‘Get out of Traian Square!’: Roma Stigmatization as a Mobilizing Tool for the Far Right in Timişoara, Romania

Abstract

Post‐communist Central and Eastern Europe has seen far right movements and parties gain considerable ground by drawing on nativist and ethnic claims to call for a return to an imagined past. In Romania, far right groups have been able to capitalize on a sense of injustice while also playing on historically negative feelings towards the Roma community. These patterns have been observed in Timişoara, where the group Noua Dreaptă (New Right) has established a foothold over the past decade by emphasizing claims that blame the Roma for loss of built heritage and corruption in the administration of property restitution. The aims of this article are to examine the emergence of Noua Dreaptă and its use of Roma stigmatization, and to consider the ways in which extreme views are normalized by appealing to beliefs and perceptions. The findings of the article show that pre‐existing prejudices can be a powerful force that not only targets marginalized communities, but also challenges administrative practices and builds organizational support. At the level of the city, it is possible to identify the way in which these claims can be more precisely calibrated to draw on concerns that circulate within the community.

The Power of Group Stigmatization: Wealthy Roma, Urban Space and Strategies of Defence in Post‐socialist Romania

“…The general post‐socialist situation of the Roma population in the 1990s and subsequent decades was significantly influenced by economic factors, with a large number of Roma becoming jobless after the onset of deindustrialization (for an excellent account of this wider context, namely, ‘zombie socialism’, see Chelcea and Druta, ). Many families migrated to Western Europe (although this was not an option for everyone), while many continued to live in poverty within Romania (Creţan, ). At the same time, nationalist ideology was quickly spreading across the entire post‐socialist Romanian political spectrum.…”

“…Since 1990, nationalistic rhetoric has been a characteristic of Romanian politics (EDRC, ). Anti‐Roma violence and hate speech reached a peak in the 1990s, while populism increased markedly throughout the 2000s (Bird and Candea, ; Creţan, ). Discrimination against Roma sometimes reached the level of physical violence, and incidents of Roma houses being burnt to the ground and of Roma being expelled from their villages, resulting in deaths of Roma, have been reported (Szente, ).…”

“…During the period of the expansion of the EU (post‐2007), the situation deteriorated for the Roma communities in Romania (Scicluna, ). Political leaders engaged in populist discourses but also in overt discrimination (Bird and Candea, ; Creţan, ). Former Romanian president Traian Băsescu was convicted twice by the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) for racist statements.…”

Evictions as infrastructural events

“…On the contrary, relatively often, the evictions of the poor are underwritten by mayors in a celebratory narrative of a return to "civilization." Often, the media, real estate agents, and politicians portray evictions as the removal of obstacles to the preservation of landmark buildings and a necessary step toward the beautification of historical -that is, pre-1950s -areas (Arpagian & Aitken, 2018;Atanasoski & McElroy, 2018;Cretan & O'Brien, 2019).…”

Framing “The Gypsy Problem”: Populist Electoral Use of Romaphobia in Italy (2014–2019)

“…Most of these works, while illuminating on the use of Romaphobia in political discourse, do not specifically focus on right wing populist movements. On the other side, despite the extensive literature on how right wing populist movements have succeeded in mobilizing and focusing popular resentments towards immigrants (Poynting and Briskman 2020;Grande et al 2018;Meyer and Rosenberger 2015, amongst many others), very few studies have specifically focused on the use of Romaphobia by far right-wing populists (Stewart 2012) and most of them focus on Eastern European countries (Creţan and O'Brien 2019;Kluknavská and Hruška 2019).…”