Constantin von Hoffmeister: Georgescu, Codreanu, and the Machinery of Erasure

Ion Antonescu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu are heroes through whom national history lived and spoke, and through whom it still speaks today — unlike the lackeys of globalist powers who temporarily rule Romania.

— Călin Georgescu, November 2020

Călin Georgescu sat on the narrow wooden bench, the smell of damp paper and mildew thick in the air. The courtroom was unlit, save for the flicker of an ancient bulb at its farthest end. He clutched a newspaper tightly in his hands, the ink smudging onto his fingers. The headline blared in a typeface too large to ignore: “Election Cancelled: Russian Meddling Confirmed.”

The words on the page made no sense. He had won the election. The people had spoken. Yet here he sat, summoned to this nameless court, waiting for a judgment that had already been pronounced in every newspaper, every broadcast, every conversation he had overheard since dawn. A faceless authority had decreed his victory void, and now he awaited his fate, although he already knew the outcome.

Each cry, each raised fist, had seemed to carry the ghost of something older, something undeniable. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938) — the Captain. The name hovered in the background of Georgescu’s memory, unavoidable, commanding. At first, he had only alluded to it, a stray remark here, a fleeting reference there. But as his campaign surged, so too did the insistence of the people, as though they had always been waiting for someone to resurrect the myth. And had he not obliged? The chants, the slogans — they were not his invention. They had risen unbidden from the collective longing of a fractured nation.

Codreanu’s image, burned into the collective consciousness of those who still believed in Romanian sovereignty, haunted Georgescu more than he cared to admit. A man born not into power but into an almost biblical sense of mission, Codreanu had spoken of Romania’s wounds as though he could feel them in his own flesh. The founding of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, a movement that blended Orthodox Christianity and radical nationalism, was not just an act of politics; it was an act of faith, a challenge hurled at a world he saw as corrupt beyond redemption. At his trial, Codreanu had stood unbowed, his voice calm and certain as he faced the machinery of a state that viewed him as a contagion to be eradicated. They said he had conspired, that he was dangerous, that his ideas would tear the nation apart, although it was the state itself that had rotted from within. And when they finally silenced him, it was done not with dignity but with cowardice, in the back of a truck, under cover of darkness. Georgescu knew these details well, too well. They pressed against his mind now as the judges spoke of “foreign interference” and “threats to democracy,” the words heavy with the weight of inevitability.

Codreanu had died strangled by a system that feared him, and now, decades later, that same system seemed to breathe anew, ready to devour Georgescu in its ceaseless grind. The room felt smaller suddenly, its walls leaning in, its shadows growing thicker. Georgescu wondered, as the judges’ words dissolved into a dull hum, if this was how the Captain had felt in his final moments: caught in a labyrinth of accusations, unable to find the way out.

The judges’ bench loomed above him, although there were no three judges, only a speakerphone from which a voice emanated — calm, detached, and yet vaguely menacing.

“Călin Georgescu,” the voice intoned, “the court has reviewed the findings. Russian interference has been proven beyond a doubt. Your campaign benefited from illegal operations designed to destabilize our democratic system.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Georgescu said, his words drowned out, swallowed by the oppressive air. “The people chose me. Their will cannot be silenced.”

“It can and must,” the voice replied. “Democracy is not the tyranny of the uninformed. It is the safeguarding of our shared truth.”

The phrase hung in the air — “our shared truth.” It sounded like something from a pamphlet he had once read, something written in doublespeak. The absurdity of it struck him, but he said nothing. He was unsure whether his silence was from fear or resignation.

The evidence against him, the voice said, was incontrovertible. Thousands of TikTok accounts, fake profiles amplified by algorithms, had supposedly elevated his campaign. Videos of his speeches had gone viral overnight, accompanied by patriotic music. “Moscow’s fingerprints are all over it,” the voice claimed. Georgescu wondered whether the court could see that he had neither orchestrated nor controlled these events. Or perhaps the court did see, and it simply did not matter.

As the speakerphone droned on, he felt the walls closing in. The room seemed to shrink, the ceiling pressing down on him. He thought of Codreanu again, standing defiant before his captors. “We will not perish,” the Captain had once said, “because we will not surrender.” But those words felt empty now, here in this room where surrender had already been imposed, where the machinery of the system had crushed any semblance of resistance before it could take root.

When the voice finally ceased, it left an eerie silence. Two suited men appeared and motioned for him to leave. The trial, if it could be called that, was over. No sentence had been pronounced, yet the punishment was clear. The election was annulled. His name would fade into obscurity, his supporters labeled as dupes or traitors. He would be reduced to a footnote, if that.

As he walked out into the gray, overcast afternoon, Georgescu felt a strange sensation in his chest. Not despair — he had passed beyond that — but a profound emptiness, as if the part of him that had believed in the possibility of change had been surgically removed. The world around him moved on, indifferent. The people in the streets hurried about their business, unaware or uninterested in the decision that had just been made.

Above him, a giant screen flickered to life. A news anchor’s face filled the frame, smiling mechanically. “Democracy has been preserved,” the anchor declared. “The people are safe from foreign interference.” Beneath the anchor’s image, a scrolling ticker read: “Election results invalidated. Trust in the system at an all-time high.”

Georgescu stopped and stared at the screen. For a moment, he thought he could hear the faint chants of the crowds from his rallies, their voices rising like a tide, only to dissipate into the wind. And then he turned and walked away, his figure swallowed by the city’s merciless gray.