Vladimir Mitev
Maria-Luisa Guevara is a nom de guerre of a Romanian activist who campaigns for housing rights, non-European workers’ rights and progressive issues in general. She is part of the Socialist Action Group (GAS), which is a Marxist-oriented grassroots organisation in Romania and works on the ground for the Common Front for the Right to Housing, one of the grassroots housing organisations in Romania. Maria-Luisa Guevara talks to Friendship Bridge in the context of her project to get to know the different faces of Romania in the supra-election year 2024 and how they see the evolution of Romanian society.
That’s really cool what you said. It can be a very good transition to the next section of the discussion, namely internationalism and the intersection between the Romanian left and your subjectivity as an agent of change, someone with deliberate action. You talked about the trade union movement in the US. There is the so-called Progressive International which unites forces in the US, UK and so on. There are also left-wing networks in Europe, foundations and I suppose you even have your own contacts with social movements in France.
In this context, what would be the role of knowledge and contacts with people in other countries and a better understanding of what is happening around Romania, in Europe, in the world, for what you really want to do as a leftist or as a citizen?
Well, in order to understand the situation we are in and to understand what is happening to us, we have to actually understand what is going on at the macro level, at the international level. As I said, these neoliberal and capitalist policies that are being implemented in Romania are not only in Romania, they come in an international context. And yes, it is very important to understand and to have perspectives from other countries.
I told you that I read the Communist Party Manifesto, although at that time I was not a communist, I was not convinced, maybe I was an anarchist. But that phrase I knew from Romania, “Proletarians of all countries, unite”, I didn’t understand it. When I was a child, I couldn’t. But reading the manifesto 14 years ago and having had the experience of emigrating to another country myself, I was already in a different country from the country I had originally emigrated to. I was talking to people from all the countries and I was already beginning to understand that the problems that my parents had encountered here in Romania as workers who had been made redundant, who had experienced unemployment, were pretty much the same problems of their comrades at work in France and they were pretty much the same problems that I saw in Scotland when I was talking to Scots. That made me understand the phrase “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” much better. And that’s a motto that seems outdated. Maybe we can find another way of expressing it today, but it is an essential idea for leftists. We cannot be leftists if we are not internationalists.
Here I digress. You know there is a criticism of the far right against “globalists”, against all sorts of conspiracy theories. But the idea of internationalism, which is a left-wing idea, is essential. It’s something we can’t work without. And look, this gig work project. We first had the idea here in Romania, and then we discussed it at a conference in Athens last year. A lot of comrades from other countries resonated and since then we keep in touch and keep each other informed and we see that there have been unionisation movements. In Russia there has even been a union of delivery workers. The head of the union was arrested and put in jail. They unionised in Cyprus, in Spain, in Italy. There were all kinds of movements. Here in Romania, we see the demographics changing. That is, we have people coming from other continents and working here, who in turn, when we talk to them, we see that they have the same problems in their country that Romania had in the 1990s. It’s impossible not to see the similarities.
And another thing – the moment you realise that a person of a totally different nationality from you in a corner of the planet, totally different from you, has the same problems, is under the same pressure as you are, then the whole idea of racism, the whole idea of cultural difference disappears, in the sense that you realise that we are, after all, human beings, we all suffer the same thing, we have a common interest in defending our rights, in defending our right to a decent living, to a house above our heads, to food on the table. And yes, without this sense of internationalism we cannot call ourselves leftists.
Fortunately, I have this luck because I went to other countries as a child and then it is very easy for me to move from one culture to another, to learn a foreign language, to communicate with people from other perspectives. And I realise that not everyone has had this luck. And I try my best to put my skills and abilities and opportunities to use in the service of the left to go to other countries. It seems to me that it is precisely the Romanian left that is trying to open bridges and links with other movements in other countries.
For example, we at GAS communicate with a very large group in Greece, which in turn is very well connected with other movements. I know the Demos people are very much in solidarity with the left-wing movement in Poland, which in turn has links with other countries. I mean all the movements in Romania, as far as I can see, are quite open to international collaboration. There are comrades from Italy or Germany who come to the Art Hub and do some conferences. Or at Filaret 16 I’ve seen all kinds of events on – “look what’s happening in Germany”, “look what’s happening in Italy”, or the housing issue or the anti-fascist issue. And the left-wing Romanians are also open to this, which is a very good thing. It gives me a lot of hope in that respect too.
