the Pandemic Project and the multitude of exaggerations and straight up evil in the years prior to 2020. There is such thing as enough is enough.

And all of this must happen before any policy discussion.

Yes, of course most European countries should increase their defense spending. Yes, of course most European countries should get a DOGE of their own. Yes, of course most European countries are socialist shitholes that must go through an active process of transition to capitalism the way Eastern Europe had in the 1990s.

But, before any of that, the first step is physical replacement. We have to do all of the above (and more) but not with the current pseudoelite.

There’s an old Romanian say: When the brothel ain’t working anymore, it’s time to change the whores. And we’re at that moment.

Weren’t these whores super-duper happy at the Great Reset project just 5 years ago? Well, turns out that the idea wasn’t entirely wrong. Let’s have a Great Reset of them.

JD Vance’s good for Romania

In the last 40 years, there have been exactly three American officials who have done good for my country not by accident, but intentionally so: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and JD Vance. In this order.

For a quick background on Romanian politics see this video from three weeks ago.

By mentioning the annulment of the Presidential election in Romania, JD Vance did two things here:

• gave permission to the 70% of the populace who also agrees that the annulment was a bad idea
• put the Regime on notice that they crossed a red line

This led to hilarious reactions from the usual suspects. Perhaps the most notable being the one shown above (the headline has since been changed).

The shutting down (really just a suspension) of USAID and the Vicepresident’s speech triggered a preference cascade the likes of which I haven’t witnessed since 2004 – at the previous serious regime change in Romania. And it’s glorious to see in and of itself.

It was even funnier to see the editors rushing to edit history as it dawned on them that their cushy wages are also American, generally speaking. The author of the above screenshot has been on the payroll of the US Embassy until two minutes ago, basically. This unconstrained public chimp out from such people (here I would also include Adrian Papahagi, Cătălin Tolontan, the grifters from Recorder and a whole plethora of local public speakers who effectively confirmed what we’ve all been suspecting: that they’re all grifters) – well,… this chimp out from them blew away the last shred of legitimacy they might’ve had.

Even some of them are now acknowledging it. Not in these words, but they do so when they acknowledge that the current establishmentarian officials in Romania are treated with contempt anywhere it is relevant (see Andrei Caramitru). Which, by the way, that is a very good thing.

The majority of Romanians (again, around 70%) treat the current Romanian officials with hostility and contempt as the default. And about 40% with straight up hatred.

Prior to 2020, even the most avid haters of the Romanian political class (such as yours truly) would assume they’re all liars and grifters for political gain. Which translated into always double-checking what they say.

After 2020, however, around 40% of us simply don’t care. An official from PSD/PNL/USR/UDMR could claim that water is wet and our reaction would be somewhere between “no, it isn’t – you’re a liar” and “who the fuck cares? You’re illegitimate. Go fuck yourself!”

Of course, this isn’t specific to Romania. Germany is in a similar situation. So is France. And soon more countries will join the club, whether they like it or not.

The reason is simple: While multi-party democracies can ensure a more lasting tenure in power for the establishment, there still does come a point when all possible combinations have been tried already. And when that moment comes (like it did in Romania), there’s no way to go but out.

And, you see, that’s an existential crisis for the current political class in Romania. Most of these people have never held a proper job in the entirety of their lives. They are, to put it simply, useless leeches. Most of them eligible for some jail time as well. And they know it! That’s why they fight so hard and so dirty to stay in power. Because once they’re truly out of power, there be dragons… for them.

On top of this, one also should bear in mind that since 1995 the political class has always been low-key subservient to the US. It was a very good bargain. The US (until 2013) had no ideological demands, was willing to support a fast-paced transition to democracy and a fast-paced economic transition (with the local currency becoming convertible in 1998 largely with US support and for great benefit to our people). In return the US asked for some military support and high(er) military spending on a modernized army formed by professionals rather than conscripts. All of this was popular with the general populace as well.

So the political class from 1995 onwards found itself in a golden age: having to sometimes serve an empire (the USA) whose demands were anyway very popular locally. You can’t get more of a perfect grift than this one!

