Propaganda pandemică și deriva autoritară
Propaganda and authoritarian turn during the last pandemic

Summary/Abstract: With numerous exceptional measures which refrained civil rights and freedoms, the recent pandemic accelerated lasting tendencies of democratic backsliding in Romania. It is by no means surprising to notice that those measures of limiting the normal functioning of democratic system fit into a larger picture of rapid dedemocratization. Instead of consolidating the democratic procedures in times of crises, the measures oriented the political system towards what was the norm some forty years ago. Focusing on the propaganda mechanism, the article raises the question whether the tools and messages used in Romania during the pandemic are still compatible with a democratic society. At a closer examination, those tools and practices rather point towards the normal functioning of the propaganda apparatus in a totalitarian political system. From this perspective, the last couple decades of democratic progress in Romania may look like a brief episode between two consolidated authoritarian systems

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