It very rarely happens to find myself somewhat on the side of the establishment. Least of all on an international issue.

Last time I was on the side of the establishment neither the concept nor the disgusting real-life manifestations of luxury beliefs had not reached my country, yet.

Yet here we are, in 2022, as the establishment suddenly finds out that Ukraine exists, that Duginism is real (NPR link because in 2016 NPR readers were trolling me for talking about this) and that Germany is run by Putin’s useful idiots. All of these are topics that us, at Freedom Alternative Network (as well as our partners and friends in Germany, Slovenia, Sweden, the USA and, yes, Ukraine) have covered, shilled, explained and analyzed in great detail for years on end.

Just 56 days ago Facebook was banning me again for discussing Russian violence. Then 10 days later Russian violence commenced on a big scale and then Facebook said its kosher even to engage in sweeping generalizations against all Russians everywhere.

Suffice to say that I have a high interest in this conflict (which I’ve made known for years) in the direction of Ukraine eventually winning (or at least not losing).

With that said, this doesn’t change the fact that the so-called “Western culture” (a shell of its former self) approaches this in a way that not only seems crazy but it IS crazy. Luckily, Russian propaganda is not what it used to be. 2010-tier Russian propaganda would have a field day these weeks by simply repeating and mocking the myriad of absurdities done in or by the West since the commencement of the conflict.

When it’s “cool” to be pro-Ukraine

As it was the case with the pandemic (in which it became “cool” to behave like a fucking lunatic in public), it is now cool to behave, say and do things that no normal person would or should do.

The connection with the pandemic was also made by the establishment – of course, in Canada, the place run by Justin “I like China’s basic dictatorship” Trudeau where “studies have shown” that those who haven’t taken up the myocarditis-inducing experimental gene therapy clotshot are more likely to be putinists.

And then the HONKs just kept on pouring.

Under the eternal “we gotta do something” – a slew of stupidity in public was triggered allover the place.

Take the Waterloo Warbirds from Ontario, Canada. They could have organized an aviation show and donate some money for the accommodation of Ukrainian refugees. Or they could’ve encouraged people to enlist the Ukrainian Foreign Legion since Waterloo Warbirds surely attracts a lot of guys with military and combat experience – which is exactly the kind of people needed today.

What did they choose to do? Vandalize their own museum-worthy airplanes with the markings of the Ukrainian and Polish Air Force. Outstanding!

Surely Putin is going to surrender tonight! Or, at the very least, two Ukrainian refugees will be saved. Virtue signaling saves lives, dontcha know?

Or take Zürich Insurance Group Ltd. (ZURN) who could have made a good insurance offer to Ukrainian farmers (that would actually help not just the farmers, but many countries in the world!) since ZURN is one of the largest and best insurers of farmers in the world.

Or maybe they could’ve donated a sum of money for the relocation of the children evacuated from Mariupol. Or, why not, a sum of money to the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces.

Instead… their contribution is… removing the Z from their logo. I’m sure President Elenski [sic!] is now happier knowing that the whole might of the corporate power wielded by the Swiss insurer is put to the highly important use of purging a letter from their logo… What’s next? Banning the letter Z altogether?

Well, akchually, don’t underestimate Europe’s ability to be stupid in public. Two Bundesländer in Germany and Lithuania are doing just that: Banning Z in public. At least Lithuania is being consistent – since also displaying communist symbols in general is haram in Lithuania. But in Germany, Bolshevism is legal and praised. Heck, the president of the European Commission opens exhibitions dedicated to Marx in Germany, statues of Marx made by the CCP are unveiled in Germany and statues of Lenin are being unveiled as well. That’s just in the last 5 years. But somehow Z is the problem.

Germany is one of the countries that is at fault for the invasion (in fact I would argue that Germany is indeed equally at fault as Russia is – since German weapons have continued to flow into Russia even after 2014). So in these circumstances they could have sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine (I mean functional ones – not just dumping its expired stockpile inherited from the DDR). Or they could have send some money. There are Polish corporations that contributed financially for Ukraine more than the German government. I’m just saying.

Instead, Germany is busy policing the wrong kinds of Zs in public. Yeah, that will help 👌🏻- I’m sure Putin is drafting his unconditional surrender speech as we speak after he heard that Z is haram in some parts of Germany!

Recently-renovated buildings allover Europe are being tagged vandalized with wrongly-written Cyrillic messages because surely the Ukrainian refugees in my hometown need to see wrongly written messages on clean buildings. Otherwise they would’ve never known that we really don’t like Putin.

The hundreds of volunteers available on the borders 24/7 and the hundreds of thousands of Romanians available in the support groups that offer quite literally anything to the refugees are not a good indication that Romanians are, by and large, being very friendly to our neighbors fleeing the horrors of war.

No, what we needed was graffiti about that!

And then there’s the relentless promotion of Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the point of selling Zelenskyy pillows (I wish I were joking) and turning the guy into a demigod.

Look, I won’t lie: I supported Petro Poroshenko in 2019 and I considered (and in fact I still do) that the Ukrainian people made a mistake voting not just with Zelenskyy, but with Sluha Nardonu party as well (a political party made up almost entirely out of amateurs). However, it is also clear (regardless of my opinion about Zelenskyy) that Volodymyr is living up to his position in a very honorable fashion (much better than anyone – including his own party – had expected).

With that said, the aggressive promotion of the guy everywhere is likely to turn against him at some point. Like all waves of emotion, this one shall pass too. And when it will (and it will!) – what will there be left? Because Zelenskyy needs the credibility and gravitas necessary after the war as well – when he will have to negotiate loans and investments and all sorts of arrangements that will be necessary for the reconstruction effort. But with all of the political capital spent now on needless promotion… this will be tricky.

You will also never convince any skeptic by calling a Putinist everyone who isn’t full of awe with Zelenskyy.

Nobody will be swayed by your Ukrainian flag on your profile either. Least of all if you’re one of those people who demanded that those who don’t subject themselves to experimental medical treatments should have their fundamental rights revoked. And no, pointing out the hypocrisy of the people shouting “freedom for Ukraine” while the same people were shouting “lockdown the unvaccinated” doesn’t make one a Putinist either!

Heck, one of the many reasons I support Ukraine is precisely because it treated the pandemic the way it should’ve been treated: without panic, without mandates and without hysteria. During the pandemic I’ve been to the country four times precisely for this reason. And I will continue to avoid certain countries and intentionally patronize others for many years to come because of their pandemic policies.

Also, the war isn’t ending earlier if you shout “Slava Ukrayini” against anyone who asks questions about Ihor Kolomoyskyi, or is skeptical about some numbers concerning casualties. Heck, you should assume that the numbers thrown around are inaccurate at least because you can’t properly evaluate casualties during an active war scenario but also because wartime disinformation is part and parcel of any war.

Yes, the word disinformation is a loanword from Russian itself. But the practice predates the USSR and the KGB’s black propaganda/active measures department. Heck, the word propaganda comes from the Vatican in the 17th century. Anyone pointing this out isn’t a “putinist” or “a war criminal” or an “anti-western shill” or whatever.

Also, someone pointing out how this crisis is being used to normalize being stupid in public is also not a “putinist”.

Théâtre Orchestre Bienne Soleure from Switzerland banned the performance of Thaikovsky’s Mazeppa “due to the current situation in Ukraine“. Mazeppa is an opera whose plot takes place in Ukraine and is about Ivan Stepanovych Mazeppa, Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks (kinda like the founder of the modern Ukrainian nation) and Vasyl Leontiyovych Kochubey a very rich Ukrainian nobleman and statesman who bankrolled the school(s) of thought that the Ukrainian nation of today take as reference point.

And then there’s the ban on Russian cats (including Russian breeds that have never been in Russia and have non-Russian owners).

Now look, I love the Ukrainian people. And I have 7 years of content to prove it. But I also have 7 years of public content to prove just how much I love kittens. What did those kittens do? Meowed in Cyrillic?

