The Propaganda Master of Communism

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A 2016 BBC documentary titled, The King of Communism – The Pomp and Pageantry of Nicolae Ceausescu, focused on Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena’s cult of personality propaganda that helped maintain his brutal Communist Party dictatorship (1965-1989) in the Socialist Republic of Romania, a tyranny that irreparably damaged the soul of a nation. Sadly, the documentary was celebrated by people who still believe in his misery right up to this day.  http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/the-king-of-communism-nicolae-ceausescu-bbc-history-documentary-2016-video/

Unfortunately, the old communist ideology has been repackaged for Millennials and useful idiots in shiny new wrapping paper, with colorful and expensive free bows, by self-described Socialist Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are so far to the left of the political spectrum that are in danger of falling off the Marxist cart.

I felt compelled to write because, although obvious facts were presented throughout this documentary, some of the chosen witness testimony on this film rewrites history by hiding most of life’s reality under the Communist Party boot, focusing instead on the awe and respect that those who helped Ceausescu maintain his reign of terror through intense propaganda still have for him to this day.

Watching this documentary almost two-thirds through, unless you were witness to this sad history of the Romanian people, you would think that Ceausescu and his wife were virtuous people who helped establish the Romanian people in the world Pantheon of respect and admiration.

Most of those interviewed on film were intimately involved in supporting and maintaining the communist party dictatorship with lavish propaganda and highly choreographed shows televised live or on tape. They were still great admirers to this day of the peasant and his seventh-grade dropout wife who kept 22 million people starving, disarmed, and unable to protest and defend themselves, prisoners within the borders of their own country.

The documentary focused on the highly effective propaganda and the cult of personality fed by extravagant and theatrical marches and shows that presented the Ceausescu couple as the father and mother of the country, the miracle leader who dared to buck the mighty Soviet empire and condemned the joint invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 20-21, 1968  by four Warsaw Pact nations, Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland.

Never mind that the Soviets had been present in the country for a long time, advising them what to do, and training Romanian communist apparatchiks at the Soviet Communist Academy in Leningrad for years.

Each weekly extravagant show that forced workers and students to attend and glorify the dear leader cost 40 to 60 million lei, easily the salary of 100,000 people, starved and forced to live in communist-built apartments in town after their small plots of land were confiscated and collectivized by force and their homes bulldozed.

Ceausescu fashioned himself as the creator of a new Romania who needed to build the largest palace in the world, to his eternal glory. He destroyed homes in Bucharest (he condemned them because, he said, they looked like a gypsy village) that were in the path of his monstrous palace and moved the owners and renters in the country in apartments that had no sanitation or running water and residents had to use outhouses while the elderly who were not very mobile used buckets to be dumped into the outhouses daily.

An old Orthodox church was also in the way of Ceausescu’s dream. He had it moved 23 meters behind a high-rise apartment complex so that it would not be visible from his personal palace or from the street. Religion in general was frowned upon as atheism was the country’s religion.

His personal palace was designed, re-designed, built, a staircase built and torn, re-built, and nothing inside was ever imported. He built factories that made just a few parts in order to avoid importing anything from abroad where the parts would have cost peanuts by comparison. One of the largest carpets in the world was woven to decorate his monstrous hall – it was so heavy that it was impossible to unroll by hand.

The House of the People which now houses the Romanian Parliament (controlled by the largest party, the Social Democrats) is opened to the public for tours now. A cube of marble, quite ugly from the exterior, the building looks somewhat better on the inside. The Romanian people hate this building because of the heavy price they had to pay for it especially since they were never allowed inside, not even on the wide boulevards surrounding the building, avenues that went nowhere and larger than Champs Elysée.

This mammoth marble building, erected with the blood and sweat of starving and compliant Romanians, symbolizes the socialist oppression and repression that the equally miserable and poor proletariat rabble had to endure – how could 22 million people rebel successfully against such a totalitarian state ruling from this fortress?

At the time, could one of the poorest countries in Europe have afforded such a lavish structure when they lived like paupers, helpless spectators to their own downfall, actors, and “applauders” of their own demise at the hands of the Communist Party.

One of those interviewed in the BBC documentary, Gheorghe Arcudeanu (Show Director), a communist party sycophant, said, “He seemed like a good man. He enjoyed our shows. He thanked us for our work. It was a nice atmosphere for us.” Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a poet, another sycophant, describes Ceausescu as “a great statesman” who “will have his place in history.” He was right about that; he will have his place in the hall of infamy.

The spectacular theatrical shows remain on celluloid tape, but the nation who was forced to participate in them despised the Ceausescus. It was no surprise that he and his wife were summarily executed on Christmas Day 1989 after a two-day show trial.

History does not speak kindly of Ceausescu except in circles that advocate his communist party ideology. His Democrat Socialism robbed people of their pride, courage, wealth, land, freedom, and destroyed their souls, self-determination, and self-sufficiency.