A President for the Creative Class or a President for the Disenchanted Class

by ALTERNATOR

This is the second part of a longer analysis produced by the Romanian collective ‘Alternator’ on the recent presidential elections in the country, and the social and political environment in which they happened. Against the monopoly of anti-system language that only reinforces hierarchies, we need to reclaim class not as an identity, but as a political transnational force. What emerges is the need for strategic alliances which are now crucial to form new vocabularies that help strengthen our housing, work, migration, and climate struggles.

Bucharest, 2011 — during a protest against the numerous real estate speculation projects that are transforming the historic city center, a police officer attempts to identify one of the demonstrators, trying to force him into a van and take him to the station. A dispute ensues, which will be resolved thanks to the intervention of a second protester who manages to persuade the officer not to carry out the identification. The first protester is George Simion, the second Nicușor Dan.

The two candidates, who faced off on May 18 this year, have followed radically different paths and held opposing positions throughout their political rise. George Simion began his political activity in football stadiums, where he helped create far-right groups such as Honor et Patria and Uniţi sub Tricolor, and became a prominent figure in the unionist movement advocating for the annexation of Moldova to Romania. He ran as an independent candidate in 2019 and, a few months later, founded the nationalist AUR party. Nicușor Dan, enfant prodige of mathematics, studied in Paris and returned to Romania in the late 1990s with a doctoral degree. He led the Asociația Salvați Bucureștiul, an organization created to protect Bucharest’s architectural heritage and green spaces from the real estate speculation which sprawled during that time. The future president of Romania ran for office for the first time as an independent candidate in the 2012 Bucharest municipal elections, where he was enthusiastically supported by none other than George Simion.

The two trajectories, seemingly opposite, intersect at a particular moment (not just in front of a police van), and share a common endpoint: entering the political scene as independent, anti-establishment candidates.

Both candidates forged their political identities through extra-institutional social movements, both positioned themselves in direct opposition to a certain status quo established by traditional parties that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall—and which, at least since the 2008 crisis, have been undergoing a worsening crisis of representation. Ultimately, both managed to channel two sides of the country—both shaped by 30 years of European integration.

On one side, we see an impoverished Romania, or one insufficiently benefited from integration: a Romania in diaspora, frustrated in its aspirations and lacking a strong national identity. In the last article we talked about a “broken promise” from the West. On the other side, there is a Romania (and, to some extent, a social class)—primarily urban (in Bucharest, but not only)—that lives and benefits from that promise, or at the very least cannot do without it. A Romania that can identify itself with Western ideals without feeling betrayed by them.

We are thus speaking of a Romania “cu 2 viteze” (at two speeds). Beginning with the backgrounds of these two candidates is not meant to be a sterile overview on the biographies of the main characters from a now-concluded electoral cycle, and therefore a thing of the past. Their political journeys have brought to light a long-standing tectonic movement that had been underway—albeit softened or concealed by the palace intrigues of traditional parties. As we emphasized in our previous article, a new political polarity has taken hold in Romania. And although our discussion begins with a local reflection, it must be understood in a continental context, as Romania’s trajectory, at the end of the story, does not diverge significantly from that of many other European countries.

Blind spots and Red-Brownism

November 2019, Southern Transylvania — George Simion visits the wood-processing plants of the Austrian groups Schweighofer and Kronospan, near Sebeș. Speaking with a local environmentalist, the then-independent candidate harshly criticizes the exploitation of the region’s raw materials for the exclusive benefit of  Western multinationals, as well as the health risks caused by the mass production of formaldehyde: “ei ne taie pădurea, ne lasă în loc cancerul” (“they cut down our forests and leave us with cancer”).

Both industrial groups have repeatedly been at the center of various scandals related to non-transparent practices in forest exploitation. For example, in 2015, it was confirmed that Schweighofer was willing to buy illegally harvested wood—an activity systematically carried out in Romania by the powerful “wood mafia”. On another occasion, the group even threatened to shut down its plants, if Romania’s forest exploitation regulations were to become stricter. In this climate strong networks between foresters and timber traffickers have been created, which are occasionally brought before the courts. According to official reports, only in the last 5 years 6 foresters have been killed, alongside over 650 (or even 700) cases of physical assaults, threats and theft of weapons.

In 2023, AUR organized a massive protest in front of the Austrian plants in the name of national sovereignty. Among the most common chants was “afară cu mafia din țară” (“out with the mafia in the country”).
Several openly fascist groups joined the protest, and the most frequent flag was the romanian tricolor bearing a cross in the center, with the inscription: “Credinţa, Familia, Naţiunea și Libertatea” (“Faith, Family, Nation, and Freedom”)

August 2024 — George Simion visits the Livezeni coal mine in the Jiu Valley. Speaking with miners, the AUR party leader denounces the EU’s decision to shut down coal mines in the region and promises that, under his leadership, extraction will resume and return to full operation.