And then there’s the issue of 16 and 17 year old Russian and Belarussian minors who will be banned from playing hockey in Canada. I’m sorry, these boys were aged 8 and 9 (or some even younger) when the decisions concerning Ukraine were made in the Kremlin. There’s no way you can convince anyone who is not a loon that punishing children has anything whatsoever with #StandWithUkraine.

This is the problem when a legitimate cause becomes a “cool” thing: all sorts of people who until this morning (in historical terms) had no idea where Ukraine is on the map end up making decisions trying to “do something” when nothing was asked from them in the first place, and in the process end up doing more harm than good.

So what’s the problem?

Okay, so many in the West are being stupid in public under the emotional moment – since war in Europe hadn’t happened this century. Well, even that is wrong since Russia has been at war with Ukraine for 8 years, but let’s put that, too, aside for a moment.

The problem, however, is that potentially good energy, as well as resources are being spent on futile endeavors. And in the process many innocents suffer.

This war will not end tomorrow. Maybe even not next month. But it will end at some point. And Ukraine as a country and the Ukrainian people (including and especially the displaced and the refugees) will need a lot of help then too. At this pace, however, by the time the war ends, a significant proportion of Western societies will end up being indifferent or even outright hostile – not because of Russian propaganda/disinformation, but precisely because they’ve been saturated with excessive messaging from their own.

It is not normal to open a news website from a country that is not Ukraine and to find on the first two, three or four pages only news from/about Ukraine or Russia. Just like it wasn’t normal between 2014 and 2021 to open a news website from the West and see NO piece of news from/about Ukraine at all. Some balance is badly needed! But who even has the credibility for that anymore?

During the pandemic multiple institutions (including and especially media institutions) have burned their trust capital by publishing disdainful nonsense and outright lies that now, rightfully so, enough citizens are having a hard time taking the media seriously on anything.

Heck, in Romania, two guys who voluntered to help the refugees were still not convinced that the war is real. So they went all the way to Kyiv to check it out for themselves. Well, they did find out and, to their credit, didn’t freak out either. The bien-pensants du jour laughed at them but I didn’t. It’s how I function as well. Heck, in 2020 I went to Sweden to check the mountains of dead bodies that the media guaranteed will be there because Sweden didn’t engage in sanitary fascism like Italy did. Of course, no mountains of dead bodies were found so I deemed the media’s stories to be what they were: utter nonsense.

The problem is that most people can’t and won’t function like that. Few people would risk going to Kyiv just to see whether the war is real. Just like few people in 2020 risked flying to Sweden in the middle of an allegedly deadly pandemic wave. The pandemic wave was real, it’s just that it was nowhere near as deadly as the media claimed.

So now, when the media IS much closer to the truth than it was during the pandemic, les bien pensants are shocked to learn there are people who just don’t believe it.

Yes, I agree it is terrible to see people who deny real suffering provoked by the Kremlin upon people who’ve done nothing wrong to the Kremlin – but we should keep in mind that calling those people “putinists” won’t solve the issue. And the issue is that the West is a shell of its former self. Its leaders are weak, its institutions are not trustworthy and its media has lied so blatantly for so long that it will take years to build back the lost trust. And Ukraine doesn’t have years. Not to mention that almost nobody in the West is even concerned with this issue.

It also doesn’t help that the loudest ones for “the Cause” are those with zero credibility on the topic. Pundits and “stars” with de facto zero knowledge about this now have strong opinions on the geopolitics of this region.

To these people the situation is just another trendy story. The mess will still have to be solved by people with beliefs and values more similar to mine, rather than similar to Patricia Arquette’s.

Yes, Ukraine needs help, and Putin must be defeated. And of course the war is real. And of course some sanctions are warranted.

But if the West doesn’t seriously clean up its room, it will all have been in vain.

The West’s main advantage over the last century has been precisely its ability to engage in open debate and tame the passions of the publics thus preventing mass hysteria from enacting hasted decisions that could bite the society in the ass later on. The West is losing that important advantage (if it hasn’t lost it already). And that vantage point must be recovered.

There is some good news too, though: Ukrainians are not like that. They’re proving it on the battlefield as we speak but it’s easy to see it if you just speak to more than 10 Ukrainians. As a people, they’re built from a different “material”. They just don’t give up.

And the harshness even before the war (and even more so now) has forged a nation that will not look kindly on Western political correctness. In Ukraine, even those with PC/leftist values have been in the trenches against Yanukovich and then against Russia. Multiple times. And still are. Hard times create strong men. The West has had too much good times for way too long. And it shows.

Just before the war the very same Western media, that now calls you a “putinist” for discussing Zelenskyy’s acting career, was itself broadcasting Russian disinformation about Ukraine focusing its attention on political parties that never exceeded 3% but almost never talking about the very real harm caused by the Kremlin continuously since 2014.

Men wiser than me say that time heals everything. Which is true. But sometimes healing comes through disappearance. The Byzantines are a good example.

So instead of turning onto your fellow citizens for failing to say the right things on this crisis (or the next one) – it is much more important to turn to our institutions and “important people” and tell them to either stop being stupid in public or fuck off outright.

That’s it. Now I’m off to prep the trip to Hungary. Lots to cover from there too.

One of the reasons half of our recommended reading list is about language and framing is because it is the most important tool of politics of any kind. The way an issue is framed and the language used to frame it gives the operative the most important clue about the bigger picture.

This is true regardless of whether you are defending the status quo (let’s say you’re Pfizer or Associated Press), engaging in counter-revolutionary activities (classical liberalism, old conservative, etc.) or in outright revolutionary ones (progressives, neoliberal leftism, etc.).

In the first 8 days of 2022 several important developments occurred in this department.

First, dr. Robert Malone framed the issue of “mass formation psychosis” as it applies to the hysteria around the Wuhan Flu. Then that issue got seen by at least 100,000,000 people. Then it became a common talking point.

These firs three elements are not new. It happened before with “Let’s go Brandon” or “Make America Great Again” or “Yes, we can!” (to also give a left-wing example).

What distinguishes “mass formation psychosis” from other recent examples is its subsequent route. Immediately after it was uttered, the establishment (particularly Google) tried to censor it. When that failed, it tried to bury it under intentional disinformation disguised as “fact-check”.

Then the establishment tried to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. As if stress-induced hysteria is something new and not a widely studied phenomenon that has been observed for centuries already. Since calling it a conspiracy theory is obviously failing too, now the establishment is calling it an “unfounded theory“.

The argument is now not that the phenomenon is unreal, but that the specific terminology used by dr. Malone is inappropriate and that it doesn’t have enough academic support.

In other words, the establishment is whining that we are using language outside of their control. And we’re doing it effectively and it’s starting to be a serious stressor for those who lick the boot of the Regime. After all, nobody likes to be called delusional – so if you can effectively emphasize and prove to a neutral audience that those who support mandatory experimental myocarditis-inducing gene therapy clotshots for a cold are indeed delusional, that’s a big problem for the Regime.

It is beyond obvious that mass hysteria exists. The NIH itself was discussing mass hysteria in the context of the Wuhan Flu as late as February 2021. So nobody seriously argues that this isn’t a real phenomenon. If you see someone arguing against that, assume that someone is a paid shill or an idiot.

The problem for the Regime, however, is that the sidelines (or the opposition) have been able to set a narrative point. Random normies that have nothing whatsoever to do with this information war (because that’s exactly what the pandemic is at this point) are now refusing to give a damn about what the Regime has to say and they routinely successfully dismiss the Regime’s “measures” with just one syntagm: Mass formation psychosis.

The next step of the Regime will be to double down on the bullshit. Sure, it won’t work, but it will buy time for the Regime. It’s the best they can do.

At this point, there is no retreat or “peace treaty” as an option. It’s either us (normal, outside of the crippling fear of a cold and outside of the special interests driving this lunacy) or them (the Regime). There is no middle ground and there will be no middle ground. Claiming otherwise is wishful thinking.

So, what’s next?

Well, we just have to keep on pressing. There is no silver bullet, but there are thousands of highly efficient bullets.

