@pugnaciousfarter Not exactly anymore. I’ll scroll through my community list once my main server becomes active again, but I remember there were some communities that were pretty much abandoned (mainly on lemm.ee). Now they just receive a lower amount of activity.

@cows_are_underrated

The thing is, that communism itself isn’t necessarily authoritarian

I’ve heard this multiple times. In reality, communism became an enabler for authoritarian regimes. And especially in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, it became as authoritarian as it could be.

Maybe the law could have been written in a way to allow “forms of communism that are not authoritarian” or something along the lines, but you don’t know how it could have ended up in practice. Maybe it would just provide some loopholes, maybe it could lead to the wrong people being prosecuted etc.

And people have been in contact for too long with the authoritarian form of communism to be able to figure any other form. For them, is the same as saying, “y’know, there are also some good fascists out there. Some kind racists, some great neo-Nazis etc”.

@Hotznplotzn I can totally understand the point of view of left-leaning people - in a world where fascism literally rose back from the ashes and is threatening the whole free world from the inside, a law like this seems just… odd?!?

However, keep in mind the fact that here in Eastern Europe communism caught a totalitarian shape, with regimes in Soviet puppet states systematically breaking human rights and suppressing political opposition. Protests were not allowed, freedom of expression was not guaranteed, and the political elite of the former regime was systematically destroyed.

Even after the Iron Curtain fell, former members of the communist apparatus managed to maintain power, one way or another, and sometimes even their Moscow links. The only way we truly managed to beat them were at the polls, and even there, barely, aided by the big cities and the diaspora in the West.

Here in Romania for example, FSN, and later PSD, successfully managed to take over the entire territorial network of the former communist party. So it was an easy win for them for over 30 years.

If such a law was passed in my country, I don’t think it would have any effect on the unions, as they do not use any communist insignia or whatnot. I think it is rather a way of bonding a permanent rapture with the past, by not allowing bad faith actors to make an apology of totalitarianism.

/my 2c

@tlex arată și mai bine tbh

@khannie Lidl is better for existing in my country.

@bvoigtlaender This is one beautiful light color scheme

@Skyline Lime had it (probably still has it). I used to rent a Lime scooter just by choosing “try app”. I would then enter the scooter code manually, and I could freely ride how much I wanted. It worked all the time. I’m no longer using this feature, as I have a new phone with a bigger storage, where I installed the Uber app, so whenever I would try the same way it would prompt me to use the Uber app to unlock the scooter.

@fne8w2ah

@whyalone Văd cam târziu mema asta, dar tot m-am căcat pe simion de râs

@Bienenvolk I’m confident rn. We’ll hear again after the next 5 years, I guess :D

@Bienenvolk there’s quite a strong propaganda, coming from the traditional parties (PSD - Social Democrats and PNL - National Liberals) claiming, but later taken by the extremist parties, demonizing him because he said he doesn’t say I love you to his children (or something like that), because he’s not married to his partner despite having children and living with her for so long, the fact that he’s still living in a rented house at his age etc.

Most notably, he is a friend of a man called Matei Păun, who had business with Russia and Belarus and held some questionable views a while ago, but he emphasized repeatedly that he doesn’t share his views. And George Simion is a persona non-grata in both Ukraine and Moldova, and pushed a lot of anti-Ukraine and anti-Moldovan narratives, so this fact was irrelevant as well.

He pretty much has the appearance of a modest man, just a regular guy doing every day stuff, driving a 20-year-old Renault Clio and living with his family, taking care of his children, something along the lines.

I’m personally following him since a while, and what I noticed was that in the previous campaign for the city hall of Bucharest, even when his opponents attacked him, they did it in a somewhat respectful way (don’t know how to explain it). So he does seem like a man who gets respect and decency without explicitly asking for it.

Imo I think we’ll have some interesting 5 years ahead.

@thorhop As a centrist, he did great things while being the mayor of Bucharest. He reorganized the public transit to cover more areas previously uncovered, brought new vehicles to the fleet (both trams, buses and trolleybuses), signed contracts to repair the tram lines that give you a bumpy ride and haven’t been repaired since ages (funding is due from the EU, as the local budget was sabotaged by the “social-democrats” in the local council) and contracted a consulting company to create a master plan for a bike path network all around the city. He also focused on repairing the aging central heating pipes so that we won’t have problems with heating in the winter anymore, especially by replacing them with new pipes with special sensors to detect leaking in time. Public lighting was also switched to LED on multiple arteries, saving money and electricity at the same time, and he managed to complete the water treatment plant at Glina, a project that should have been finished years ago by the previous “social-democrat” mayors.

