Ep 36 ｜ Andy Ionescu ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 14 minutes
Words per Minute
135.20059
Summary
In this episode, my guest is a man you ve never heard of, but the story of his life played out like a real-life Twilight Zone. We watched his country transform not to anything supernatural, but an equally terrifying totalitarian socialist monster.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Let me quote a not-often-watched movie from 1983, Twilight Zone.
00:00:09.140
That is what he said just before he transformed into a supernatural monster.
00:00:14.900
Well, my guest today, not Dan Aykroyd or a monster,
00:00:21.040
but the story of his life played out like a real-life Twilight Zone.
00:00:25.280
We watched his country transform not to anything supernatural,
00:00:28.800
but an equally terrifying totalitarian socialist monster.
00:00:36.380
51% of millennials today say they would rather live in a socialist country than a capitalist country,
00:00:42.060
but they confuse Sweden with a socialist country.
00:00:45.220
That is a capitalist country, that from their own prime minister.
00:00:48.820
Now, that number rapidly declines with the older generation.
00:00:51.820
Only 30% of anybody 50- to 64-year-olds have a positive view of socialism.
00:00:56.480
That number falls to 28% if you're 65 and older.
00:01:02.040
Because the younger generation has never had the experience of seeing what socialism really is firsthand.
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They miss the Twilight Zone of Eastern Europe from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, into the late 1980s.
00:01:16.480
That is not the case of the man you're about to hear from.
00:01:20.200
It is a story of terror, fear, hunger, survival.
00:01:35.200
Andy, I have, we have so much to cover, and you, reading your blog is just so eye-opening.
00:02:03.000
I want to try to take it chronologically a little bit.
00:02:06.980
Tell me about Romania before the communists come.
00:02:19.620
Um, so, Romania was probably one of the most promising countries, uh, before the war, before World War II.
00:02:35.280
Um, and unfortunately, it got caught into the, the Axis alliance with the Nazis.
00:02:46.600
Uh, simply because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was between Hitler and Stalin.
00:02:56.360
And, uh, that's when, following that, they invaded Poland.
00:03:00.900
But everybody knows that they invaded Poland, but almost nobody in the United States, uh, knows that actually Romania, following this pact, was broken.
00:03:16.620
And the Soviet Union got half of, uh, Moldova, which both are historical Romanian provinces.
00:03:23.180
So, uh, basically the Romanian government didn't have much to say.
00:03:28.860
They followed, uh, they followed the Axis because, uh, Hitler promised them restitution.
00:03:34.400
Promised them, uh, they, they would, he would get them rid of, uh, of the Soviets.
00:03:40.060
And, um, uh, the Moldova territory would be brought back to Romania.
00:03:45.340
Kind of like what happened in Finland, where they joined the, the Nazis because the Russians were always, uh, invading them.
00:03:55.180
So, um, so when the war was over and the Nazis fell, there was a pact, though, with, with, uh, Russians that they couldn't, they couldn't overthrow any government through military, uh, means.
00:04:10.580
Did you ever see communists keeping their promises?
00:04:14.800
So, uh, what happened, they, um, uh, in August 23rd, the young King Michael, um, of Romania, he was the youngest monarch.
00:04:29.580
Um, he, uh, ordered the Romanian army to, uh, turn arms against the Nazis and join the allies.
00:04:37.780
So, um, he arrested the, uh, the prime minister, uh, the general, uh, general Antonescu.
00:04:45.240
And he declared that Romania from that day on is, uh, on the ally side.
00:04:50.740
So they fought, actually, Romanian soldiers fought all the way to Berlin.
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Uh, from August 23rd, 1944 until the end of the war.
00:05:00.120
Uh, but that, that didn't stop the Russians from, uh, occupying the country.
00:05:05.840
And, uh, they, um, uh, brought their own, uh, uh, consultants.
00:05:15.300
Uh, they organized, uh, so-called free elections in which, uh, everybody voted for, uh,
00:05:24.580
uh, historical parties like, uh, the liberals, uh, not liberals in the American sense, but
00:05:30.400
the true sense liberals and the national peasant country.