For now, we must continue to increase the personal cost of those who support the Regime. Infiltrate their circle of friends, ruin their credibility, cut them from their support network(s), ruin their careers (political or otherwise), go through the tedious (but highly rewarding) process of demoralizing them (Alinsky’s 13th rule) and, of course, never stop ridiculing them (Alinsky’s 5th rule).

Make it personally costly for any footsoldier of the Regime to continue to be one. Just next week, for instance, a police officer is due to pay me half of his wage (under court order) for having had the audacity to fine me for not wearing facial underwear on the street a year ago. Now is that police officer more likely or less likely to bother normal people on the street in the future?

The point is to remain intransigent. NONE of the points made by the Regime are legitimate. And never have been. Do not allow anyone around you to start from any other premise than the inherent illegitimacy of the Regime. In other words, language matters. The way you frame things is what drives the thought process.

Also, you should continue to look at things locally first because not all countries or regions are at the same point on the narrative curve. Some have longer inertia (e.g. Israel), some are relatively in sync with the English-language bubble and some have already finished or are close to finishing the curve (e.g. Sweden, FL, TX, etc.).

Oh, and more thing: Do not forget to keep lists of all of those who collaborated with the Regime. These people must be punished in every imaginable way within the confines of the law. And you’d be surprised just how wide the confines of the law are if you have enough imagination.

That’s it for now. Keep pushing!

When I’m writing this, the controversy related to Novak Đoković being held in the Melbourne airport is yet to be resolved. So many of you will already know the result by the time you’ll be reading this.

Nevertheless, regardless of how this controversy will be resolved (Nole being deported, Nole being allowed in or Nole sent to one of Australia’s concentration camps remote quarantine facilities for a few days) – the event itself has the potential to be a turning point in ways I am sure the Australian “authorities” did not foresee.

Something clicked

From the moment it became public knowledge that the Serbian athlete will be allowed to compete without having to take the myocarditis-inducing experimental serum, something clicked both in the minds of those ignorant about the inherently political nature of the “pandemic” and in the minds of those who have been judiciously supporting the Regime so far.

It became clear that his participation could be similar to the one of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know – it’s an unfair comparison but… is it really?

The Reich denied that black athletes can be excellent. Australia denies that normal people should be able to conduct their business without taking bloodclots-inducing experimental serums.

The Reich claimed to control everything – including reality itself. Jesse Owens showed that to be horse manure. The “pandemic” Regime in Australia claimed to control the border and rigorously enforce the “vaccine” on everyone and made millions of people to believe there is no escape.  Here comes Novak Đoković with the potential to prove otherwise.

Just like the Reich, Australia also has camps where it sends the people who disagree with the Regime. And, just like the Reich, the Regime is capable of getting positive propaganda for this atrocious policy into the New York Times.

There are plenty of semblances between the two Regimes. Much more than the useful idiots and the paid shills of the Regime would want you to ponder upon.

Sure, Australia doesn’t (yet) gas people who disagree with the Regime and doesn’t (yet) build ghettos to dehumanize them. But make no mistake: that will come too if this tinpot third-world shithole is not stopped. And it’s coming to Europe too. Just today, Emmanuel Macron outright said that those who refuse the clotshot aren’t citizens.

But then again, it doesn’t have to be identical with the Third Reich of 1940 in order for the analogy to be appropriate. Australia today is closer to the Reich of 1936 than the powers-that-be would want you to consider.

However, unlike 1936, the plebs can now read for themselves (sometimes – even when Alphabet/Faceberg/Twitter censor things) and make the connections themselves.

And this leads us to the core issue: The plebs don’t like it.

Those who licked the boot of the Regime (and observed every single stupid “rule” that has nothing whatsoever to do with health – but everything to do with Control) are either asking for Nole to be forced to be as stupid as they are or… they’re starting to have doubts.

Timidly, sometimes quietly, sometimes not so quietly, more and more Australians (and not just Australians) are asking the obvious: Hold on a sec, are we the baddies here?

If Nole can have an exemption from the clotshot, then maybe the whole blanket mandate is a bunch of horse manure? If Nole can be just fine without taking the clotshot, then maybe, just maybe, the shot itself is at the very least useless for young and fit people? (hint: it is)

Australia has already seen violent protests against sanitary fascism – but those, as necessary as they were, came from people like me: people who smelled the BS right from the getgo and took the Wuhan Cough as what it is: a semi-serious respiratory virus used as an excuse for the installation of a dictatorship.

But what Australia hasn’t seen yet is a mass questioning of the Regime itself. Don’t be fooled by Twitter bubbles. Just as we speak there are millions of conversations taking place allover Australia about the Regime.

Sure, many will still end up agreeing that Novak Đoković is killing grandma or whatever bullshit the Regime is still selling to the plebs as an excuse to curb their freedoms. But a lot more won’t. Many of them will not voice it publicly, necessarily. But the seed of doubt will have been firmly planted.

And, as time goes on, that seed will start to flourish. And they will end up resenting the Regime. And that resentment will turn to anger. And, some of them will end up turning that resentment into action. Some of them foolishly – like the chap who self-immolated over the vaccine mandate (instead of taking a few members of the Regime with him) – but, surely, some of them will turn to much more effective action: political.

Of course, we can’t know now how many. But, the slave mentality of the Penal Colony notwithstanding, it’s impossible not to see a rise in dissidence Down Under after this incident.

This cannot and should not be forgiven

The biggest mistake those who oppose the Regime can make is to forgive. None of this should be forgiven. Ever. And every single apparatchik of the Regime will necessarily have to be punished in any way possible.

One thing is certain, though: Nobody can, in good faith, argue against the point that Australia is, at best, an autocratic illiberal Regime. In fact, Australia is no better than Mugabe’s Zimbabwe – a third world tinpot dictatorship in which arbitrary nonsense is the norm.

Taking Nole’s phone and effectively jailing him for the crime of being healthy without clotshots is something that cannot ever be forgiven. Even the Third Reich treated politically incorrect foreign athletes better in 1936.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m insulting the victims of fascism or whatever cope will be thrown at me this time around from the bien pensants du jour. In reality I am doing the opposite: I’m honoring the memory of the victims of fascism by speaking out in order to prevent that tragedy from happening again. You know, I kinda take #NeverAgain seriously.

And remember: Australia has apartheid, remote camps for dissidents, non-stop surveillance that would make STASI or the KGB envious, massive censorship apparatus and you can’t leave the country. There is no significant moral difference between the current Australian “pandemic” Regime and the Chinese Communist Party. Scott Morrison may indeed be genuinely anti-China (and good for him, and some of his actions on that front are commendable) but Australia, at this point, is just the People’s Republic of China with a smiley face.

The rest of the so-called “free world” isn’t too much behind.

We, as citizens, can change that and prevent that from happening. But, I suspect enough countries won’t. Western Europe is lost already and it’s basically an open-air concentration camp in which you get thrown down the pavement (including grandmas, women and children) for disagreeing with the Regime (it’s happening as a matter of routine in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany already). In Australia they outright shoot you.

But don’t forget: Novak Đoković is a Serb. And Serbians have a tendency of not going down easily. In fact, the foundational myth of the Serbian people is based on a resounding defeat in which the Serbs refused to lose until they took the enemy with them – making the victory incredibly expensive for the enemy.

Or… perhaps this will be a nothingburger. Perhaps the Australian psyche is so blasé from the Regime’s military-style propaganda that this incident will not wake them up from the psychosis too many of them are into. I guess we’ll see in a few months 🤷🏻‍♂️

Just recently, the donors of the Network have fulfilled the fundraiser towards a 2-week-trip to Republic of Moldova to cover the campaign for the upcoming snap elections. We are grateful for your generosity and we already started putting the logistics together (put our paperwork in order, make sure we have a place to stay, transportation, etc.) – but… that’s the easy part.

The hard part is getting ourselves in the mental framework to do this job properly for you. So before we hit the road, we’ll try hard to get you up to speed and in the mental framework as well.

Meme country
Moldovan /politics/
The Moldovan /press/
Youth politics
The Powers that Be
What the public sees
Conclusions

Meme country

We’ve covered events before (elections, summits, controversial marches, tensed political events, etc.) both in English and in Romanian. So we approach this with a reasonable amount of confidence that we’ll be able to deliver on the expectations the fans and donors have on us.

However, what we never did before is to try to convey the inner-workings of an inside joke to a group that is outside of it. Just like it’s difficult to explain the implications of a remark like “Okay, boomer!” or “Top kek!” to a Romanian who doesn’t speak English and doesn’t hang out in the godforsaken corners of the Internet that many of y’all do, the same is true when it comes to explaining the implications of many things Moldova to those who don’t speak Romanian. Yet that’s exactly what we’ll have to do.

Heck, sometimes we need to explain to Romanians on the right side of the Prut river some of these things because no matter how similar the two societies are (the Romanian and Moldovan) there are still shockingly many differences.

Despite having Romanian as the official language, Russian is still pretty common in Moldova. And that’s not so bad. The worst part is that the common parlance on the left side of the Prut river is rife with calques – especially phraseological calques – in which an idiom from Russian is translated word-for-word into Romanian and then you’re just expected to “get it” – and you can’t unless you either lived in Moldova for years or you speak Russian well enough to figure out the context on the spot.

Such situations exist in every country, of course. For instance the French phrase ça va sans dire got calqued in English as “it goes without saying” and today it seems normal. Nobody bats an eyelid when hearing it and everyone understands what the speaker meant. However, in most countries of Europe, such imports into the language occurred decades or even centuries ago.

In Moldova, most of them occurred in the last 20 years or so – as more and more people started to speak Romanian in public (since Russian was no longer mandatory) but those generations were educated in the Soviet system. Perhaps this explains why so many young people are running in this election (more on that later).

Here’s a video that is impossible to translate fully into English, Romanian or Russian. You basically need to speak the latter two really damn well (or to have lived in Moldova for many years) to get an idea of what this very smart history teacher is trying to convey. Good luck:

At the same time, however, Moldova is still going through an identity crisis. Is it really a country? If it is, then surely some particularities aren’t a big deal. After all, the German spoken in Austria isn’t exactly identical to the one spoken in Germany, n’est-ce pas?

If it isn’t a country, then why bother since it will soon be integrated into something else? But hold on – what something else? This election, a party called “The Patriots of Moldova” is running on the platform to make Moldova a federal subject of Russia with certain conditions.

Also in this election, with bigger chances of passing the 5% threshold to get into the legislative, there’s a Romanian party running whose objective is also the dissolution of Moldova through complete and unconditional integration of the country into its western neighbor – Romania. The Alliance for the Unification of Romanians already shook the leftist-elitist political class in Romania after they “unexpectedly” got into the Parliament – so now that they’re running in Moldova as well with the same unionist message, the powers-that-be are treading more carefully. More on that later.

And then there’s the Transnistria issue. Or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. A place so weird that it’s hard to explain even to Romanians, let alone to those not familiar with the shenanigans of the Soviet Union or Russia.

So, let’s try: The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) is a sliver of land on the left side of the Dniester (Nistru) river sandwiched between Ukraine and the rest of Moldova that’s on the right side of the Dniester river.

From an international law perspective, the PMR belongs to Moldova. De facto, however, as a result of the 1992 Transnistrian War, the PMR is a separate country with its own currency (recognized only by Russia) which only recognizes the Romanian language if it’s written in the Soviet Cyrillic script.

Point of information: there was a moment when the Romanian language was written in the Cyrillic script but that stopped almost 200 years ago. Also, the script used in the 1830s is not the same used today in Transnistria under the official name of “Moldovan Cyrillic Alphabet“.

Well, usually, the votes from this region (which de jure belongs to Moldova) would routinely go towards pro-Russian factions. This time around, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) decided not to allow any polling stations in Transnistria because the Chișinău authorities can’t control them properly. All fine and dandy but in previous elections, it happened multiple times for voters to be physically carried over the “border” to cast votes (sometimes multiple votes per person) for the preferred Russian faction.

Readers from the ex-Yugoslav space may be more likely to get the idea of this practice as it also happened last summer in 2020 in Montenegro and it routinely happens in Bosnia or Serbia – particularly in the buffer area Republika Srpska (which de jure belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation but the populace’s loyalties routinely lie with Belgrade).

Moldovan /politics/

Moldovan politics in general are basically a meme, but this is particularly true this time around.

The political party supported by the Romanian Government and the European Union is called /pas/ – yes, kinda like /pol/ – except it has terrible memes and imagery.

The Party for Action and Solidarity – /pas/ – also doesn’t really think Moldova is a country. But they also don’t think Moldova should be Russian or Romanian. They’d prefer Moldova to be a blob of everything for everyone (globohomo basically) and maybe a “civic nation” à la française but without too much Allahu Ackbar like the original.

The slogan? “We are kickstarting the good times” (Pornim vremurile bune) – an NPC slogan by an NPC party for NPC voters. The same NPC voters who made other no-names relevant in Moldovan politics in the past. Or, as our favorite Moldovan analyst Marcela Țușcă would put it: “The goodniks” (with the implicit assumption, of course, that those who defy the Progress and Good brought by /pas/ are, of course, nogoodniks. The root of the word goodnik is Russian and Yiddish and may have come into English from present-day Moldova)

/pas/ wants to dissolve Moldova into the wider EU (and, make no mistake, it stands a good chance of succeeding since it will likely form the next government). The AUR wants to dissolve Moldova into Romania – and if they get into the Parliament they may even end up in Government. The “Patriots” want to dissolve it into Russia (these guys are way too late to the party, though).

Then there’s BECS. No, it’s not a misspelling of the Hungarian name for Vienna (Bécs) but an acronym standing for Blocul Electoral al Comuniștilor și Socialiștilor (The Electoral Block of the Communists and Socialists). This alliance is run by two pro-Russian ex-presidents – Vladimir Voronin and Igor Dodon.

For those who may have followed Moldova in the past, Vladimir Voronin is that president against whom the people rose up on April 7, 2009 in a similar fashion their western neighbors had risen up 20 years earlier against Ceaușescu.

No matter how you look at it, these guys represent the distant past. Vladimir Vornin just turned 80 a month ago and Igor Dodon is increasingly unpopular even in his own party (The Socialist Party of Republic of Moldova – PSRM) as the base of PSRM perceives him as having lost the support of the Kremlin. Whether that’s true or not we will surely find out by July 14. One thing is certain though: The path to victory for BECS is pretty narrow because in addition to fielding very pasée frontrunners, their message – one of independence – is a lot less popular than it was even a year ago, let alone 5 or 10 years ago. The faith in Moldova as a viable independent state is running dry. More cynical observers may even go as far as to say that Moldova as a state died a long time ago but it didn’t find that out yet.

Then there are two contenders named after two people: The electoral block “Renato Usatîi” and the Șor Party (named after Ilan Șor).

Renato Usatîi is the mayor of Bălți, a town known as a Russian-speaking stronghold. We will go there and will show you how it evolved. For now, it is worth noting that Renato Usatîi was instrumental in unseating Igor Dodon back in November 2020. He ran in the presidential election, came in third with ~17% of the vote and in the second round he advised his voters to reject Igor Dodon.

However, while him personally is quite popular, the electoral block bearing his name is not sure it will get the 5% necessary to be in the next Parliament.

One reason him personally is popular is because under his leadership the municipality of Bălți suffered a transformation mostly for the better – and it even attracted international attention as to how transparent his administration is and just how much has corruption been reduced. Now, make no mistake, it’s still pretty corrupt, but before Usatîi, Bălți would make some Brazilian local authorities blush.

Usatîi would like to create the Moldovan equivalent of the Mossad to hunt down corrupt politicians, abolish district (raion) authorities and intensify economic cooperation with Romania and Ukraine.

Ilan Șor is the former mayor of Orhei. At the age of 34 he has a resume similar to more seasoned oligarchs. Born in Tel Aviv (from parents that had fled the USSR), grown up in Moldova since age 3, Ilan Șor came out as a strong advocate for the Russian-speaking population. He is married with Jasmin – a successful Russian pop-singer. He owns a football club, several duty-free stores, he got elected as mayor of Orhei whilst on house arrest and also got involved in the so-called “the billion scandal” in which roughly one billion dollars (one eighth of Moldova’s GDP) vanished from Moldova’s banks. Just like that. He is currently in hiding. And he’s just 34 years old!