But… over time… things changed. The country joined the EU in 2007. And after 2012 the EU itself started transforming into something that is deeply unpopular and downright harmful and evil. The local political class survived through a fine balancing act between US and EU (read: German) interests, also benefiting from the fact that the most angry people with them simply left.

And then 2020 came. Which not only brought exaggerations and evil policies, but also brought back a lot of people from abroad. This trend had started prior to that (as it did in Poland too) but got heavily accelerated with the Pandemic Project which saw several countries going full insane over a cough with 99.999% survival rate of everyone under 70 and a statistically zero IFR among children. The upending of the entirety of social and economic life so that grandma lives till age 88 and 4 months instead of 87 and 11 months initially shocked people but the shock turned to anger and slowly to resentment and spite. And for good reason!

The Pandemic Project hit hard on the prime exponent of the post-2004 Regime, that is PNL (blue on the graph above) without a perfect corresponding upswing for the other big systemic gang that is PSD (red on the graph above).

Long story short, by 2024, the systemic parties found themselves increasingly on the wrong side of the public. Here at the Sofa we’ve been warning and detailing how and why this will happen but few have heeded the warning. From the Regime’s perspective, all of this happened suddenly and unexpectedly. And although that’s not true, they act as if it is because that’s their sincere belief. And, in these matters, perception is reality.

From their perspective, everything was going smoothly as late as the summer of 2024 when the Regime alliance (PSD+PNL) got almost 50% of the vote and, combined with the Westoid Left’s 8% (mainly USR) and the Hungarian Minority Party’s 6%, it seemed that the establishment is doing great – especially since the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians had under-performed (only 15%, coming second) and SOS barely made the threshold at 5.03%.

Then came the parliamentary/general elections on December 1, 2024, in which, again, the establishment performed worse than expected but still good enough – now able to rule, albeit with a very slim majority. But also with almost 40% of the new Parliament comprised from rock-through-the-glass parties and with the Westoid Left (USR) caught in the middle and in fast decrease.

And then came the unmitigated disaster of the annulment of the Presidential election. And the suspension of USAID and JD Vance’s speech. This is almost the perfect storm. All we need is a terrorist attack from a blue-haired westoid leftist against a “sovereignist” and the whole situation mismanaged by the Police. Not that I’m hoping for that – I like my country without terrorism, thank you very much – but, truly, that would make this a perfect storm.

Still, JD Vance’s speech made violence a lot less likely now. The 40% haters have no reason whatsoever to chimp out violently. They had very few even in December, but now it would be counter-productive since the Trump Administration signaled that it agrees with us.

Meanwhile, the Regime suddenly can’t engage in too much violence either. It tried in the first weeks after the annulment but that didn’t quite work out because the idjits went after random TikTokers who are young and therefore simply unimpressed by the State’s authority. Effectively, the Regime tried to manage the situation using Boomer politics in a political moment that is very much explicitly against Boomer politics.

So what’s left is the Regime (and its army of shills) fighting for their own survival now.

And they’re losing too. Mostly because they’re stuck in a project that nobody cares about. Încremeniți în proiect as Romanian wisdom tells us.

In 2025 they try to counteract the threat to their privileges and power through methods that are straight up laughable: like having university professors write long screeches on Faceberg or in Regime newspapers that are read by approximately zero people.

Meanwhile, VP Vance replies to anons on X with very detailed policy explanation. Of course, the user to whom he replies to is not a random anon, but also a policy wonk from Germany. But the fact remains: the discussion is no longer taking place in the Regime’s terms and on the Regime’s turf.

VP Vance will not find time to offer detailed policy analysis to CNN or to Deutsche Welle. But he has plenty of time for @eugyppius1 on X, on CPAC or on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The very notion of what constitutes mainstream and legitimate is (finally! thank God 🙏🏻) suffering a profound reset.