00:05:34.940
But somehow, uh, the communist party, which was only about 1,000 members strong, they won
00:05:48.760
And they were the ones that you, the reason why Romania joined Hitler was because you didn't
00:06:02.720
They feel very, very strongly about communists.
00:06:05.080
In, in 1947, when the communists came to power, as I was telling you, uh, the communist party
00:06:17.120
That in a country was about 20 million at the time.
00:06:31.720
I was born in 64 and, uh, born in America and your life and my life are completely different.
00:06:41.600
I grew up in America that we were afraid of the Soviets, but not like you, we were afraid
00:06:47.380
Um, but we, you know, thought we could vaporize you guys right back.
00:06:52.180
And I remember thinking that growing up that the entire block was just this monolithic,
00:07:04.700
And it wasn't until the revolutions happened until the wall came down that the people in
00:07:10.260
the West started to see, I mean, you guys are just like us.
00:07:13.720
We're, we're so much alike, not our governments.
00:07:20.180
We never understood that when the wall was up, we thought everybody was in lockstep.
00:07:27.720
But in the same time, what is funny is that we didn't understood you either.
00:07:33.960
I mean, we knew about the West freedom and the land of plenty and, you know, you can speak
00:07:41.500
But the funny thing is I'm in the generation, I was pretty young when it was the, the hippie
00:07:53.460
And we were so, uh, taking, we, we try to, um, to imitate really, um, long hair.
00:08:04.220
And let me tell you something that was a big no, no, because if they were catching, you
00:08:12.280
could actually be arrested for long hair, for long hair.
00:08:19.700
And for wearing those pants with the, how do you call it?
00:08:30.620
Not go to jail, but, uh, uh, picked up from the street, thrown in a van, um, uh, put in
00:08:39.500
a, uh, um, in the, in a basement, in a cell at the police.
00:08:45.280
And they were sending one guy and, uh, beating you good.
00:08:57.340
And you, I mean, it's so strange because now that things have opened up and you have
00:09:02.300
Netflix, et cetera, um, I've, I've watched some of the old Soviet TV and it's crazy how
00:09:14.400
I don't know if you've ever seen, uh, Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris versus communism.
00:09:21.520
And I recommended to Nick and we're working on a project together.
00:09:26.960
Josh, really, I I'm good friends with Chuck Norris and he had never heard of it.
00:09:32.160
I'm actually going to his house this weekend and I might bring it to make sure that he watches
00:09:37.860
And I said, no, no, no, Chuck, you don't understand.
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It's about the underground, um, uh, movement of, uh, dubbing movies, uh, Western movies,
00:09:54.920
And, uh, because they, everything was censored by the government, by the party.
00:10:03.960
When the, when the, when the wall fell and you finally saw the West, maybe, maybe, maybe,
00:10:11.220
let's go 10 years past that 20 years past that there had to be some trepidation, but also
00:10:19.340
excitement about what the West might offer and end to what you knew and excitement for
00:10:26.760
I've been, I think we all have in the West been beaten into this, um, uh, feeling that
00:10:36.500
we've been a great disappointment to the world and those who lived behind the Soviet curtain
00:10:44.300
that we're no different than that, that freedom is, is there's no real freedom here.
00:10:52.540
And it's just all this ugly cronyist capitalism.
00:10:58.920
Why do the people, they, they, they, they try to get here so hard, Glenn.
00:11:14.020
Because it's different because America is still America is land of the free because no
00:11:19.300
matter how, uh, and let me tell you that the tractors, okay, are here in the United States.
00:11:28.060
People on the other side, people in Romania, people in the Eastern countries, they love
00:11:37.140
It's a symbol and they love it and they appreciate it.
00:11:39.980
You know, the Reagan has statues all over the place in, in Estonia, in, in, in Poland,
00:11:48.100
I think they, uh, I was reading in a newspaper.
00:11:50.580
They want to erect a statue of Reagan in Bucharest in Romania.