The Șor Party could accurately be described as national-socialist. They believe in Big Government, Big Welfare State, nationalization of foreign energy firms, collective farming (they literally advocate for the return of the kolkhoz) and all around socialism. However, they distrust big transnational involvement (such as the European Union), they like the Church (and cultural conservatism in general) and, unlike the Western Left, they also support law and order (including death penalty).

At the moment of this writing 19 political parties and “electoral blocks” signed up for the election. That number may change as a few others are wrapping up their paperwork. Besides, in Moldova it is perfectly possible to be disqualified three days before voting day. Ask Renato Usatîi about that.

The Moldovan /press/

Partisan press exists in every country on Earth so the fact that such thing exists in Moldova as well comes as no surprise.

However, the way in which this is done oftentimes shocks even seasoned political operatives from the Intermarium area (who should be, and are, accustomed to this neighborhood’s way of doing things).

There is not much etiquette. It’s just straight-up agenda-driven reporting without any pretense of being anything else. In a way, that can be a good thing but the readership makes things depressing to look at and analyze.

Shilling is also at a level not seen in Eastern Europe for 20 years. To call it low-tier bait would be an understatement. Take for instance this article from Timpul. The headline reads: ”The communist Securitate officer is still on PAS’s list. On April 7th he was KIDNAPPING young people off the streets and taking them to police precincts” – and then throughout the article the individual in question is called a torturer (torționar). The Romanian word torționar is associated with the odious crimes against humanity committed in Communist-era prisons such as the Pitești experiment.

Now, make no mistake, this individual from /pas/ may indeed be a terrible commie bootlicker – but he is no torționar.

Similar type of gross exaggeration comes from all sides. In the pro-Russian media Romanians are casually called ”fascists”, ”imperialists” and even worse names are reserved for those further west.

Those who complain about the American media as being “hyperpartisan” should take a trip to Moldova to see what a real hyperpartisan media landscape looks like.

The more ”credible” media outlets (and by ”credible” one should understand slightly less hysterical but also very partisan) have meme names or meme practices.

It is unclear where this practice of writing /like this/ came from but it’s so common that the /pas/ logo doesn’t look so weird as it would look for those not accustomed to the Moldovan way of doing things.

Back in 2017-18, the Social Democrats in Romania (then in power) pejoratively called those who protested against them haștagiști (lit. the hashtag-ers). Well, in Moldova there is a legit media outlet called Diez (lit. hashtag).

And to make sure it lives up to the meme – the motto is ”News for young people”.

And the meme-stereotype goes even further: All of the news on the website are incredibly short. Basically the founders assume that their target audience is kinda retarded and lacks the attention span to read 1000 words. So most of their “articles” are under 200 words. Meme /press/ 🤷‍♂️

Youth politics

Drawing from the wisdom that Moldova is like the European Union in miniature, the worst excesses of the EU and many of the worst excesses of Russia are present in Moldova if you know where or how to look. Oftentimes the presence is pretty glaring.

Earlier in this article we mentioned that so many young people are running in this election. But just how young? Well, one of the few articles that is longer than 200 words on Diez.md is the one with the whole list of people younger than 30 that are running in this election.

While in the EU political parties go out of their way to accommodate young people – some even going as far as instituting a mandatory quota – in Moldova no such thing is necessary. If anything, some parties would probably need some pro-boomer policies 🤪

It is true that many of those young people are not on the so-called eligible spots (meaning they’re so far down the list that only a miracle or an extreme tragedy would take them into the next Parliament) – but, even so, the number of very young people involved officially in national politics is still quite astonishing in itself.

For instance, if /pas/ manages to win 51 seats, that would mean 2 legislators born in 1991 and one born in 1993.

If the political party PACE wins 13 seats, then that would put in the next Parliament a legislator born in 2002. That would mean a legislator who was in utero at the time of 9/11 and under the age of 7 at the defining moment of Moldova’s post-Soviet history (namely the April 7th protests). It’s unlikely that PACE would surpass the 5% threshold, but the intellectual exercise in itself should tell you just how young the political class is poised to be in Moldova in just a few more years.

The electoral block “Renato Usatîi” is unsure if it will be in the next Parliament. But if it manages to get 8 or 9% of the vote, this will mean at least one legislator from them born after 1998.

Platforma Demnitate și Adevăr (the Dignity and Truth Platform) may get into the Parliament unless it withdraws to support /pas/. If they don’t withdraw, they will send at least one legislator born in 1994.

If the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians (AUR) repeats in Moldova the score it has gotten in Romania, they will send one legislator born in 1994 and another one born in 1991. That would mean people who weren’t even born when the Soviet Union was still a thing.

A lot of things can happen (Moldovan elections, when looked at for this kind of nitty-gritty, is notoriously unpredictable) but the point remains: All political parties have on their lists people who could never be elected in most of the EU (as they wouldn’t be allowed to run due to their age).

On one hand, here on the Sofa, we’re quite skeptical of ostensibly pro-youth policy and messaging. We’re simply not convinced that tweens would make good legislators at a national level.

On the other hand, Moldova is a mess. So it’s not like these young people can really make things significantly worse, relatively speaking.

After all, there’s always room for worse (întotdeauna se poate mai rău) as Romanians bitterly (and cynically) say when referring to the Regime but, realistically speaking, a few 20-somethings in the next legislative body of Moldova will probably be no big deal overall. Other issues will come up much faster than the perceived lack of experience of a few MPs.

However, what’s a lot more interesting is the trend. While this won’t make much of a difference on July 11, 2021, at least some of those born between 1991 and 2003 (!!) that are now running (and will predictably fail to win a seat) will stay around in politics. How will their mentality be affected? What kind of worldview will they end up developing as a result of getting into politics at such a young age?

To give you an idea about how out of touch the legacy institutions are, Radio Free Europe was running a report a week ago lamenting that young people in Moldova aren’t interested in politics. Well… it’s quite hard to reconcile that kind of messaging with the reality that there are more young people per capita running in the upcoming Moldovan election than in any EU country in the last two decades.

Is that a good thing? If not, why not?

These are questions we will have to explore in the field in the upcoming weeks we’ll be spending on the left side of the Prut river.

As a rule, wherever there’s young people and politics radicalism and radicalization isn’t far away. Will this “rule” hold true for Moldova as well? Keep in mind that the economic level of Moldova is very backwards (it is the poorest country in Europe after all) which can foster resentment and radicalization even faster than in the West.

Many American youth got radicalized (to the Left or to the Right) because they can’t purchase a new home in a nice suburb. In Moldova the concept of a new home is pretty alien. The median household income in Moldova is $2,145 per year. In other words, we at the Freedom Alternative Network, will end up spending in two weeks to study their elections more than the official median household income for an entire year.

Now, of course, it’s not that bad because, like it’s usual in such countries, there’s a lot of gray market, then there’s the huge diaspora and the remittances they send (a third of the population lives and works abroad) and the prices are oftentimes lower both in relative and absolute terms for many basic items. Also, adjusted for PPP $2145 is around 5000 in 2019 Int$.

Still, the fact remains: There’s much more poverty in Moldova than anywhere else in Europe. So when you have cynical youth in politics… things can go wrong.

The powers that be

It is not fair to use phrases like the deep state or the System (mandatory capital-S) when it comes to Republic of Moldova.

While, of course, such thing as a deep state exists in Moldova as well, it is far less established than it is even in the neighboring countries (Ukraine and Romania) let alone the United States or Great Britain.

This is the case because, as we mentioned a few times in this article, very few people have a firm commitment to Moldova continuing to exist as a country and State.

The deep state and the corruption that comes with it is more often than not in petty bribes – like a professor asking a student to pay her €139 phone bill in exchange for a good grade.

Sure, that doesn’t mean there aren’t bigger ones too. We mentioned earlier the $1 billion just vanishing from Moldovan banks. There was also the incident when the president was getting a nice bag full of cash (allegedly).