The mine closures, decided in 1997, marked the beginning of a long decommissioning process that is still ongoing and lacks clarity in its timeline. Despite continuous state and EU funds allocated to promote the reconversion of local industry—often disappearing without a trace—most of the region’s population has lived for years in a state of precarity and uncertainty.

The Jiu Valley holds immense symbolic value in Romania. Once the beating heart of the country’s extractive sector, it represented the ideal model of the working-class society during Ceaușescu’s regime. The miners of the Jiu Valley were also central figures in massive mobilizations—some remembered as major moments of resistance, such as the 1977 strike; others more controversial and reactionary, like the Mineriads of the 1990s. Since the deindustrialization began in 1997, the region has become a symbol of Romania’s devastating post-communist industrial collapse and one of its poorest areas.

On May 4, during the first round of the presidential elections, 44% of voters in the Jiu Valley (Hunedoara County) voted for Simion.

November 2024, Germany — In the midst of the electoral campaign, George Simion visits the Romanian community near the Garzweiler lignite mine in North Rhine-Westphalia. After pointing out that the German state keeps a massive open-pit mine running while Romania has halted extraction of the same resource, the AUR leader gives the floor to a local miner who laments the marginalization faced as a Romanian worker.

According to various sources between 3,1 million (Eurostat, 2024) and nearly 6 million Romanians live abroad (“in the diaspora”), primarily in Italy, Spain, the UK, and Germany, making it the highest percent of EU-citizens working abroad.

Many speak the local language without an accent, and their children—often educated entirely in the new country—may speak Romanian only as a second language. Yet, despite integration, many Romanians in the diaspora face systemic racism and remain in precarious or marginal job sectors: construction, caregiving, seasonal work in agribusiness. These jobs may be better paid than in Romania, but still involve instability.

In the first round of the 2025 presidential elections, 61% of Romanians in the diaspora voted for Simion. In countries with the largest Romanian communities—Italy and Spain—the percentage reached nearly 75%.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, the country was repeatedly crossed by convoys bearing the yellow AUR insignia on their sides. The trucks, equipped with medical equipment purchased through party funds and donations (an estimated investment of one million euros), traveled to regions poorly served by the national healthcare system. They provided access to qualified medical staff and the possibility of undergoing tests and check-ups that, following the standard system, would require months of waiting and long-distance travels.

This took place in a country which, according to Eurostat, has had the highest mortality rate in the EU for both preventable and treatable diseases.
Between 2023 and 2024, the AUR caravan is reported to have reached over 110 localities, providing services to more than 20,000 patients.

The AUR party was founded in 2019, absorbing a multitude of groups, actors, and informal networks that had been active in a wide range of social issues: from environmental defense to welfare. AUR managed to appropriate numerous traditionally left-wing demands and use them to legitimize its sovereigntist and ultranationalist narrative.

The key point is that—in the shadow of European integration—the voice giving expression to a multitude of social demands, that should be class struggles, is at the moment a legionarist and homophobic party.

The party has also skillfully taken up the theme of corruption (a core issue in Romanian political discourse), but has flipped the framing—moving away from neoliberal rhetoric and reinterpreting it as an external disease inflicted upon Romania by a corrupt West (“out with the mafia in the country”).

As discussed in the previous article, this dynamic highlights the inability of the left, both in Romania and across Europe, to reconstruct a truly political discourse on economic and power inequalities—issues that have been absorbed and depoliticized under the vague label of “corruption.”

A candidate for the creative class

“Bucharest is a very wealthy city with a very ugly appearance.”

“The municipality is like a large company that has to deliver a product; this large company must operate according to certain rules.”

Nicușor Dan, Hotnews 2012

“We undertook actions aimed at a development vision that would stimulate Bucharest’s potential: the IT sector, creative industries, a breathable city with a ring road, incentives for public transport, and limits on uncontrolled urbanization.”

Nicușor Dan, RFI Romania 2015

The two interviews, conducted in 2012 and 2015 respectively, were not given by Richard Florida, but by a young man in a worn-out sweater and an unkempt beard. In those years, as president of the NGO Asociația Salvați Bucureștiul, Nicușor Dan filed over 400 lawsuits against the municipality and real estate developers, winning a significant portion of them. These legal actions were directed against illegal demolitions of historic buildings, unregulated high-rises, and construction in green spaces. Dan’s movement took shape in courtrooms and zoning meetings. His core initial support was composed of architects, academics, professionals, and NGOs defending the idea of the “public good” through law and policy. It reflected a class position: these were citizens who had the knowledge, time, and trust in institutions to act within the system, albeit critically.