The same phenomenon is happening in Romania as well. Regime-aligned websites routinely get fewer readers than this website. Regime-aligned expensive TV shows gather fewer views even than the Sofa. And that’s despite the multiple algorithmic restrictions that the Sofa still is under while the Regime-aligned shows benefit from an implicit algorithmic boost (at least on Youtube – though not anymore on Faceberg).

And the response that it’s all amplified by russia/CCP simply doesn’t work anymore. It’s not that such amplification doesn’t happen (it sure does happen, at least sometimes), but it’s not the russians that make Regime-aligned content be effectively marginal on the Internet. It’s not the russians that are upset for the election annulment – quite the opposite: they’re very happy that this happened – and they tell you that openly. Here’s a russian politician about it. Here’s vladimir putin about it. Sorry for the russian links but this is also something that is usually exploited: Most people can’t read russian so the Regime relied heavily on this fact and assumed everyone would believe them about what russian propaganda says. This worked well when the Regime claims were somewhat in the same ballpark with reality – but that’s not the case anymore.

Of course, this holds true for the vatniks as well. The running joke these days is that even our vatniks are westernized. Most pro-russian shills in Romania are just as fluent in the russian language as most pro-EU/westoid shills – which is to say fuck all.

All in all, JD Vance opened the floodgates. He may not have intended to (although given his subsequent behavior I have many reasons to assume he did), but the outcome is what it is. The masks are off.

What we do (both in Romania and in Europe in general) with this political moment is still unclear.

But, in the case of Romania, I will insist: No matter the outcome, JD Vance’s tirade was undoubtedly a very good thing he did for my country and my people. Even if my favorite side of the argument ends up losing this war, it will still have been an uncontested good for Romania that these people, the establishmentarians, get a gigantic kick in the teeth alongside ALL of their inconspicuous (paid!) shills. All of these people must lose. And they deserve to lose. The country will be inherently better off once all of these people will have lost.

Then we’ll have plenty of time to deal with the consequences. And yes, some of the consequences won’t be pleasant. The line might go down (oh no!) and the most irresponsible people in society – those who have debts – might have to pay a higher interest (oh no!), but, overall, that’s a cost that is totally worth it.

Some things are worth more than their monetary value. For yours truly and most of this esteemed audience, freedom of speech simply matters more. So much more that I’m perfectly happy – heck, exhilarated indeed – to trade even a long recession in return to a complete restoration of freedom of speech not to 2013 levels, but to 1991 levels! Everything must be permitted in public and in full. Yes, including the most unsavory and fucked up things that disgust me.

Because, ultimately, that’s what freedom of speech is for. For the things that we hate the most.

Downstream from this, yes, of course I also want revenge. For the Pandemic Project in particular. But also generally for the arrogance of the current establishment – and not just in Romania. These people must lose.

We tried the nice way. I certainly did. For over a decade. The patience has simply ran out. I’m out of fucks to give. And so are about 40% of my fellow countrymen.

It’s politically irrelevant (realistically speaking) who the next president of Romania is. But, since the Boomers in the Regime have signaled that it’s highly important for them, then it is incumbent on me and on us, the (at least) 40% to make sure the next president is whomever they hate the most.

But even more important is for the next president to be someone NOT from the current regime. So definitely not Crin Antonescu, Ponta, Bolojan, Ciolacu, Lasconi, Moșteanu… or anyone from PNL, PSD or USR. At this point I’d vote for Satan if it means these people lose and are humiliated. Cruelty must become the point. Their ideals must be openly held in contempt and stomped upon. Politically speaking, of course. As I said: I’m not a big fan of violence and that’s precisely why I was the happiest person in Romania for JD Vance’s speech. He just made violence utterly unnecessary. Which is great. It means we can fix this in a civilized manner.

Not a conclusion

The current EU-sponsored hybrid and panic porn attack on Romania shall also pass. In a month nobody will even remember it. That’s why, unlike my fellow dissidents, I’m unmoved by the relentless panic porn that the Regime media unleashed following JD Vance’s speech.