But corruption notwithstanding, the shadowy deals in Moldova aren’t happening as part of an established framework that we’d call the Civil Service, or the deep state or whatever name you want to give to such a structure you know it exists in your country as well.

In Moldova, however, it is much more accurate to talk about the powers that be. And who are those powers? Well, it’s not difficult to guess. Who holds authority over Moldova?

The current president, Maia Sandu, is openly supported by two of the governing parties in Romania (PNL and USRPLUS). In the past, the Romanian diplomacy would somewhat bother, occasionally, to halfheartedly deny that it is being involved in Moldovan politics. Those times are long gone.

Also, the current president is openly supported by Berlin (and, by extension, by Brussels too). Just this month, the EU approved €600 million for Moldova as part of the “economic recovery and resilience” mechanism which was supposed to be for Member States only. But then again, it’s Moldova. And the powers that be have already reached an agreement.

If it’s supported by Berlin, then Moscow likely agrees. Following the recent Putin-Biden summit, it’s quite likely to see a sudden disappearance of Muscovite objections over Moldova’s westward lurch. Call it a hunch, if you want.

In addition to Bucharest, Berlin, Brussels and Moscow, there are also business actors who are indeed part of the powers that be from Moldova’s standpoint. These include, but are not limited to, Banca Transilvania (Romania), Rompetrol (Romania), Lukoil (Russia), Orange (France) and the commerce lobby (mostly Ukrainian and Romanian – for obvious reasons).

If these powers that be reach an understanding (and they likely will, if they haven’t already) then the political forces that disagree with a core component of that said understanding may end up in trouble.

What the public sees

All while this is happening in the background, the public continues to argue in other parameters.

It is worth noting that in Moldova, oftentimes, the public is privy to the real discussions as well. Not necessarily by design, but because the country is small enough that you can’t really keep a secret.

Nevertheless, this election may be the first one in which themes from Romania overlap and makes the public discourse a lot more complicated (and nuanced) than in the past.

Just two years ago the discourse was “pro-Russians” versus “pro-Europe”. That’s it. Even though at least a third of the populace wants unification with Romania, the powers that be always made sure that that option is not on the table. And the same is being attempted now as well.

Mark Tkaciuk former ideologue of the Communist Party founded a new party a month ago with a view to run for this election. Yet he isn’t campaigning. Instead he is fighting tooth and nail in the courts to get the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians off the ballot. Why?

It’s difficult to assess since we’re not yet in the field but the easiest explanation (which routinely turns out to be the correct one) is because the powers that be don’t exactly like AUR. It’s not that there’s anything inherently bad about AUR – but if the understanding is for /pas/ to govern (which is the most likely outcome anyway) – it is preferable to have /pas/ get a majority in the Parliament in a coalition with Renato Usatîi (thus returning the favor from November 2020 when Usatîi helped /pas/ leader Maia Sandu win the run-off against the Kremlin-backed candidate and incumbent president Igor Dodon).

Mark Tkaciuk in fact admitted (sort of) on TV that the main beneficiary of removing AUR from the ballot would indeed be /pas/. But why would a Russian shill want to help the pro-EU party?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Prut river, AUR is routinely painted (falsely) as a pro-Russia party. So imagine the 🤡: The same political party is ”pro-Russian” in Bucharest but openly and harshly pursued by legit pro-Russians with a view to have it disqualified from the race in Chișinău. Welcome to politics in this part of the world!

Meanwhile, the allegedly anti-Russian and pro-EU /pas/ has on its list a lady who thinks Romanians are fascists, a chap who believes (just like Stalin unironically) that such thing as the Moldovan ethnicity exists, and another chap who believes such thing as the Moldovan language exists. All of these represent legit pro-Russian shilling and talking points but… the powers that be decided that /pas/ is anti-Russian, therefore you WILL believe that. Or else your mother is Putin. Or something.

However, even though the efforts to remove AUR from the ballot are ongoing and could help /pas/ and president Maia Sandu, the president herself made an unexpected move and asked the Migration Board to review the case of AUR president and founder George Simion – who got banned from the country for 5 years in 2018 by the pro-Kremlin regime at the time. Errr… that’s a long story in itself.

And then there’s the whole business with the Diaspora. Unlike Ireland, Greece, Armenia or Israel (countries which also have huge diasporas) – Moldova permits equal voting from all citizens wherever they are in the world and organizes polling stations for them at consular offices. Romania does the same too although at a much bigger scale.

Well, the diaspora vote tends to skew heavily for the pro-western and unionist parties. So it is in the best interest of the socialists and communists to frustrate the diaspora vote as much as possible.

In the past the diaspora vote was pretty balanced since a huge chunk of the diaspora lived and worked in Russia. But, over the last 5-ish years, the Moldovan diaspora started to look more like the Romanian one (in part because many of them acquired Romanian citizenship) and worked more in the EU (including Romania) and, with that, also came a shift in the vote, geopolitically speaking.

Every single election season there’s a dispute about the number of polling stations in diaspora. The ‘right’ (read: not Russian commies) prefer more polling stations in the west and as few as possible in Russia. The ‘left’ prefers the opposite.

In the last two weeks there were even small protests in Germany, Romania, the UK, Italy and other places against CEC’s decision not to severely increase the number of polling stations in the West to avoid the long and excruciating queues observed in 2020. But CEC is run by a Socialist (Maxim Lebedinschi) so… yet another court battle.

One thing the Moldovans get better than Romania: Their court battles on these matters are surprisingly swift. Which can be both a good thing (speedy trial is generally good) but also annoying (it encourages frivolous lawsuits that harass parties and waste their time and distract from campaigning).

And then there are the promises. We won’t get into that now because it’s much better to show them to you on tape. Because you’d never believe us otherwise.

Nobody in the EU (or North America, or indeed South America) dares to promise in the election that they will quadruple all wages. Nobody. No matter how populist(ic) a candidate or a party may be. But such promises are thrown around like candy in Moldova. More on that in a few weeks.

Conclusions

Of course, this article barely scratches the surface on what Moldovan politics are. There’s no way an article, no matter how long, can cover everything.

Three months ago we invited on the Sofa a fan of /pas/ just to walk us through the political history since April 7, 2009 (the turning point in Moldovan politics the way December 1989 was the turning point for Romania). The chap doesn’t really like to speak a lot. We still ended up talking for over 3 hours just to list all of the events and explain the terms. Translating that into English would take two weeks at the very least and a re-edting to include extra explanations.

Perhaps we’ll just have to do it allover again in English. If he’ll want to, of course. Until then, those who speak Romanian may want to review the Sofa’s older videos with Marcela Țușcă, especially this one.

For this tour, we will only explain in English the aspects not yet explained in previous materials. For the coverage in Romanian, we will assume that everything discussed in the over 12 hours of Moldova-related content from podcasts and interviews is already known.

One definitive conclusion that we can draw now is this: The two weeks spent in Moldova are not going to be a walk in the park. Meme country with meme politics reported by a meme press… untangling that ain’t going to be easy, that’s for sure.

Welcome to Moldova!

Let’s explore!

Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.

One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they must work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don’t.

When Beautiful Theories crash into hard, cold reality and shatter, faith is the glue used by the elites to put their precious ideas back together. They need militant faith to get the job done: true believers eager to crush doubt and compel obedience by making war on the infidels.

Some are swept into the faith because they desperately crave a sense of control over the crisis. They need to believe Something Can Be Done, and they’d rather invest their faith in debunked Beautiful Theories than have no faith at all. Faith is a coin that demands to be spent.

Some crave social approval, and the purveyors of Beautiful Theories have immense political, economic, and cultural power to make their faith seem fashionable. Virtue signaling is such a plague in modern society because the signals are prepackaged and made very easy to send.

Some aren’t even hoping they can assert control over a crisis by converting to its religion. They’ll settle for just having some meaning, some simplicity, a sense that the righteous will fare better than the unbelievers, that virtue will be rewarded while sin is punished.

That’s a very common impulse with the Church of Covid, since the Beautiful Theories were so very obviously wrong. There isn’t much left of the faith except the visceral communal satisfaction of hoping unbelievers will be punished for their blasphemies with sickness and death.

That sort of thing happens with all of the crisis religions, although not usually as quickly and obviously as with the Church of Covid. Look at the endless stream of movies about how the world became an apocalyptic hellscape because people didn’t believe in global warming.

The last resort of every crisis religion, the last thing that puts asses in the pews, is that addiction to misery porn, the collective hope that unbelievers will suffer someday, and everyone will admit the True Faith was right all along as Judgment Day crashes down upon them.

The elite will never have the humility to admit they were wrong, and they’ll never give up on politically or financially profitable “solutions” even when they obviously don’t solve the problem. Founding a crisis religion means they never have to say they’re sorry.

That applies to some very longstanding crises, like the War on Poverty, whose nostrums long ago transformed into fantastically expensive articles of religious faith even as mountains of data accumulated that proved they were utter failures, and often made the problems worse.

You can look for some telltale signs of a crisis transforming into a religion. The most obvious one is when the high priests tell you the “war” you’ve been drafted into will never end. They become very angry when asked to define success or failure, or lay out exit strategies.

Watch for the moment when you’re told “science” means not asking questions, defying dogma, or challenging “consensus.” That is the literal definition of faith, not science.

Always keep an eye out for Moving Goalposts, which are the signature miracle of crisis religions, their version of parting the waters or loaves and fishes. Crisis religions work very hard to make their faith unfalsifiable by constantly changing the standards of evidence.

Check to see if certain people are accumulating huge amounts of money and power from a crisis. That’s a pretty good sign it’s turning into a religion. A crisis should be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don’t let it fester long enough to become a special interest.

Above all, look for the whiff of arrogance to develop around a crisis. Wise religions and effective crisis managers have something in common: a sense of humility. Crisis religions are militant faiths that quickly become arrogant, smug, and totalitarian.

Dedicated people who truly want to solve a problem will look for evidence their analysis is wrong, or their policies aren’t working, and make adjustments as quickly as possible, no matter the cost or embarrassment to themselves. This is humility.

Crisis religions are arrogant. They reject criticism, insist their Beautiful Theories must be right because they’re ideologically pure – they fit snugly into a worldview that must not be challenged. Their plans only fail because their commands were disobeyed or sabotaged.

The high priests of a crisis religion see devils everywhere, leering at them from the rubble of every failure. Only sin can explain why their Beautiful Theories are tarnished. Failure is never their fault, so it must be yours. They find your lack of faith disturbing.

And you know what? A lot of people want to see the world that way, including a great many self-described atheists. They hunger for the comfort of faith and the vibrant energy of militancy. They want to be right, and they want the wrong to suffer for their folly.

Conservatives think religious faith in the State is terrifying and wonder why so many embrace it. It’s because uncertainty is much more frightening. A simple false story is better than a complex true one, and with enough faith, maybe we can force the simple story to be true.

This article has been compiled from Mr. Hayward’s Twitter thread.

During this oftentimes disproportionate panic one must not forget to look at the benefits brought by this period. Especially considering that some of the benefits are quite significant in their own right.

First of all, let’s get one thing clear: one must continue to insist on discussing this topic by using names such as ‘Wuhan-chan’, ‘the Chinese virus’, ‘the Wuhan flu’ and other similar terms. The Chinese propaganda machine is already working overtime to convince as many people as possible that this new infection from the Coronavirus family is perhaps American(!), Italian, or really anything else but Chinese.

So with that said…

1. Even the globalists are finding out about the notion of countries

The Cathedral Media has already been “warning” us for the last month that the “far-Right” and/or the “populist right” is using the topic to remind everyone that countries are good, secured borders are great and that lack of them is kinda cancer. Or Chinese flu, in this case.

The problem is that it’s no longer just the “populist right” (whatever that is) – but really almost everyone non-insane. Just a few days ago, North Rhine Westphalia (the largest and the most Leftist state in Germany) overwhelmingly voted against receiving new migrants and in favor of a stronger position with regards to the federal borders. All political parties, including the SPD, agreed – with only the Green Party voting in favor of more mass immigration and open borders. The Green Party, for those newer in this, is the political party that used to run networks of “anti-authoritarian” kindergartens in the ’70s and ’80s. Part of the “anti-authoritarian” nature of the kindergartens was that sex with children was permitted.

The same Green Party is now unironically peddling the narrative that literally everyone except them is basically a Nazi. I wish I were joking.

Joke or no joke, the existence of the panic related to the Wuhan flu brought the level of public questioning of borders to a historical low. And that is a good thing!

2. “Citizens of the world” are suddenly gone

You know that “I’m a global citizen” type of person? I do. ‘Cause oftentimes I have to bear with such soulless vermin.

Well, as it turns out, globalism is indeed a luxury belief in most cases (just as we’ve been saying here for 5 years now) since when push came to shove and the snowflake got a little bit scared – most of them suddenly rushed to their places of origin. And a lot more are still trying even though their countries of origin may have shut down their borders already and advising them to stay put.

Look, it’s unlikely that this panic will cure a lot of cases but if it makes 5% of the cases to reconsider a soulless and rootless existence, that should be counted as a win in itself. It sure would be faster than a propaganda and subversion exercise.

3. It reveals how many State employees are related

Over here in Romania a lot of memes and jokes got circulated at the expense of a retired police officer (patient number 17) whose behavior is responsible for up to 48 of the 131 cases in Romania.

This guy traveled to Israel with his mistress. They both got the Wuhan flu there and then came back. A few days later he checked into a military hospital but failed to mention his trip (because his mistress’ existence was a secret). In the meantime, he infected his wife, his son, a colleague of his son, most of the wife’s workplace and so on. Not to mention that an entire hospital was quarantined as a result as well, blocking some essential medical personnel for 14 days. All those infected were working for the State (his son in the intelligence community, his mistress at the census department, etc.). The famiglia is big with this one.

But this is not exactly unique. In fact, globally, it seems that State employees are disproportionately affected by this Chinese virus.

While the piece of news that claimed Preisdent Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil had contacted the new coronavirus was fake news (and one spread with an ideological motivation at that!) – it is nonetheless true that, except for China and Italy, many state officials did get much closer to contamination with the Wuhan flu than the general population in their respective countries.

The most spectacular case is in the Islamic Republic of Iran, but other cases are interesting too – such as Canada or France. In Canada, Turdeau’s wife got some Coronachan and in France at least one Cabinet member did too, turning Macron suddenly fearful. Understandably so, Macron’s wife is top of the list in the persons at fatal risk 🤪

On a more serious note, the fact that this virus appears to physically remove (though for now only temporary) government employees is in itself a good thing. There’s too many of them anyway. Too much goddamn government everywhere.

This situation also reveals that a lot (if not most) government structures are quite literally run by clans who are related to each other to a much higher degree than normies had expected.

Now, of course, this is not exactly a secret for anyone who has been following politics in more than three countries for more than a year. Some of us have been explaining these things literally for decades. But it sure did become slightly easier now when there’s direct epidemiological link to show it to skeptical normies who still buy into the disdainful nonsense that the State is there to help them. Or, in the case of the former Western Block, that corruption and nepotism is only for the plebs and it doesn’t happen in their enlightened societies.

4. Price of oil has gone down

It is true that oil was already getting cheaper even before the Wuhan-chan panic as a result of the gas war between OPEC and Russia but, at the same time, the panic did accelerate the issue even further.

Oil prices plunged by more than 25% as a result of the panic and will continue to stay low for at least 10 to 12 days at the very least. This is in itself a great piece of news for the poorest members of our society who may need now more than ever to use their cars in order to avoid crowded places (such as buses or subways) and abide by the “social distancing” recommendations.

Also, it is in general a good thing for everyone when oil prices go down. It usually means the price of some material goods also going down. Or at least staying stable and offsetting other price increases generated by the Wuhan virus panic. The smarter investors (including governments) with cash at hand are now stockpiling oil – as they should. You won’t get such a discount anytime soon.

