From neo-liberalism to religious conservatism: The ideological journey of public intellectuals in Romania
From neo-liberalism to religious conservatism: The ideological journey of public intellectuals in Romania

Summary/Abstract: Public intellectuals played a significant role in Romania during the post-communist transition. By their ideological liberal and neoliberal position and their intellectual legitimacy, they managed to support right-wing parties in opposition to former communist successor parties. Right-wing intellectuals successfully balanced the incipient weakness of those parties, until they managed to win their first parliamentary and presidential elections. Intellectuals virulent anti-communist critique also helped neo-liberalism to become the only game in town, largely shaping Romania economy and society. The critique of the modern world, done by the same public intellectuals in Romania two decades later, is an avoidance of a real critique of neo-liberalism and its social and cultural consequences. Trapped in the logic of defending neo-liberalism by severely attacking left-wing ideas, right-wing public intellectuals have to indirectly confront to the neo-liberal consequences by using a strategy. The strategy unraveled by the Critical Discourse Analysis used in this article is to condemn the by-products of harsh neo-liberalism under the disguise of a religious and conservative critique. This is the way found by right-wing intellectuals to avoid embracing a left-wing oriented critique, but still condemn the selfishness, irresponsibility and irrationality on post-communist individuals, which undermine the solidarity of a traditional community.

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