THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL FAMILY AND ITS DEPENDANTS

Preparing for the 2000 Parliamentary and Presidential elections, in the analysed editorials, Tudor described Romania as a country reduced to being ‘a crossroad of beggars’, a ‘toxic dump’, and ‘a brothel’ (RRM 521, 2000: 14). He exploited the dual function of the family as a fundamental principle of the organisation of social life and as an ideological construction that ‘naturalises’ hierarchies of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class (Collins, 1998: 63–64), portraying Romania as a national family on the verge of social collapse:

Mothers kill their newborn infants because they cannot afford to care for them. Elderly couples throw themselves, hand in hand, from the rooftops of

high–rise apartment buildings […]. Unemployed, and more recently even those living in rented homes, are setting themselves alight turning into living torches.

(RRM 526, 2000: 15) The apocalyptic description above makes reference to a dehumanised folk.

Women, that are commonly portrayed in the radical right populist discourses as merely ‘retaining the traces of putatively historical, quasi–organic community within the modern state’ (Cusak, 2000: 543), cannot afford the costs of family’s perpetuation, and thus fail in their collective role as mothers of the Romanian nation. The other ‘dependants’ – the elderly and the socially vulnerable – are forced to commit suicide as a result of similarly dire economies. Tudor continued this line of reasoning in his later editorials, problematising the difficulty of a population living below poverty levels, an image rather uncomfortably familiar to the great majority of Romanians. Appealing to the religious devotion of his fellow citizens, he described a tragic situation in which the elderly were forced ‘to steal the oil from oil lamps across the country’s cemeteries, to be able to fry a meagre portion of potatoes’ and to use the crumbled ‘antidoron [blessed bread in Orthodox liturgy] over a cut tomato to appease their hunger’ (RRM 529, 2000:

14).

The description of the national family’s dependents as extremely vulnerable and in need of special attention was then cemented through a series of media campaigns that focused on Tudor’s visits across the country that targeted hospitals, retirement homes, orphanages, and canteens for the poor. Such visits built on the previous charitable actions of the PRM’s women’s organisation – whose actions effectively strengthened the women–charity–maternity axis specific to nationalist inspired radical right populism (Miroiu, 2004: 227). On this matter, Vladimir Pasti (2003) has observed that Tudor adopted in these campaigns a paternalist attitude, heavily reliant on a hegemonic masculinity embodied in the figure of the ‘political hero’: more often than not making a donation to the visited establishments and entertaining a colloquial discussion with the hosts.

Importantly, he needed not to be involved in the caretaking process itself; it sufficed that he, as a family father, indicated his willingness to contribute financially to the dependants’ wellbeing (Pasti, 2003: 226). Such a move only cements the idea of a hierarchical structuring of the NATION IS A FAMILY conceptual cluster, whereby women are portrayed as ‘the natural’ caregivers of other dependents in the family – the elderly and children, the sick, and (even) the poor – and men are confirmed in their position of leadership as ‘political’ entities and family breadwinners.

Closer to the election date, Tudor radicalised the tone of his editorials. Even more problematic, according to Tudor, was the treatment of children, understood here as the promise of continuation for the Romanian family into the new

millennium. Indeed, Romanian mothers were portrayed as unable to provide for the most basic needs of their children. ‘[H]aving lost their sanity because of poverty they live in’ they agree to the ‘most barbaric aggression against the biological fibre of the Romanian People’, a ‘truly Satanist attack against Christianity’ – selling their children for the organs:

The REAL Country is the belly of the woman that has commenced to sell her babies, even before they are being born, as if she were a breeding dog with its puppies pledged two months in advance of delivery – at least those puppies are alive and well, whilst the children sold this way await an inescapable death, supplies for the organ banks of the world’s richest. […]

Romania has thus become the largest exporter of hearts, livers, eyes, spinal cord, skin, blood, of hands and feet in the whole Europe.

(RRM 534, 2000: 14) (Emphasis in original) The NATION IS A FAMILY conceptual metaphor was extended in this context to describe a country about to be completely annihilated, transformed into a cheap producer of organs. Women appear to have lost their quality as ‘mothers of the nation’, and have been transformed into mere reproductive devices responsive to the demands of a global market. The explanation for such a development resided in the fact that the Romanian mothers have lost their sanity, an extreme consequence of the outrageous poverty that the ‘REAL Country’ was living in.

Although not directly indicated, Tudor pointed an accusing finger at the incumbent government and its attempts to modernise the country by way of massive privatisations and indiscriminate adoption of ‘Western’ standards in economy and society at large. Nonetheless, because of the weak and divided governing coalition, manifest in the absence of a strong leader, Tudor added,

‘everyone can come whenever they want, can steal whatever they wish, can rape children and women, desecrate holy places’ with no consequences (RRM 527, 2000: 15).

Under these extreme circumstances, the PRM participation in the Parliamentary elections, which was coupled with Tudor’s presidential candidacy, was envisaged to put an end to the foreigners’ impunity for acts of assault and domination of the nation’s dependants – women and children – narrated as acts of pollution of the nation. It is noteworthy that pollution was presented as having extended beyond the limits of physicality – rape of defenceless people – into the transcendental; manifested in the desecration of the country’s ‘holy places’.

Even more so, in true populist tradition, Tudor recreated a plebiscitary atmosphere, imagining a ceremony for the restitution of sovereignty to the Romanian nation, in which people ‘from all corners of the country’ would gather and collectively reject the political establishment and acclaim ‘Vadim President!’

(RRM 743, 2004: 12). According to Tudor, what led the people to support the PRM and its leader was ‘HUNGER, the best electoral agent’ (Emphasis in original)

– as he argued in one of his 2009 texts (RRM 977, 2009: 12). A definitive end to hunger required the coming to power of his party, since the PRM was ‘the only political force not in Power, because it has been prevented from acceding to Power, for it would have switched off the machinery of plunder’ (RRM 977, 2009:

12).

In sum, it appears that Tudor has portrayed the Romanian national family as on a road to self–destruction, resorting to exaggerations depicting a dehumanised folk. Indeed, the dependants of the national family seem to be on the verge of catastrophe. Women have been portrayed as having lost their motherly instincts – killing their offspring or selling their infants to organ traffickers. The elderly, in turn, have been described as experiencing absolute poverty, and being forced by famine to disrespect the national family’s century–old Orthodox Christian traditions. Under these circumstances, the PRM and its leader have been presented as the nation’s providential saviours.