5. Little dictators reveal themselves

While the economically dumb reveal themselves during a recession, the best time to notice the unaccounted little dictators is during a time of panic.

Usually counting the dictators is hard because many peoples already tend to have a boner for authoritarianism and dictatorship. The great wisdom of the more populist brand of freedom-based social order is that the fear of having that “other guy’s” dictatorship installed leads to a de facto freer state of things. James Madison in the Federalist Papers described it as “ambition made to counteract ambition” – but the idea is very similar and much older than the United States itself.

James Madison only thought about how things could work with a non-panicked populace. He did not, however, theorize on what would happen if all (or at least most) of the factions of an otherwise diverse and competing country would become united by (oftentimes disproportionate) fear. Well,… one thing is certain: during such times it makes it easier to count the little dictators that lie even in some of the most unexpected corners.

Of course, for those more liberal-minded, this is in itself terrible news. But for those who think at a civilizational scale, this is a very useful piece of information. Knowing which kind of little dictators (and in what proportions) you have in your country helps you craft better messaging in the future when “selling” various policies or principles.

One has to remember that the best propaganda is not that which is artistically the most pleasant. Or that which is the most ideologically coherent. The best propaganda is that which resonates with as many factions as possible (including competing ones) in the context in which that piece of propaganda is distributed.

6. Distrust in the EU is growing

Of course, the hardline eurofanatics (which are at the most 3% of the population of any EU nation) are terrified these days. So terrified that they all crawled out of the woodwork on social media threads, on TV, in the Cathedral Media broadcasts and everywhere else they could, desperately trying to tell us about the pocket change “investment initiative” launched by the EU alegedly meant to be used to combat the crisis – as a show-off of how useful the EU is in these perilous times.

The problem is that everyone also heard Ursula von der Leyen who told us all that closing the borders is haram and that the distribution of the funds will be made using the usual bureaucratic channels. Which, among other things, means that Poland (231 cases, 0 deaths as of the moment of this writing) will get more than Italy (which is by far Europe’s most affected country). Madam Ursula is also forgetting to mention something that anyone who has ever worked near a EU project already knows – namely that the “classical” mechanism also means a lot of make-work jobs, long payment delays and, of course, more corruption.

The eurofanatics and their propagandists (some of them paid by your taxpayer money!) will be working overtime in the next few days trying to convince as many people as possible that things aren’t exactly like that. Some of them go as far as to outright assert that Ursula von der Leyen’s statement is “fake news” (a tactic confirmed already in Poland and Romania and soon to be deployed in the rest of the border-conscious countries).

This doesn’t appear to be working, so far. The more moderate fans of the EU have quickly understood and internalized the fact that the EU is basically nowhere to be found and on this issue everyone is basically for himself.

You see, the EU exists in order to prevent activist communist judges from being removed by a democratically elected government. Or to overrun referenda. But not for useful things.

7. Terrorist threat is going down

Admittedly, not by much, but it’s something. The Islamic State itself warned its members to avoid Europe. You know, that Islamic State that Obama used to tell us it wasn’t Islamic.

So apparently Wuhan-chan is haram, after all.

8. Gradual growth of economic education

Economic illiteracy is endemic to Europe and is often seen even among the ranks of those who should know better. Also, the lack of common sense in any discussion about economics is also widely prevalent in almost all political parties of Europe.

The panic generated by the Chinese virus is however getting surprisingly many individuals to face questions which less than three months ago were the purview of the “far right”, or of the “social fascists” (as the far-Left calls normal people these days) or of the “cavemen nationalists” (as normal people are routinely called at Renew Europe when Mr. Cioloș thinks we can’t hear him).

Now, of course, there is a long way to go and we’re far from the goal of getting the political class or the plebs to a decent literacy level when it comes to economics. For instance, we could observe these days so-called libertarians with F.A. Hayek quotes on their profiles seriously explaining that it’s “normal” for the Maximal State to cap prices during a crisis. If Hayek were alive, he would’ve developed a special breed of Coronachan because of this heresy.

However, despite all of that, more people have asked the correct questions in the last 4 or 5 days than in the previous 4 or 5 years combined. Questions such as: “Is it really wise to manufacture essential products 8000km+ away from your country?”

Or even more daring questions like: “Aren’t we helping our nation more by buying our products than by staging useless protests and flash-mobs?”

But even with this panic, economic wisdom’s advance is still very slow. But at least it is advancing slightly faster than 3 months ago. From this perspective, it may indeed be helpful if the panic lasts, say, two months. Two months could realign important segments of the electorate. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all!

9. Homeschooling becomes not just socially accepted, but in fact mandatory

Not only did homeschooling became literally overnight the absolute norm in some countries, but even the State-sponsored TV stations are joining the effort. For instance in Romania, a country in which any talk about homeschooling normally gets you branded as an extremist, now the State TV brought back a commie-era show called “Tele-school” in which regular classes are being taught at a similar pace as in a normal school.

For now the schools are due to stay closed till March 22nd in Romania. Most of the countries of Europe that did impose this measure have done so until March 31st at the most (or somewhere in that ballpark). But what if the panic prolongs and schools would stay closed till early May?

That could lead to a situation in which a school year ends successfully after almost 100% of the pupils learned from home for a whole semester. This could lead to more parents realizing that homeschooling is not the Boogeyman described by the teachers’ unions – and may indeed be something pleasant and even desirable in certain cases for certain children.

10. Trust in the €uro-zone will sink further

The euro-zone itself and the euro currency should have never come into existence. But, since they did, the area hasn’t been successful in making itself too popular with investors. The European Central Bank has been trying for more than 10 years already to at least apply basic monetary theory on the euro currency and the success rate is basically zero.

Now, with the Wuhan virus situation, some more panic on the market is coming too which leads to more rushed and irresponsible actions of governments (and a lot more will soon follow) – such as the unlimited cash plan for companies dubbed as “Bazooka” in Germany, or the almost limitless printing press by the ECB.

Sure, it is entirely possible that we won’t get all the way to a Venezuela-tier type of situation. But it doesn’t even have to get that far. Just the measures already announced and the ones forecast by those in the know are enough to tear apart even the modicum of trust that the eurozone was still enjoying.

Add on top of that the fact that Italy already hadn’t recovered after the 2008 economic crisis and its economy is now clearly affected the harshest by the Chinese virus situation… er… you do the math.

Next year around this time don’t be surprised if you will increasingly see prices displayed in US Dollars in the eurozone – which is a very common practice in the countries or areas in which the local currency becomes synonymous with toilet paper.

But still…

We laugh, we make jokes (and will continue to do so), but the fact is that this period will also bring a lot of clown world situations. And some of those can already be observed. For instance, in Germany, the State is much more concerned about the discussions at the bar between AfD members than about the German economy or the Wuhan flu. Their Ministry of Internal Affairs quite literally announced that it will send informers and operatives in order to compile dossiers with the private conversations in case someone from AfD is too mad on a certain religion of peace or on the armed branch of the far-Left pompously known as “AntiFa”. It’s the good old days once again for comrade Merkel!

In the US also a few weirdos found themselves explaining how it’s now time for “universal basic income” – and the total amount of ideologically-motivated stupidity being spread in the public will rise sharply in the next 20 days or so. It probably won’t survive too long, but the next few weeks will for sure bring about a lot of strong H🤡NK.

Well, such is life and life goes on. All we need is to maintain our mental and physical health. But especially the mental one!

In other words – be wise and avoid being stupid. Don’t panic and don’t make decisions when you’re being an idiot. Ideally, you should also turn off your TV (if, by chance, you still have such a device in The Current Year + 5). If you’re in a country with hysterical media (such as Romania, Italy or the USA), turning off your TV is a priority!

So here’s a public service announcement: To preserve your mental health, turn off your TV and don’t turn it on for at least 40 days.

The word “quarantine” comes from the Italian word “quaranta” which means forty. Forty was the number of days a ship had to wait in a port before permission was granted for the crew to get into the city during the plague in late 1340s AD.

A TV quarantine is indeed very useful for you!

That’s it. Cheers! See y’all soon on the channel.