There’s a lot of work to be done and there’s the financial issue, which comes into play, because not all of us can afford to buy plane tickets to go to other countries. But look, at the same time we have the possibility to communicate on the internet and what we are doing tonight. It’s a perfect example of being able to communicate online. Your work with Cross-border Talks is another great example of collaboration between different countries, between people from all kinds of countries who can communicate, share experiences, better understand the perspective from another country and compare it with what is happening in their country or learn from each other. Because yes, look, I told you, in Romania we don’t have a very big left-wing experience. Instead, there are other countries and other comrades from whom we can learn how to organize, how to develop certain strategies, how to think in certain situations, how to deal with certain situations. And then, yes, it seems to me that the international part is essential and without international solidarity we will never succeed in doing anything on the left, if we just stay at home and only because otherwise we will turn to national socialism, i.e. Nazism or fascism and all sorts of very ugly -isms. Yes, I got very excited on this issue and I don’t know if I answered your original question or if you have any other clarifications.
Very good. I can maybe say something personal here. Maybe it’s very subjective what I’m saying, but for me being Bulgarian is a kind of drama, it’s a kind of downfall that leads to many negative things. And it’s a baggage that is both heavy and useless at the same time. Of course, maybe I’m exaggerating here. I mean I have this theory that every trauma can offer a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience, if you manage to understand it. So it seems to me that now I’m really on the right track in this process, but for a long time I struggled, I think, a lot, including because I think I didn’t have the language to understand things. And rather intuitively I sought internationalisation – in Romania and in other countries.
I believe that internationalisation can help to change some balances, either in ourselves personally or in society. It seems to me that in Bulgaria, in general, change is very difficult. Either old generations, economic interests or the inertia of society during the transition times do not encourage a more significant and deeper change in society. I think it often happens in Bulgaria that we find ourselves with a lot of problems for which we don’t have the language, we don’t have the leaders, we don’t have the experience, we don’t have the procedures and the knowhow how to manage them. Each of us discovers the wheel on our own, if we manage to discover something and discover as much as we can. And in this condition it seems to me that there is a lot of fog with us. In Bulgaria, even if we live, of course, and see something with our eyes, but still it seems to me that there is a lot of fog in which the people who have the real power are kicking and catching fish. There are a lot of people who don’t have the language, don’t have the experience, don’t have the training to know what to do.
So for me internationalisation provides a space where you can have distance or be free from your national trauma, so it allows you to find some energy, some experience that changes. How do you see the strengths and weaknesses of internationalisation?
You have the Bulgarian perspective and you know Bulgarian society much better than I do. What I can bring or what comment I could make is that maybe a reason for the scepticism towards the big world was also the geopolitical or economic isolation of Romania and Bulgaria after the 90s. We know very well that we have been very marginalised by the European Union for years and still are, for example with Schengen. And then, automatically, this creates a kind of isolationism. And yes, this can also translate to the social and societal level and to the way we perceive ourselves as a nation.
But one thing that I talked about with comrades in Greece that completely changed my perspective is to go to the Balkan perspective and for the Greek comrades and Romania was in the Balkans, which I had never heard of. I mean, we in Romania don’t necessarily perceive ourselves as Balkan or, on the contrary, the Greek and Turkish comrades used to tell us “You are part of the same Balkan space with us”. And that means extending a network of the Balkan left, for example. It means a vision.
