It’s truly bizarre to me how when eastern Europeans like us talk about our countries, our opinions don’t matter because some poll contradicts us. You know far better than I do what was and is going on in Hungary, but talking about Romania like the streets were paved in gold during the communist period is utterly bizarre. Many families spent their life savings on getting smuggled out of the country via Serbia, the government covered up pogroms against the Roma, many Hungarian minority towns were intentionally disadvantaged, and Jews, while initially huge supporters of the Romanian communist movement (for obvious reasons), were later systematically purged from any position of power and the government eventually came up with a deal with Israel to get Israel to pay thousands of dollar per Jew allowed to leave.
None of these sound like the hallmarks of an equitable, safe and stable society.
To be honest, I think most of these people are edgy contrarian Western people if not straight up agitators. Yes, the current US system does abhorrent things. Yes, it is often hypocritical against Russian and Chinese policies. But the mental gymnastics required to go from “US imperialism and worker exploitation bad” to “Russian / Chinese imperialism and worker exploitation good” is a huge leap.
It’s truly bizarre to me how when eastern Europeans like us talk about our countries, our opinions don’t matter because some poll contradicts us. You know far better than I do what was and is going on in Hungary, but talking about Romania like the streets were paved in gold during the communist period is utterly bizarre. Many families spent their life savings on getting smuggled out of the country via Serbia, the government covered up pogroms against the Roma, many Hungarian minority towns were intentionally disadvantaged, and Jews, while initially huge supporters of the Romanian communist movement (for obvious reasons), were later systematically purged from any position of power and the government eventually came up with a deal with Israel to get Israel to pay thousands of dollar per Jew allowed to leave.
None of these sound like the hallmarks of an equitable, safe and stable society.
To be honest, I think most of these people are edgy contrarian Western people if not straight up agitators. Yes, the current US system does abhorrent things. Yes, it is often hypocritical against Russian and Chinese policies. But the mental gymnastics required to go from “US imperialism and worker exploitation bad” to “Russian / Chinese imperialism and worker exploitation good” is a huge leap.