00:11:54.020
So if America is no different than the rest of the world, why, why is that?
00:12:00.700
So let's, let's take a look at what life is like under socialism.
00:12:05.740
First of all, what is the difference between socialism and communism?
00:12:11.460
Um, okay, uh, socialism is, uh, stepping stone.
00:12:19.480
I don't say that, but you know, uh, Marx himself, the creator of, uh, socialism said it, uh, socialism
00:12:28.420
is just a stepping stone on the way towards communism.
00:12:32.320
So basically in socialism, you, everything is owned by the state, um, the means of production,
00:12:43.140
uh, everything, the economy is planned, but people, they are still having salaries.
00:12:51.460
Um, they work as employees for, for a salary and so on.
00:12:57.800
There is still allowed a certain amount, different from country to country, a certain amount of
00:13:04.740
For example, you are allowed to own a home or you are allowed to own a little piece of
00:13:27.760
Every body works to the best of his ability and he's rewarded according to what his needs,
00:13:39.660
The reason why, uh, let's be clear, communism was not achieved by no country in the world,
00:13:46.940
not the Soviet Union, not even the, uh, North Korean regime.
00:13:52.720
The reason why, uh, they, they called, they, they are say they're communist countries is
00:14:06.280
Because they represent themselves as the trailblazers of the people in their march towards communism.
00:14:17.040
They being the ones that trailblaze, they call themselves communists, but the society is
00:14:23.060
socialist up to the point where all private property is eliminated.
00:14:49.940
Obviously, uh, they still have private property to a certain degree, but it has a planned economy.
00:15:01.160
That would be kind of hard to tell because I wasn't there, but from what I heard, what
00:15:05.800
I read from, from the internet, they're about there, they're about how it was during the
00:15:14.700
Ceausescu years in the mid, uh, eighties when was the, the blackest times in Romania.
00:15:22.460
Although I believe in Venezuela, Maduro, it's, I would say it's more violent than, than Ceausescu
00:15:39.780
Um, let me, uh, let me ask you one more question on the differences between these systems.
00:15:44.640
Everybody says, we're not going to have communism.
00:15:56.220
No, they're capitalist countries which have social programs, social safety nets.
00:16:01.800
So what is the difference between a socialist country, one run by democratic socialists and
00:16:20.360
Uh, the state doesn't own the means of productions.
00:16:24.060
It doesn't own the, most of the land in Sweden.
00:16:28.940
Um, they have high taxes indeed, uh, to provide for a wise, uh, social net.
00:16:39.220
But they are, uh, capitalists and even, I would say probably more capitalists than the, in the
00:16:46.380
United States because they are more free than the regulations are.
00:16:51.180
The business regulations there are, you know, more relaxed than in the United States.
00:16:55.980
So, uh, Sweden, the, the Nordic countries in Europe are not socialist by not democratic
00:17:05.640
They are capitalist countries which have a wide, uh, social safety net.
00:17:26.340
My mother, uh, was, uh, an attorney and, um, uh, my father was the son of a capitalist pig.
00:17:41.440
It's the name you probably heard about the name Kulak in Ukraine.
00:17:49.100
In Romania is the same thing, but it's called Khabur.
00:17:51.760
So my grandfather from my father's side, uh, he owned about 10 acres of land, of land.
00:18:00.240
He owned 10 acres of land and a convenience store store, like a 7-11.
00:18:05.980
And because of that, he was declared an enemy of the people.
00:18:11.180
He was put in, uh, prison and released only when he was too sick.
00:18:19.180
He, uh, he got TB and they let him out when he was too sick to work in the Gulag.
00:18:29.060
They wouldn't want to care for him, you know, pay for his, uh, medication.
00:18:34.780
So I remember him dying in, I think I was like maybe five years old when he died at home of TB.
00:18:47.420
My dad, he was very young when they arrested my grandfather.
00:18:54.780
He was, uh, with the produce at the market in the capital in Bucharest.
00:18:59.360
And, uh, he, uh, he was, he caught wind that his father got arrested and he lived on the run
00:19:06.240
under an assumed name for the next 15, 16 years.
