CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Erdei, Robert |
|---|---|
| Title | Chosen traumas and national nostalgia: How AUR used psychoanalytical fantasies to mobilize the Romanian diaspora for the 2024 European elections |
| Summary | This study started from the empirical puzzle related to the Romanian diaspora's vote for AUR in the 2020 parliamentary elections. Although the literature on AUR offers a variety of explanations for its success both in the country and in the diaspora, my study proposes a further explanation inspired by the concept of fantasy developed in Lacanian psychoanalysis and later translated into nationalism studies. The method of data collection used in this study was social media ethnography. My dataset is a collection of 25 primary sources from the party's online campaign for the 2024 European elections. Based on this dataset, this study argues that AUR produces a political fantasy through its discourse, which is structured around three components: a golden age nostalgia, which is a metaphor for different historical periods of Romania; a set of two villains, which embody the current Romanian political establishment and the Brussels neo-Marxists; and an identification mechanism, namely the concept of "AUR militia" (or oaste, in Romanian), which refers to all those who support the idea of a sovereign Romania. This study contributes to the literature from a theoretical perspective by presenting a hypothesis on the 20% that the AUR obtained in the diaspora in the 2020 parliamentary elections, as well as the result that it will obtain in the 2024 European elections. From an empirical perspective, this is the first academic analysis of the AUR's campaign for the 2024 European elections, although my research does not examine the entire campaign, but only its online component. |
| Supervisor | Miller, Michael, Lawrence; Herbel Mihaela |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/erdei_robert.pdf |
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