The elections will be in May. A looooot of things can happen until then. Very likely by then we’ll have a different prime minister. And very likely a wholly different governmental majority. If not by May, certainly by autumn. That will be my focus (and hopefully our people’s focus too) – to help to the best of our abilities that the next governing majority favors as many of our policy positions as possible while also necessarily holds in contempt as many of their policy positions as well.

I hope (and I’d pray too if I believed in that) that our people can hold the eyes on the ball for the next several months. The most important part of Romanian politics is the Parliament. Who moves things there matters the most. Who is President is a lot less important for the day-to-day lives of our people.

However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the election seriously. It just means we gotta keep doing what we’ve been doing – actively undermine the Regime joyfully and calmly. Let them be angry and seething. Nothing brings more votes for the institution of the Extremist Candidate™ than Tapalagă or col. Dogioiu seething in the pages of their increasingly marginal blogs.

We’ll probably have fragmentation as well. The Regime will attempt a form of malicious compliance in this form: The Strategic Partner said we should observe democracy? Great, then everyone can run – including Ponta, Șoșoacă, CG and maybe two or three more ”sovereignists”. It’s a tactic that has routinely worked in favor of the Regime. It failed in December 2024, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily fail again.

But… that’s a story for another time.

For now, this would be the shortest 😂 assessment for our foreign friends.

The ball is in play (“se joacă!”) as we routinely say on the stadia. It’s 1-1 at half time after 0-0 in the first leg. We haven’t won anything yet.

Eyes on the ball, my friends!

See ya on the Podcast! 👌🏻

Whether you call it Rule 34, educational content or, as in past times when Broadway was more honest – The Internet is for Porn – the fact remains that sex sells and sex-related trade is a driver of most new technologies. How that makes you feel is a separate conversation for some other time.

Short history

The oldest ever video was shot in 1874 and it’s something really autistic – the passing of the planet Venus over the Sun. The second oldest is from 1888 and it’s a random scene from someone’s backyard/garden. Third oldest is Lumière’s now famous 1895 shot of workers leaving the factory. The scene is now relatively famous because more people look up on the Internet “oldest continuous/smooth video”. But at the time, that scene had an audience of 10. Not ten thousand, but 10 people.

Just a few months later, in 1896, the first two erotic movies are made – one in France and one in the United States. That is the moment when “motion pictures” became an industry. Sure, the two films from 1896 wouldn’t be considered “erotic” today – but they were in their time. It’s also unsurprising that they happened in France (then just as today one of the most sex-positive countries and home of the invention of cinema) and in the US (the place where permitless innovation was the norm and daring investments a routine practice).

If you know what Betamax is, you’re either very old (and from a rich Western background) or someone who worked with anything that could be acquired in the post-communist chaos of early 1990s (like me).

If you don’t know what Betamax is, you’re either younger than 20 or you already know what VHS cassettes are. Betamax was the other format of cassettes, produced by Sony, as opposed to VHS cassettes produced by JVC.

In fact, Betamax cassettes were slightly better (and smaller in size) and they were the first video cassettes to be produced. A huge intra-Japanese war ensued with the Japanese government trying to force all manufacturers to adopt Betamax (because it was the first).

But the war was swiftly won by VHS. Why? Logistics and porn. But especially porn. The porn producers’ decision to adopt VHS as the medium of distribution for their production ended up making VHS the standard for everyone regardless of how they wanted to use their recorders/devices. This got expanded to cameras/camcoders too – which initially had a VHS cassette and later on a mini-VHS for regular people, while professional studios maintained the bigger ones (I filmed with one of those as late as 2004).

Betamax cassettes were produced until March of 2016 (!!) and VHS cassettes are still being produced today, though not by big mainstream manufacturers.

DVDs? Same story. They became widespread when pornographers decided they’re great for distributing higher-quality video. Then came mainstream movies and music. The reason pornographers adopted the DVD so fast was simple: Finally they could offer their end-users the ability to jump to the… ahem… preferred scene and do so seamlessly and without risking ruining the medium – as it had been the case with VHS cassettes. Anyone who digitalized VHS cassettes knows what I’m talking about – the most watched scenes tend to be the hardest to recover from an old tape.