I said that an international vision is important, but at the same time a regional vision is important. There will always be historical links, which have consequences for today. Now, Bulgaria, throughout its history and from the few things I have read (I admit it’s not a subject I am very familiar with), but from the Balkan perspective, Bulgaria has always had an important central role throughout history. And looking at the networks of links between Balkan countries, Bulgaria has played a central role in that. Maybe this would be a first step: to think, to rethink the way we relate. Because ok, Bulgaria is still marginalised in Europe and it’s quite hard to see yourself as part of a European left-wing project with Western countries. Or it’s quite hard to have this courage, to perceive yourself as an international person, let’s say, or as an international proletarian, if we want to use leftist words, but at least at a regional level, we can understand that we are part of a larger group of countries and then create some links with comrades from other countries or even people who are not leftist, but from countries that have at least a common background. And then maybe that would be the starting solution, for example with the Romanian left. In fact, that’s pretty much what happens. As far as I can see, the links of the Romanian left are starting to be with either the former socialist countries of the Eastern bloc or mainly with the Balkan countries. The links with the leftist West are quite weak and quite fragile and will probably only be in the background in the future. So I don’t know. I see things maybe a bit more optimistic for Bulgaria, in the sense that a relationship can start, but more of a beginning at the regional level. Given all these historical links between Bulgaria and the surrounding countries, I could only give you some hope.
One direction I want to go in now is the topic of the periphery – that is, the fact that Romania and Bulgaria are part of NATO, the European Union, but they are also a bit special. They’re still not fully in Schenghen on land borders, they need visas if they want to travel to the US and so on. So it’s a bit more special, Bulgaria and Romania, and that’s an important thing. The fact that maybe there is a divide or a gap between us and Western Europe, let’s say. But there’s also something else – the fact that in the periphery there’s a lot of hegemonies, small hegemonies – people and ideas, that have this hegemonic role. Much of social life is not directed towards building solidarity or a common spirit, a community. It’s directed towards having a hegemony that dominates opponents and pretty much the whole life, social life, institutional life, even if you like, is built like that, that we become hegemons and dominate each other.
And there’s a tendency for the top in the various structures to keep the bottom submissive, uninformed and to discourage initiatives from below. Because if one were to develop and assert oneself one could perhaps become a danger. It’s good to keep everything in order, i.e. static. Likewise if you are a journalist and open your mouth too much there is always a suspicion that you want to take political power, that your work is a front for political interests acting through you. Under these conditions, perhaps paradoxically, one could find more normal relationships, detached from the element of competition and power in international contacts. One thing I appreciate about the Romanian left is that even though it is a small bubble, it seems to have this inventory of notions and experiences and approaches that allow for more normality. You can find the energy to transform other spaces where this logic of hegemony dominates.
Yes, it’s a very philosophical question that I haven’t thought about in the perspective you mentioned. And you really give me a lot of food for thought on this. But something similar or an observation that I’ve made over the years about the left and for example, why the left can’t unite and why there’s so much dissension on the left and why there are so many currents and contradictions. In fact, it comes from the foundation, from one of the fundamental ideas or values of the left, and that is, let’s say, diversity of opinion or the acceptance that someone can have a different opinion or the fact that yes, you don’t seek to be a hegemon, to have absolute power, but rather camaraderie, friendship, companionship, cooperation, whereas, here are the capitalist values that are. Well competition, first of all, the idea of having power over the other, exploiting him, obviously having power over him and controlling him, whereas the values of the left are the opposite. Hence this dilemma or conundrum that I still have and have not yet settled; and I’ve had many discussions with both leftists and non-leftists. Why have there been these authoritarian drifts in communist regimes throughout history? Because the values of the left are not authoritarianism, hegemony and power, just as you say with the name of your blog Friendship Bridge. After all, friendship, comradeship, comradeship are values of the left.
And why I said earlier, about what the left can do and what hopes there are for the left to come to power. For the moment, this is a hindrance. In fact, at least in Romania and in the countries where we had communism, but no longer do. The fact that the left has values that are not about hegemony, they are not about taking power – and here I don’t mean taking power as a proletariat and making revolution. I mean, exactly as you said, this thirst for power, for hegemony, for dominating, controlling and exploiting others. That makes that, for the moment, this is, I say, one of the major obstacles we have to gain more power in society. Now I didn’t know that you were accused that through your independent journalism you were doing this just to have power… I don’t know how those people were thinking, but they clearly have something wrong in their heads.