00:19:19.240
He went to college, uh, and in his, to become an engineer, he changed his name to UNESCO,
00:19:26.440
which is my name, which is not actually my name, but it was his assumed name.
00:19:33.900
And when he was in the senior year, he, uh, they caught, caught up with him.
00:19:38.720
They didn't put him in jail because by that time they kind of like trying to let people,
00:19:47.900
They were the years in which Ceauses could try to appear more, uh, you know, westernized
00:19:57.580
Uh, but, uh, nevertheless, they kicked him out in, uh, from college.
00:20:05.940
Any doubt with the technology that we have now that your dad would have lived?
00:20:10.580
With the technology that we have now being able to find anybody anywhere.
00:20:21.800
Um, so what's school like for you when you're a kid?
00:20:40.140
Leaving aside the indoctrination part, because.
00:20:45.120
Every classroom had the portrait of the dear leader.
00:20:53.920
Um, and we had, but later in high school, we had, uh, classes teaching, uh, Marxist, Leninism,
00:21:04.400
Leninism, uh, dialectic materialism, and all that stuff.
00:21:10.300
But leaving that aside, I can compare with the school that my son went through here.
00:21:17.900
And I would say, like, in general education, it was really good.
00:21:30.960
Um, you couldn't, uh, you couldn't, uh, engage in any kind of political discussion other
00:21:40.480
than saying, you know, what a beautiful life you have.
00:21:52.060
Were there, were there spies, like, like the Nazis?
00:21:55.460
By the way, there is a, I read an article recently that the Nazis were, the national socialists
00:22:02.480
Is there a difference between the Nazis and the socialists?
00:22:16.140
And there is no wonder why Hitler and Stalin was best, were best buddies before, uh, you
00:22:22.920
know, before, uh, uh, Hitler attacking, you know.
00:22:26.360
That's why the Nazi flag is red, according to Hitler.
00:22:30.960
Um, the, uh, uh, you know, we know in the West about Hitler.
00:22:40.020
But he just seemed to do more of what Hitler was doing.
00:22:45.040
Um, we know Hitler was, he, um, bred fear, neighbor against neighbor.
00:22:54.100
He was using kids to inform on their parents in school.
00:23:06.360
You could have, um, your best friend or your neighbor, or even a member of the family informing
00:23:14.420
I remember when I was, uh, 20 something, I was working on an offshore drilling rig, um,
00:23:23.780
And I had, I was dating my, uh, my colleague that I was sharing the same cabin on the rig.
00:23:32.580
And after the revolution, I found out that actually he was an informant.
00:23:39.440
So you could never, you could never trust anybody and you could never trust anybody.
00:23:45.300
And if you were listening to voice of America or radio free Europe, which were illegal to
00:23:50.400
listen to on the radio, you did it with the volume turn like way down, way down.
00:23:57.100
So, because they put us in this apartment flats with thin walls and you could hear from one
00:24:04.860
apartment to another and you were staying in line for bread or for meat and you had to
00:24:13.760
You couldn't express your disgust with how long the line is because you, you never knew
00:24:22.800
And, you know, all of a sudden a black van pulls over and you're gone.
00:24:30.480
So how much, like we're experiencing a little bit of this the first time Americans have always
00:24:46.880
And people, people here are not reacting to it.
00:24:51.020
I think the same way that they would where you're from when they see things where you
00:24:57.320
can just accuse somebody and their life is over.
00:25:00.680
We've always had a innocent until proven guilty.
00:25:04.900
And it's we're seeing this now in this democratic socialist movement, this social justice movement
00:25:16.360
If the accusation is out there, you'll be destroyed.
00:25:20.620
And that's how much of how much of the security apparatus and the informants, how much of
00:25:29.980
that stuff were you worried that if I get on the wrong side of somebody, even if I don't
00:25:36.140
know that they're an informant, if I just get on the wrong side of somebody, they could
00:25:40.940
turn me in because they want something of mine or I've wronged them somehow.