Pay-per-view TV? Yeap, that’s pornographers’ work as well. And it was the same incentive: How to deliver content to clients in the most private way possible and as on-demand as possible while also charging money. Pioneered first in hotels and then in digital networks, pay-per-view TV became mainstream in early 2000s after the pornographers had perfected the model in the 1990s. In fact, the same pornographers then became consultants in tech and sale for mainstream content distributors later on.
The best example is Danni Ashe, the first big name in Internet pornography in 1994. Her career as a pornographer was, naturally, short. But her experience made her a sought-after consultant for every single big media corporation. She’s just the most famous example, but many others have been in the same position.

E-commerce? Yeah, that’s porn too. Long before anyone knew what e-commerce is, pornographers were already doing that as early as 1993. For the next 15 years, e-commerce meant porn. And then when it was perfected, industry insiders offered consultancy (for hefty fees) to everyone else on how to do it.

Likely the smartphone would’ve never become ubiquitous without the incentive for porn. In fact, the investments into 3G and 4G were only green-lit after consulting with the porn industry. It was (correctly) assumed that without the ability to distribute porn, the adoption of “smart” phones would be sluggish or simply won’t happen at all and thus investments would never be recovered.

By the way, this moment (around 2002 when 3G started to become a thing) is when you see a sharp rise in women consuming porn. A fact of life that anti-porn crussaders of 2024 have yet to integrate in their narrative(s), in part due to the women-are-wonderful effect.

Fast increase in bandwidth? Piracy and porn. Netflix came much later, when the market had “matured”. Netflix would’ve never happened without ThePirateBay and Porn.

From glorified tape recorder to useful technology

Michio Kaku calls present-day “AI” a glorified tape recorder. And he’s not wrong. As opposed to nearly every other take on “AI” on the Internet which competes in the “who can be the most wrong” Olympics.

But in order for “AI” (really just LLMs and 50 year old technology with bigger hard drives) to really become relevant, it will have to pass some tests. And the testing ground will be porn – regardless of what you and I think about that.

Just two days ago the first “AI” beauty pageant was announced. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly the first and the whole thing is not exactly new. But propaganda marketing matters because it creates perception. And in the world of propaganda, perception is reality.

But what will make or break this not-exactly-new-but-better-marketed technology will be “AI girlfriends” – which is a nicer way of saying porn. For now, there’s quite a bit of talk about how much that would be worth. But so far it’s only limited to chatbots.

May I remind you that chatbots for lonely people is not exactly something new. ELIZA is almost 60 years old.

Also, by “AI girlfriend” I don’t necessarily mean sex-bot androids with a language processor either – though that would certainly be a huge improvement. It will be enough if someone manages to create an advanced enough bot that can simulate a videochat-like conversation. That is to say… interactive porn by prompt.

By the way, interactive angle-changing for sport events that was the big thing in mid 2000s had been a thing in porn for over a decade prior. And the first interactive sports broadcasts paid for proprietary software to porn studios.

Similarly, the one who will be able to create interactive porn by prompt will get to set the standard for its “mainstream” offshoot (think realistic news anchors, entire sections of a featured movie and so on) and make big bucks out of it too.

There have already been some attempts at this, but they’re nowhere near close to good enough. And the only way they get good enough is through porn.

That’s when “media creators” should start worry. When the first company makes the first billion in revenue (VC investment doesn’t count) from selling access to PornGPT. That’s when we will also see the first really big REEEEE about porn in the 21st century, not dissimilar to the one from 1896 at the projection of (one of the) first erotic movies in a theater.

Or, alternatively, this doesn’t happen at all (or doesn’t happen in the next 50 years) because it’s too complicated without quantum computing – in which case “AI” goes where it deserves: A cute gimmick with niche applications – such as a glorified Grammarly to be used by kids to save time on bullshit assignments by bullshit professors/teachers in the bullshit institutions we still force them to attend because our societies are ruled by crazy people with bullshit ideas.

We’ll see what happens. But porn will be make or break.