The problem with this dictatorship or totalitarianism that was with the old communist parties probably came from the fact that there is a kind of spirit of socialism related to values, ideas, something immaterial, value, promise, ethics and so on. And this for socialism, of course, is very nice. But the body, in fact, is a kind of grounding of the soul and it’s something that serves the logic of earthly power. I don’t know if I’m speaking correctly. The point is that, for example, I’ve been thinking about this in the context of the Islamic revolution in Iran, I’ve been trying to do a kind of PhD, which I haven’t defended yet. The people who started this revolution were encouraged by their intellectuals, who were influenced by European and Western ideas. But it’s interesting that they combined these ideas with the Iranian tradition and the idea was that it was a kind of correction of the trauma of the monarchic period. That’s how I understood the social process very briefly for me. So the idea was to be something good, to be a kind of revolution that reminded me of a kind of social change and so on and to release from the trauma, because the suffering was very strong in the monarchic times. But what happened was that the trauma didn’t actually go away. Probably some of the spirit was grounded. For example, even in Islamic Iran there has always been a labour movement or a left-wing tendency. Of course, there was also repression against it. It’s complex, but I say it’s a kind of grounding of this spirit that prepared the revolution, but it’s also the trauma that came back or remained very strong. And you see that the repression was also very harsh and now that hasn’t changed. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s always a challenge. As well as having very beautiful, very smart, progressive ideas, there’s also this thing, that it’s a logic of earthly power, let’s say. We have to be very careful and aware that there’s a different logic, when the grounding takes place. There is another logic, earthly logic, where there is a kind of ego, personal ego, group ego, national ego and so on. I don’t know if I’m helping. In fact, I don’t know why I said this theory so much, but it seems to me that this is also a challenge for anyone who wants to be a left-wing party.
So I, for example, in Bulgaria, I am very disappointed with all the attempts to do party and party politics. They seem to me to have failed from conception. It seems to me that as a society we have to assume a kind of failure of action by force and look for change or look for realization in a soft power. There seems to be something more realistic there. It seems to me that the moment you make a kind of group that is moving towards political power and it’s left-wing, that means you are socially constructing yourself as very weak, very small and everybody will dominate you. I don’t see the point of making a kind of guard and making a new hegemony, even if very small hegemony. I don’t think that’s where the change is. I don’t think that’s where the spirit is. To have a very small left hegemony, subject to the domination of all the other hegemonies. If there is such a thing coming from the left, it will not be in hegemony at all. Which means, of course, at least to me, that a truly progressive left will not aim for yet another group egoism, but will seek to influence society at a deeper and more all-encompassing level.
I don’t know if I want to fully describe this philosophy, but it seems to me that it really works. From the left I think it’s a good idea to acquire an internationalist and global consciousness. I mean, even if you can become utopian, of course, very much so, to become a kind of global citizen, globalized, without the hegemonic element of corporations or NATO or these military and intelligence powers and so on. That seems to me very utopian, the most utopian thing. But if you can have a kind of global consciousness without the hegemonic element, that already seems to me to contain a lot of achievement in itself and I think it will be appreciated even by the hegemon. I mean it seems to me that hegemonies are always limited to certain groups in certain limited spaces. And true global knowledge would have no limits. How does this theory sound to you? Isn’t it too complex or utopian?