00:25:49.820
I mean, you you couldn't you always had to be on guard.
00:25:54.800
You always had to and you always had to think about the double meaning of everything, of
00:26:04.360
I was struck when I came to the United States of the innocence of the American people, which
00:26:12.400
pretty much when I came here 20 years ago, they take everything at face value, which was
00:26:19.220
That didn't happen anywhere in the communist bloc.
00:26:24.880
Everybody can be the guy who is going to rat on you.
00:26:30.900
You always tried not to tell what you're really thinking.
00:26:34.740
There was life day to day over there, even with your children, like in Germany or not?
00:26:40.520
With the children, you were not you were trying to.
00:26:45.080
Even with the children, you when you had small the moment they were starting to understand
00:26:52.140
what is that they have to keep their mouth shut and they don't have to to tell their friends
00:26:59.100
But before that, when they were very young and innocent, parents were trying not to talk
00:27:04.560
about politics or anything, anything against the regime in the presence of their children.
00:27:11.660
They could have gone outside the home, tell their friends, their parents might be informers.
00:27:21.240
You know, this I just saw somebody say, oh, communism has gotten a bad name because I love this because
00:27:50.360
It's not that the farming, the centralized planning doesn't work.
00:28:00.180
Tell me what the good times were like in a grocery store.
00:28:07.700
OK, I mean, when under communism, what was it like?
00:28:10.600
Just, you know, this is an everyday kind of I'm going to the grocery store to get stuff.
00:28:16.280
Up until probably 1975, it was it was from our point of view, it was kind of OK because
00:28:25.580
you could go in a store and find a piece of cheese or you could.
00:28:30.280
It was good because you could go in and find a piece of cheese or you could find bread.
00:28:36.400
I'm not talking about imports like oranges, olives and stuff like that.
00:28:41.260
But basic necessity, you know, basic foods you could find up until 1974, 1975.
00:28:50.640
But after that, everything, every single thing was a struggle and everything was on a ration
00:28:58.400
You had a ration for bread, for butter, for everything that you put on the table.
00:29:06.440
But don't count like everything that you can buy here from the store.
00:29:10.460
OK, like very basic necessities of food and food stuff like bread, potatoes, meat, rice,
00:29:21.180
OK, but the fact that you had them, you had the right on your ration cart didn't guarantee
00:29:33.560
So you could go to the store and tell the the I have my ration cart.
00:29:47.200
Come back and might be here like three days from now.
00:29:55.040
Make sure you bring your little chair, stay in line.
00:30:05.920
It's not like you could call the store and say, hey, is that shipment of rice come in?
00:30:09.880
Well, you could you couldn't call the store because you didn't have a phone.
00:30:13.360
And that was that was the main reason they wouldn't they would tell you, are you crazy?
00:30:20.800
First of all, but you didn't have a phone because in order to have a phone installed in your home,
00:30:25.840
you would have waited anywhere between eight and 12 years to get a phone, get the phone line installed.
00:30:34.420
And that phone line installed most times was a shared phone line with somebody that you didn't even know.
00:30:42.300
So you pick up the phone and you hear somebody else that you didn't knew who it was.
00:30:49.540
I don't know if this was the case ever in America, like two families.
00:30:54.760
Very early on in my life, I remember some people would have what was called a party line.
00:31:02.620
OK, there was another thing that, you know, made you to be very guarded because you never know when you pick up the phone.
00:31:10.120
Who was the other guy that could have listened on on your conversation?
00:31:24.860
So all you have to do is just get into your car.
00:31:33.420
I think in Romania, only about probably one in twenty five families have a car, had a car at the time.
00:31:42.720
One car for every maybe twenty, twenty five families.
00:31:48.140
Because they had the car, they had these ugly cars of the people.
00:31:53.400
The OK, because the industry of the socialist industry wasn't geared towards consumer goods.
00:32:02.220
So automobiles were considered consumer goods and they were not considered really a necessity for the people in order to buy a car in Romania.