A Mayor for the Middle-Class Metropole or Technocracy as Class Politics

Nicușor Dan’s mayoral mandate in Bucharest ( between 2020-2024 the second mandate starting with June 2024, before running for presidency) primarily served the interests and political imaginaries of the urban middle class, educated, professional, often liberal, and oriented toward Western values. Dan’s legitimacy within the city’s electorate came through a shared ideological investment in transparency, order, and depoliticized expertise. His support base wanted a cleaner city, predictable public services, respect for planning regulations, and a mayor who acts more like a city manager than a politician. His policies largely ignored or penalized the urban poor, especially those living in informal settlements or in state-owned housing without clear property titles. No major initiatives were launched to develop affordable or social housing, despite skyrocketing rents and a growing number in evictions. Furthermore, as property prices continued to rise in formerly working-class neighborhoods, there was no acknowledgment of gentrification dynamics or displacement.

Nicusor Dan’s mandate was framed in the language of technical solutions: modernizing the heating network, digitizing urban planning processes, reducing debt. But technocracy is not neutral, it tends to reflect and reproduce the priorities of those already embedded in formal systems. His term as mayor exemplifies a class-coded technocracy. Under the guise of neutral competence, it consolidated the interests and imaginaries of the urban middle class, those invested in property, legal order, and institutional respectability. It excluded, or at best neglected, the informal, precarious, and working-class residents of Bucharest, who remain invisible in the logic of modernization. The city was not reimagined, it was administered. Inequality was not addressed, it was, at best, bureaucratically managed. The contradiction was not politicized, it was proceduralized into invisibility.

Bucharest, May 14, 2025 — The Televised Debate at Romania TV

In the lead-up to the second round of the 2025 presidential elections, Nicușor Dan participated in a nationally televised debate broadcasted by Romania TV. George Simion declined to attend, leaving an empty podium beside Dan. Throughout the debate, Dan addressed pressing national issues, emphasizing fiscal responsibility, judicial independence, and Romania’s commitment to the European Union. He presented data-driven arguments and detailed policy proposals, aiming to appeal to urban, middle-class voters seeking stability and integration with Western institutions.

The visual of Dan speaking earnestly next to an unoccupied lectern became symbolic. Simion refused to participate in most of the TV debates, and Dan`s presence resonated with voters who valued procedural governance.

The media landscape itself mirrored Romania’s uneven political terrain. Nicușor Dan appeared to benefit from a broad, if implicit, alignment: a diffuse coalition of mainstream outlets, that, while not formally endorsing him, nonetheless shared his liberal-technocratic vocabulary and voiced criticism against Simion. In contrast, George Simion relied almost exclusively on one television channel—Realitatea Plus—which served as his primary stage for nationalist, anti-system rhetoric. In this sense, media access itself became a class-coded battlefield—reflecting not just message control, but who gets to speak from within the center and who is cast to the noisy periphery.

First week of european dream

Romania, May 2025 – On May 19 this year, Nicușor Dan won the presidential elections. The so-called pro-European forces were jubilant, celebrating what they felt to be the salvation of democracy from the nationalist danger. A few days later, on May 26, Nicușor Dan was sworn in and began his mandate, showing what concrete content this democracy saved in extremis entails. This first week of his mandate has prefigured, in a nutshell, not only what will come next, but also what the limits and profile of this democracy are. Let’s see:

First concern of the newly elected president: the budget deficit – which is why, from day one, he meets with financial experts from the public and private sectors to reduce the deficit. In other words: austerity.

He assures the NATO Secretary General of Romania’s willingness to increase military spending and President Trump of the trust his country has in the US.

Precisely in the week with one of the most gruesome attacks on the civilian population in Gaza, while responding to the congratulations sent by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he expresses his intention to continue the “historical friendship between the two countries (Israel and Romania)” and his commitment to strengthening bilateral relations in areas such as technology, education, culture and the preservation of historical memory.

He travels to Poland where he supports the pro-austerity candidate Rafał Trzaskowskite in the presidential elections and meets with the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, who has just signed the letter initiated by the Meloni government. In this, an amendment to the European Convention on Human Rights is requested, because the Convention prevents the expulsion of refugees, migrants, and undocumented persons.

On this occasion, president Dan visits the FRONTEX headquarters in Warsaw, where he thanks the Romanian employees for their professionalism. As our friends at urzica sarcastically put it, FRONTEX’s professionalism is notable for “its contribution to the increase in the number of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean.”

Such are the outlines of the policy that the savior of democracy in Romania is now sketching… They show the pathetic limits of the liberal consensus on which European democracy is founded. And its grim outlook. If one could ask the pro-European forces what the reasons for their jubilation are, we would have to admit that these reasons are, at their roots and in their effects, undemocratic. But of course, such questions cannot be effectively asked.

The state of the art is that there is a latent war, a crosscutting fracture being exploited by two actors we do not like. The success of these two opposing blocs has hinged on their ability to move beyond their traditional voter bases by cannibalising the language of class. Whether it’s fascists hijacking anti-colonial, environmental, and welfare rhetoric, or neoliberals claiming anti-authoritarianism and minority rights—both are leveraging a broken political discourse.

As always, we are left to connect the dots and rebuild a class-narrative of our own.