It’s not too complex, for one thing. In the way, I was talking about fighting, guerrilla warfare or having a small, hegemonic left power in a country versus being surrounded by capital. It’s just that we have these little left pockets. Whatever, “pockets of” leftist regimes in the world, which can be criticized or not, like Cuba, Venezuela, or Vietnam, which still calls itself socialist. I have no idea, there are still, there are still examples and they operate in these autarchic ways. But with citizens who are starving, who are exploited, who are being exploited, I really don’t think a left-wing regime would work in one country and the rest would be surrounded by capital, capitalism. And I don’t think it works primarily because capitalism doesn’t support the idea of alternatives, of diversity, of having a different way of running a country. International capital and capitalism as a regime, as an ideology, can’t stand that. Capitalism wants capitalism everywhere, to be under the control of capital everywhere. And then there is the risk of authoritarian drift in these little islands of leftism. That’s how I see it. That’s pretty much how I understand it has happened throughout history, and that’s pretty much how I’ve now deduced about guerrilla warfare. What can I say? I think they play their part too. And in what way do I mean? I’m not advocating the use of guns or violence. Not guerrilla warfare with weapons but in the way of small groups doing some activism. I think they all have their role. Look, for example, in France, a few years ago, there was a movement called the Black Thursday collective (Jeudi Noir in French) and they were campaigning for the right to housing. They would go and find an empty building. There were thousands of huge empty buildings all over Paris, while there were thousands of homeless people. And these people would go and occupy these buildings and take direct action. This is a kind of guerrilla warfare. OK, it’s not guerrilla warfare with guns and machetes. And it just happened to be without physical violence. But primarily that for years some people who otherwise would have been sleeping on the streets were able to get into these buildings and live in more or less ok conditions. For years they were able to have a network of solidarity around them and the housing issue was in the headlines many times in the media, because they were very active. In recent years, however, there has been an enormous police crackdown. Some were even put in jail, because Sarkozy and Hollande passed draconian laws against squatting, and the movement died out. And I think there is room for some very active groups on a practical level. For example, they were not necessarily internationalists, but little by little a European coalition for the Right to Housing was created, which includes the FCDL in Romania, the Social Ways and other small organisations of this kind. We leftists are at the point where all options are open. We have to take every opportunity, every chance we get, we have to take it and act or write or fight for the job. We can’t ignore channels of action just because I don’t know, some say it would be better to be only electoral or would it be better to be only NGO istic? On the contrary, it seems to me that we have to act on all levels. And one more thing: it seems to me that this is where local specificity comes in. There are countries where a particular strategy works better or there are areas where a strategy works better and we need to adapt the strategy to the place where we operate, where we live, where we work, where we live. So we have to adapt. And yes, internationalism. I have already said that without internationalism there can be no true left. But we must also be aware that we must adapt our means and the tools we have and the strategies we have. We have to adapt them to where we operate. Yes, I don’t know if it adds anything to your theory or if it contradicts it.
Talking about your experiences abroad and what do you bring from those experiences or what do you see to look out for in France, the UK, other countries, if you’ve had left-wing or social experiences.
There I wasn’t active in any particular group for various reasons – lack of time, lack of boldness. If you’re very shy, you don’t get into many groups. Plus, in France for example, left-wing groups are a bit more closed. I told you, there’s a bit of scepticism towards foreigners and in terms of nationality, but also those outside the bubble. Plus there it was very suspicious that I worked for a corporation and if I went to these groups, they looked at me very strangely.
In London I tried and went a few times to some public meetings organised by Jeremy Corbyn supporters. I didn’t necessarily go because I cared about Jeremy Corbyn, but it was one of the very active left-wing movements at the time, 2016, just before Brexit (Momentum was the name). It didn’t tie anything together then. And then I can’t say that I bring any on-the-ground experience with left-wing groups, but what I bring from abroad is understanding how capital works and through the lens of the research work I do at the corporate level. I learn all sorts of interesting things for us leftists and the way capitalists think and the way they act and the perspective of working people in other countries.
Now I’m not saying I’ve talked to all the workers in France, all the workers in England. No, it’s not that, but through the people I know in those countries I can bring certain points of view. Plus, over the years, living in other countries, I’ve learned about certain struggles of workers in these countries, I’ve understood how certain strategies have worked and I can bring this knowledge to Romania. And I can also bring the fact that I can make contact with comrades from other countries. Or look, speaking several languages I can help with translations, for example, or with putting people in touch. I mean it’s necessary for all of us who have foreign language skills to use that as well, when we are students and we have colleagues from other countries, to keep in touch with them, because over the years we will need people abroad. That’s pretty much what I can say that I bring and then there’s, yes, the knowledge about local specifics and political issues in these countries.