Imo he’s more than just an alternative, he’s simply the way to go, and I’m glad he’s now a president.

@davriellelouna I hope more Romanians will use Signal. You failed to overturn our elections, bă, pulă!

Edit: too bad tho, Telegram just looks gorgeous.

@Hubi Grok knows all too well.

@latenightnoir Ieșim la vot și va fi Nicușor! ✌️

Dacă te ajută cu ceva, eu weekendul trecut am fost la Cotroceni, am luat un steag și un balon cu UE, apoi m-au oprit niște puști pe la Victoriei să mă întrebe de unde le-am luat că vor și ei :D

Fingers crossed!

@CAVOK Fuck…

@EuroMod Oh, right, I now see the reasoning. I only posted this as a news myself too, haha. Thank you as well!

@EuroMod I’m sorry I did not provide adequate context. There was a march in support of the EU membership, given the current situation where the most voted candidate was a pro-Russian who more or less wants to sabotage it and sabotage the EU itself. This one was in Bucharest, but others were held in lots of other big cities across the country.

There were technically two such rallies this weekend, but one of them was in support of the pro-European candidate (organized by him as well)

@kek the only external influence that has been going on was the Russian one, and it’s been happening in basically all the European countries - if not in many of them: Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, probably the Baltics too, etc.

Yes, we voted against the establishment, and we now have two candidates that positioned themselves as such. However, one of these candidates has a strong nationalistic rhetoric, wants us to stop helping Ukraine, the country that literally acts as a shield against Russia to us, to not help Moldova and its people despite being a strong unionist in the past (it’s how he gained the popularity of today) and despite moldovans and us being pretty much the same people (today’s Moldova is the result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which pretty much drew the border of nowaday’s Eastern Europe). He literally wants to leave two of our neighbors at the whim of Russia, and isolate us from the rest of the world, bringing that Georgescu guy as a president or as a prime minister (depending on what fits best) - a guy that said he literally wants to do away with all the political parties altogether (not just with the existing ones, but in general) - imo this is clearly extremely undemocratic.

The other guy that’s running for president literally fought in court with the authorities for giving illegal building permits, created the first actually new party since around the '90s upon its creation (most of the others were just creations of older politicians becoming unhappy with their mothership and creating another party and another party, but not bringing any new face in the game) and won the city hall of Bucharest twice, despite facing an ugly disinformation campaign from the established parties. Once in office, he managed to get the finances of the city straight (the previous mayor literally bankrupted the city, but he hid this fact from the public out of fear that the creditors would start asking for money straight away, stranding the local budget even more), he contracted EU funds for repairing the city’s heating pipes (we have pretty much the biggest central heating system in the country), bought new trams, new buses, new trolleybuses, stopped the lawsuits against the journalists (that, again, the previous mayor started because they were too uncomfortable), gradually closed most of the public companies the previous mayor started as a way to siphon public funds etc. Yes, he’s not perfect, he hasn’t really done any wonders while in office so far, there’s still a lot to do for this city, but the intention of him is very clear and because of this he’s a better fit for many as a candidate, even to the post-1989 establishment.

There’s much more to say about both, but this is largely the political landscape we’re faced with the next Sunday. Hope this also clears things up for you too to a certain degree. :)

@Kennystillalive we sadly did. Many people voted for that guy and we, the others that are deeply attached to the EU and it’s values are quite afraid of the possible outcome. Fortunately there is hope.

@kek no, democracy is not when you ban your opponents. Democracy is when you sanction contenders if they don’t respect the rules of the game. When they declare 0 spending in online campaigns, when they don’t properly label their political propaganda material as such (even when the law requests it), when they do not disclose their spending but they spend huge amounts of cash coming from far-right affiliates and other sketchy sources, when they threaten with riots or outright coups involving mercenaries that fought in Congo alongside Wagner, this is when the rules of the game are not respected.

I would be more concerned for democracy if we would have only two political forces and barring one from running would make the other one the only choice, than barring a sketchy guy from entering the race.

Just fyi, we had 11 candidates this election and we had 3 debates last week, where all of them were invited.