New Flags, Old Scripts: How Romania’s Digital Disorientation Echoes a Dangerous Past

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but      people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction… no longer exists.” - Hannah Arendt

In the aftermath of World War II, authoritarian regimes from Eastern Europe to Latin America learned an important lesson: you don’t need to crush dissent violently if you can dissolve it culturally. Control of the narrative—of symbols, media, memory—became the quiet cornerstone of their dominance.

Romania’s own post-war history offers a precise case study. Beginning in the late 1940s, the communist regime under Gheorghiu-Dej—and especially under Ceaușescu—didn’t just govern through secret police and repression. It governed through total narrative saturation. Radio, film, books, and especially television served one purpose: not merely to inform, but to drown out all competing versions of reality.

The regime didn’t need to argue. It needed only to repeat—until doubt became dangerous, and memory was no longer something shared, but something scripted. Ceaușescu understood that controlling the medium meant controlling memory. What the Romanian public was offered in those years was not a national conversation, but a loop: of pride, paranoia, and paternalism. Those who stepped outside of it weren’t just corrected. They were erased.

That was then. The tools have changed. The intention hasn’t. The far-right in Romania today doesn't rely on banners or rallies. It doesn’t need official censors or propaganda officers. It has something far more effective: Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram.

These platforms do not impose ideology in the old sense. They let it bubble upward—rewarded by algorithms that amplify emotion, simplicity, and outrage. Spend an hour scrolling Romanian TikTok and you’ll find young influencers blending Orthodox imagery with nationalist pride. On Telegram, anonymous channels circulate distorted interpretations of EU migration policy or “cultural Marxism,” sprinkled with memes and patriotic invocations. On Facebook, entire communities form around a nostalgic whitewashing of Ceaușescu’s regime—a regime remembered not for its repression, but for its "order," its "values," and its "respect for tradition."

This isn’t just misinformation. It is cultural rewriting.

And because content is decentralized, no single entity can be held accountable. There’s no state broadcaster to expose, no press office to protest. The power is in repetition. In aesthetic. In how truth becomes optional—just another filter.

There was a time when propaganda came from above. Now it rises from below, swirling through the digital ether in bits and bursts—so pervasive, so persistent, that it becomes difficult to remember what reality looked like before it was chopped up into slogans and stitched into reels.

What we are witnessing is no longer just disinformation. It is disorientation. This is what happens when the concept of a shared truth erodes. When institutions feel hollow. When news is not believed, and complexity becomes a burden. People don't simply believe new lies—they stop caring about what is true at all. And when truth becomes blurred, certainty sells. That’s where far-right ideology takes root—not as a radical alternative, but as a refuge. A fixed point. A steady, comforting rhythm in the noise. It presents itself not as political theory, but as “common sense.” It doesn’t shout. It reassures.

Sometimes it’s Brussels. Sometimes it’s George Soros. Sometimes it’s secularism, LGBT rights, or the vaguely defined “globalists.” But always, it is the promise that Romania is being stolen, diluted, betrayed. That the old ways must be protected from modern decay.

Authoritarianism rarely begins with tanks. It begins with stories. In the 20th century, those stories were tightly controlled and top-down. Today, they’re viral. They spread laterally, casually, dressed as jokes, nostalgia, or identity. But their function is the same: to narrow the imagination of democracy, to make plurality seem chaotic, and to make democracy feel unsafe.

We are already seeing the cultural seep into the political. Parliamentary discourse grows more aggressive. Media watchdogs report a surge in harassment campaigns. Laws once designed to uphold transparency are being quietly rewritten.

The new authoritarianism doesn't demand obedience. It thrives in exhaustion. It waits until people are tired of nuance, tired of politics, tired of debating what is real. We are not in 1940. We are not in 1989. Romania is a democracy, with institutions, with civil society, and with the memory of what came before. But memory fades. And when it does, the conditions that once gave rise to authoritarianism begin to imitate themselves—through new mediums, in new tones.

There is no Ministry of Truth. But there doesn’t need to be. The smartphone has become the most effective propaganda tool in history—precisely because it’s personal. And when your timeline becomes your truth, history no longer repeats—it reloads.