I, for example, follow very closely what is happening in French politics and then I can bring a perspective on what is happening in France and who is involved. Look at the way the far right is growing in France because of Macron’s neo-liberal proto-fascist “neither left nor right” policy, then from England, the way corporations operate, how they invest and understand the movements of international capital that often on the left we may not sit and read reports about tax havens or maybe we don’t understand exactly what the impact is on us, but if we sit and read a little bit on the subject it becomes very clear. Or look, from Northern Ireland, that year I spent there I learned a lot about the struggle of the Irish Catholic Republicans to get out from under British colonisation. And who, for example, in their country, are automatically sympathetic to Palestine, to the apartheid issue in South Africa, even though there politics is not divided into the left vs. right spectrum. In fact, left-wing issues are automatically included in the idea of anti-colonialism. And I have contacts there with people who are nevertheless very rich in social action and who work on the same issues that we work on here in Romania. I mean yes, this international perspective, the fact that I have contacts in other countries and the fact that I can make contacts very quickly. And I put it at the service of the Romanian left and I hope that in time this can help us to create very close solidarity links with other countries.
I have one last question for today. Indeed, since I met you I realized that you have a very valuable experience, unique and of course, being perhaps a good man, you want to share these experiences, you want to be useful to the community. This experience that you have is from some countries that are more playing the role of a center in the capitalist world system or whatever you would call the world system.
But we live in peripheral areas and somehow know life beyond the capitals in our countries. The question would be to what extent is it possible for our countries to move towards the centre? And do they need to move towards the centre or do they need to do something else? For example, as a semi-periphery, it should find a valuable position, a valuable role, as a semi-periphery for example in collaboration with other peripheries.
That’s a very, very good question. What I have noticed over the years is that we are given the illusion that we are starting to be part of the centre and no longer a periphery. For example, Romania is now applying to join the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – a forum of ‘civilised’ countries that acts as a think-tank for spreading neoliberal ideas), with the idea that we will now be part of the small club of ‘the big boys’. But in order to join this forum, Romania must implement a series of structural reforms of neoliberal obedience that will condemn it to further peripheral status.
Why do I say this? In 2003, when I went to France, Romania was effectively peripheral. And it was considered so for a very long time. But we are given the illusion that we could also become “the centre” in the last 4-5 years, maybe 7 years since Romania’s economy has grown and since Romanians in big cities or a part of Romanians in big cities have a certain high standard of living (I say only a certain part). And look, more and more Romanians are taking city breaks in the West. And there are also a lot of Romanians who, when they emigrate to the West, don’t emigrate like they did 20 years ago, like my parents or like they did 10 years ago, like my cousins who used to go to England to pick strawberries. I mean, it’s not just a migration of the working class and people with limited education, but it’s changed a bit because there are a lot of Romanian corporates emigrating, although they are now called expats, they are no longer called immigrants. And then there is this illusion that we Romanians are now “white” in quotes. Yes, we are Europeans. We are also slowly starting to receive a few crumbs of Schengen. And we are beginning to believe that we are part of this centre.
Except no, we are not part of the centre and I don’t think we will ever be part of the centre. We are just given this illusion, precisely because it is to the advantage of the centre to have this safety cordon, let’s call it that, made up of countries like Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, where living standards have risen since the 1990s and which, under the illusion that we are also, in inverted commas, ‘white’, we can be racist towards migrants from South-East Asia or Africa, for example, which would not have been the case in the 1990s, because we ourselves were discriminated against and treated negatively by the West. Instead, what should be done and is exactly what you say: from this position of semi-periphery or periphery, we should understand that we will not be part of this tight club of the centre, but align ourselves with other countries, with other perspectives.
We know of the non-aligned movement of Bandung in 1955, which said “We do not align ourselves” with the two hegemons, America and the USSR. Romania should do the same, Poland should do the same, the Czech Republic should do the same, and other countries that are given the illusion that they belong to the select club of the centre should do the same, and we should propose alternatives, for example, in our relations with migrant workers, so that we do not have the same attitude of exploitation, colonisation, superiority and racism. Or the way we re-develop, because Romania was developed in the 60s and 70s, but the way we develop our industry, for example, should be a totally different model, not the one practised in Western Europe, which means pollution, which means a destruction of nature and so on.
