David Rieff: Wilting Jasmine
[David Rieff is a contributing editor for The New Republic.]
In early December, 1989, rioting broke out in the western Romanian city of Timosoara. Within weeks, the Ceaucescu dictatorship had fallen, the self-styled ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ and his wife, Elena, having been shot by an impromptu firing squad after a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court that condemned them for one of the things they were not guilty of: genocide. Before she was killed, Mme. Ceaucescu is said to have screamed, ‘You are murdering the mother of the nation.’ Discontent had been building since the beginning of the 1980s, when Ceaucescu instituted a disastrous program of economic austerity that further impoverished an already poor population, and by 1987, demonstrations by both workers and students were becoming more and more frequent, and fear of the regime less and less pervasive. At the same time, there was increasing restiveness about Ceaucescu’s rule within the Romanian Communist Party.
As the regime fell, most outside observers believed they were witnessing a great victory of democracy over tyranny. There was also something off the same triumphalist rhetoric about emancipatory technology that we hear today about the effect of Twitter and social networks in the Egypt today: Romania, it was said, was the first time a revolution had taken place on live television, and the potential of that was purportedly limitless. In fact, however, the overthrow of the Ceaucescus was more of a coup d’etat orchestrated by the secret police—the Securitate—and members of the Communist Party grouped in the so-called National Salvation Front led by a Ion Iliescu, who had fallen out with Ceaucescu in 1980, and would go on to serve three terms as Romania’s prime minister. As the British historian, Mark Almond, put it, “The idea that the wicked witch and her husband the bad tyrant were taken down simply by the people rising up is a fairly tale.”
Something of the same suspension of disbelief has greeted the overthrow of the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia.
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In early December, 1989, rioting broke out in the western Romanian city of Timosoara. Within weeks, the Ceaucescu dictatorship had fallen, the self-styled ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ and his wife, Elena, having been shot by an impromptu firing squad after a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court that condemned them for one of the things they were not guilty of: genocide. Before she was killed, Mme. Ceaucescu is said to have screamed, ‘You are murdering the mother of the nation.’ Discontent had been building since the beginning of the 1980s, when Ceaucescu instituted a disastrous program of economic austerity that further impoverished an already poor population, and by 1987, demonstrations by both workers and students were becoming more and more frequent, and fear of the regime less and less pervasive. At the same time, there was increasing restiveness about Ceaucescu’s rule within the Romanian Communist Party.
As the regime fell, most outside observers believed they were witnessing a great victory of democracy over tyranny. There was also something off the same triumphalist rhetoric about emancipatory technology that we hear today about the effect of Twitter and social networks in the Egypt today: Romania, it was said, was the first time a revolution had taken place on live television, and the potential of that was purportedly limitless. In fact, however, the overthrow of the Ceaucescus was more of a coup d’etat orchestrated by the secret police—the Securitate—and members of the Communist Party grouped in the so-called National Salvation Front led by a Ion Iliescu, who had fallen out with Ceaucescu in 1980, and would go on to serve three terms as Romania’s prime minister. As the British historian, Mark Almond, put it, “The idea that the wicked witch and her husband the bad tyrant were taken down simply by the people rising up is a fairly tale.”
Something of the same suspension of disbelief has greeted the overthrow of the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia.