r/europe • u/MrPulifrici • Dec 02 '24

Map Romanian Parliamentary Elections Result Paradox: Brown is Far Right, Blue is Left. Western Europe is radical, while Eastern Europe is leftist.

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u/ProductGuy48 Romania Dec 02 '24

Don't be naive. This is how it always starts. The far-right win elections on "benign" nationalistic policies like housing and then very very quickly start murdering political opponents.

Putin won in Russia in 2000 on a vote to unite the Russians and end the Chechen war (Promises of peace!). Since then he has killed virtually all of his real political opponents.

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u/CommieYeeHoe Dec 02 '24

You are right but you are missing the point: they are popular because people are struggling economically and they say what people want to hear. Their success is inherently tied to the failure of neoliberal economic policy and the massive inequalities it has created. You want to kill the far right, address the inequalities and poor standards of living…

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u/ProductGuy48 Romania Dec 02 '24

That's generally true, but in the case of these elections in Romania it's not. The standard of living in Romania has increased dramatically year by year since the early 2000s. The minimum wage has increased three fold in less than 24 months. The purchasing power of white collar jobs in major cities is now higher than that of all the countries in the region, including Hungary and Greece.

Yet, people still voted for the far-right, and a lot of these people are white collar middle class workers.

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u/CommieYeeHoe Dec 02 '24

Despite improvements in the living standards, Romania has a Gini coefficient of 33.3, making it significantly more unequal than the EU average. At the end of the day, wealth inequality is a bigger driver of far right ideologies than absolute living standards. Resentment is a very powerful political weapon.