But that will be very difficult to do. Why? Because at the political level, the politicians we have (I don’t know about Șoșoacă and Simion – I have no idea what they think about this), but people like Iohannis, Mircea Geoană, who is very much involved in these circles – NATO, Aspen Institute and all that – and the rest of the political class look to the West as a model, as a select club that they want to be part of and, automatically, so does the country they run. It’s not necessarily that they care about ordinary Romanians, it’s that, being in the ruling class of a country, they want to be part of that club. But this could be precisely where the role of the left could be. And this is where the role of the intellectual left, the left in the academy, begins, especially at the intellectual level, to produce knowledge, to produce information, to produce articles, books, first of all about what the non-aligned movement means, what the whole history of colonisation and decolonisation has meant and how certain parts of the history of third world countries or the non-aligned movement resemble Romania’s position and Romania’s history. We don’t like to call ourselves a colonized country and I know it’s a sensitive topic among the left. When I said before that Romania was colonized, that Transylvania was colonized by those groups of Swabians and Saxons in 1200-1300, many people jumped up and argued with me that it wasn’t true, even though they actually called themselves colonists. That doesn’t mean we should hate ethnic people, Saxons or the Saxons in Romania. It just doesn’t mean that, it just means to see that Romania, in turn, was a small, peripheral country between three empires. It has been colonised, it has been colonised, but without falling into the idea of hating people who come from countries more powerful than us.
That is not the solution. But the moment we understand that we are not part of the select club, that we are not “white” in quotes, and here I am not talking about skin colour, I am talking about the concept of whiteness, and there is a very interesting book on this subject called “How the white race was invented” and I recommend everyone to read it (here is a link to the first volume in PDF and to the second volume). How the white race was invented and the idea of having certain privileges vis-a-vis people of a different skin color, because that allows you to divide workers, even though European and African slaves had the same status originally in America, colonized in 1619. The only thing the English colonists found then to divide Irish slaves from African slaves was the color of their skin, and this illusion was given that the person was white. Except look, for example, the Irish, actually for a long time were not considered white by the English. Up until the 1960s they weren’t allowed in, they weren’t allowed in, Africans and dogs weren’t allowed in pubs. That is, it wasn’t skin colour that mattered, it was status. Although Romanians in recent years have the impression that we are “white” when we go to the West and have the impression that we are now part of this select club. No, we will never really belong. We are given the proof every day. Look at Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen negotiations, we are still treated as peripheral citizens, we don’t have the same rights. So the solution, especially for the intellectual left, is to conceptualise and bring to light the similarities and links formed. Look, and during Ceausescu’s time with the countries of Africa, with the countries of the Middle East. Once again, the communist regime in Romania had many flaws. And yes, we have to comment on them, we have to criticise them, but it also had some positive parts from which we can learn. These links with African countries and countries in the Middle East are very important throughout history and for us today, this is what comes back. Look, the Palestinian community in Romania today and the fact that today hundreds of Romanian people are taking to the streets with their Palestinian friends to defend a cause that, in principle, should not interest the Romanians… We have cultural, social and economic ties with other countries and they should be maintained. This information work is already being done by the intellectual left and I have seen very good publications, I told you, from the University of Sibiu, from UBB, I have seen, there are independent publishing houses in Cluj and Sibiu, which publish some absolutely extraordinary texts, absolutely outstanding and worth reading. And this research and information must be done, and then, at a practical level, activist groups must also make these links with countries that are not part of the centre. And as proof of this, links between leftists in Romania and Poland, Greece and Turkey are already happening. I mean, it’s happening, but not yet at the mainstream discursive level. Ideally I would like to see things moving in the direction of proposing and looking at things in an alternative way, in practice. How much can we change the compass? That remains to be seen.
Photo: A non-aligned rainbow between the earth and the sky (source: Matt Hardy: https://www.pexels.com/photo/rainbow-over-sea-2309266/)
Subscribe to the channel of the blog “The Bridge of Friendship” in YouTube, where a number of video and audio interviews are published! The blog can also be followed in Facebook and Twitter. Its Telegram channel is here. And here is its Substack account.
About Author
Discover more from The Bridge of Friendship
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
