Member of the Assembly of Deputies of Romania George Simion told Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec what free speech on social media means to his campaign and his country.
Simion credited social media with ending mainstream media’s ability to ignore and silence disfavored candidates during a Friday interview on Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec. Simion, the winner of 41% of the vote in the May 4 first round of Romania’s presidential election, praised Elon Musk for striking a blow against censorship on social media. “It is important that you have a platform that doesn’t exercise censorship like [Big Tech] they did, like banning the account of President Trump,” he said.
Simion's comments follow Romania's Constitutional Court's cancellation of a separate first-round electoral victory by candidate Calin Georgescu. The court based its decision on questionable claims that Russia manipulated not voting machines or election officials but what Romanians saw on TikTok. Vice President JD Vance condemned this decision in a speech criticizing European censorship and pressure on social media companies to censor.
In response to the cancelled election, TikTok claimed to have removed hundreds of thousands of accounts. TikTok also created an “Election Center” in partnership with disinformation nonprofit Funky Citizens, which leftist billionaire George Soros gave at least $889,000 from 2022 to 2023. Furthermore, TikTok claimed it was working with over 20 fact-checkers and was “launching a media literacy campaign in collaboration with a number of top Romanian media partners” [emphasis not added] ahead of the May 4 election. Media literacy is often used as an excuse to push censorship, frequently by steering advertising dollars away from disfavored media outlets.
During the Human Events with Jack Posobiec interview, Simion criticized the Romanian media that is now working for TikTok for their past behavior. “I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be in the first place if we wouldn’t have social media. Mainstream media was exercising censorship: if you didn’t go on TV, you didn’t matter in politics before,” Simion added.
Simion said that television channels and members of the press were directed from the top not to give attention or interviews to his party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians. Simion described how his party managed to exceed expectations and the threshold to enter the Romanian Parliament by campaigning on Facebook instead of in the press.
“Now we have Facebook and TikTok and we are spreading our ideas faster than any mainstream media channel can and directly to the people. I’m talking directly to the Romanian people and this is awesome, this is why they cannot control us,” Simion explained
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