THE NEW RASPUTINS

Anti-science mysticism is enabling autocracy around the globe.

-  ANNE APPLEBAUM

Frosty pine trees rim the edge of an icy lake. Snow is falling; spa music plays in the background. A gray-haired man with a pleasant face stands beside the lake. He begins to undress. He is going swimming, he explains, to demonstrate his faith, and his opposition to science, to technology, to modernity. "I don't need Facebook; I don't need the internet; I don't need anybody. I just need my heart," he says. As he swims across the lake, seemingly unbothered by the cold, he continues: "I trust my immune system because I have complete trust and faith in its creator, in God. My immunity is part of the sovereignty of my being."

This is Călin Georgescu, the man who shocked his countrymen when he won the first round of the Romanian presidential election on November 24, despite hardly registering in opinion polls and conducting his campaign almost entirely on TikTok, where the platform's rules, ostensibly designed to limit or regulate political messages, appear not to have constrained him. On the contrary, he used the tactics that many social media influencers deploy to appeal to the Tik Tok algorithm. Sometimes he added soft, melancholic piano music, imploring people to "vote with your souls." Sometimes he used pop-up subtitles, harsh lighting, fluorescent colors, and electronic music, calling for a "national renaissance" and criticizing the secret forces that have allegedly sought to harm Romanians. "The order to destroy our jobs came from the outside," he says in one video. In another, he speaks of "subliminal messages" and thought control, his voice accompanied by images of a hand holding puppet strings. In the months leading up to the election, these videos amassed more than 1 million views.