TikTok star
The judo-loving Georgescu has some 3.8 million likes on TikTok and 298,000 followers, while his videos regularly attract millions of views. During the campaign, accounts with bot-like behavior were highly active in comments on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok. Some also attacked his rivals.
On TikTok, clips of Georgescu went viral, often produced with the subversive, populist style of controversial influencer Andrew Tate, accompanied by dramatic music and subtitles. Georgescu was shown barely breaking a sweat on the running track, flipping opponents in judo — à la Putin — and riding a white horse in a traditional Romanian shirt.
In many ways, Georgescu fits the mold of the radical right-wing populist in 2024. He speaks plainly, shuns Western orthodoxy, is loathed by mainstream media, and has sounded more than friendly toward Russia.
Among Europe’s former Communist states, Romania has historically been one of the most skeptical toward Moscow, but Georgescu’s enthusiasm for Putin seems not to have cost him at the polls. Putin shows he loves his country, Georgescu has said, adding that Romania could do with some Russian wisdom.
He has also criticized the EU; claimed that NATO would never intervene to fight for Romania if it were attacked; and called for an end to the war in Ukraine, arguing that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is bad for his country. Meanwhile, the U.S. ballistic missile defense system housed at the Deveselu military base in southern Romania is a matter of national “shame,” Georgescu has argued, and promotes conflict.
According to Marius Ghincea, a political scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Georgescu’s meteoric surge was driven by voter disillusionment with Romania’s two largest mainstream parties, which have been in a grand coalition since 2021 and are seen as “incompetent.”