00:32:14.000
First of all, you had to save your entire salary.
00:32:21.600
Let's say you're a blue collar worker in a factory.
00:32:28.920
And you live out of your wife income for about seven years.
00:32:37.380
The car, you would have to pay your entire salary for seven years.
00:32:42.720
Put it in a savings account special design for buying a car with a with a national bank.
00:32:57.460
So you pay seven years, your entire salary and you live at the mercy of your wife or relatives because you didn't have any money left.
00:33:05.460
After seven years, when you finish paying, OK, then you find you finally get in line to get the car, which takes another five to seven years.
00:33:17.220
14 years in years to get a car, OK, and then after 14 years, you get a letter and you go to the only one dealer of cars in Romania, which is the factory, Dacia factory.
00:33:31.400
And you can pick anything there, anything, any car, as long as it's produced that month.
00:33:39.000
So, for example, you want to buy a red car and you get there and you see all that parking lot full of green cars and you promise your wife you're going to get a red car at home.
00:33:53.840
Well, you can't because they didn't produce the red cars that month.
00:33:57.740
OK, so you get your green car or you don't get anything.
00:34:06.060
You get out of the factory parking lot gates and then you have a problem because in the gasoline tank, there is only about two liters of gasoline enough to go to the first station gas station.
00:34:19.160
And you get into the gas first gas station and you have a ration for gasoline, too, which is seven liters a month, a month, seven liters a month.
00:34:34.560
Most of the times it's not enough for you to get home with your new brand new car.
00:34:39.260
So you have to have a friend waiting for you with a jerry can somewhere and, you know, put gasoline in your car and then you finally get home.
00:34:55.080
I got my first car when I was 27, 28, a year after the revolution.
00:35:04.620
But other than that, you were you were considered lucky to to have an automobile and, you know, go into a vacation.
00:35:15.760
And by the way, you couldn't go into a vacation at any time.
00:35:30.000
To to the ration, the get the gasoline rush ratio.
00:35:33.640
And then you had to plan it because you couldn't drive your car every weekend.
00:35:41.660
If you had an even the license plate with the ending with an even number, you could go.
00:35:49.220
You could drive your car in the week in the in the first and third weekend of the month.
00:35:54.860
If it was uneven in the fourth in the second and the fourth.
00:36:13.800
Did you were not allowed to to drive like that?
00:36:16.700
I don't maybe this is how liberals in America, they were trying to imitate this this model.
00:36:23.540
I did it in the 70s when we had a gas shortage.
00:36:27.580
You know, and that's when, you know, we had we had the wonders of Jimmy Carter, who who loved a lot of these social.
00:36:45.600
You could drive as much as you want, but you're not going to get any gas.
00:36:50.880
So as you're going as you're going through this.
00:37:19.480
Once you turn 18, you got your must have been an exciting time.
00:37:40.500
They look at me and say, well, you have big ears.
00:37:51.040
And a month later, I was I was in the Navy, in the Romanian Navy.
00:37:58.580
We went to the boot camp for two months in which.
00:38:02.300
Besides the the training and, you know, marching and all the stuff that you was letting, leaving us tired as dogs, like pretty much here in the United States and gas mask on the face and all the all the things.
00:38:22.140
But after you finish all that stuff and you are you are tired like a dog and you want to hit the sack.
00:38:29.760
OK, you couldn't because they were starting the political indoctrination lessons for about two or three hours every day.
00:38:38.920
In which everybody in that classroom was like listening, some instructor droning about the 15th Congress of the Communist Party and what Ceausescu said and how beautiful it's going to be in the future and stuff like that.
00:39:05.860
After the boot camp, it was kind of a little bit better because I was assigned to a ship, but only to a certain point because the food was really bad.
00:39:16.660
Cockroaches everywhere, including in the bread.
00:39:24.080
We were taking the loaves of bread from the galley and we were going outside on the on the top deck, slicing the bread.
00:39:39.280
This is at the time when we were having Reagan.
00:39:47.280
Yeah, would have been 81, 80, somewhere in that area.
00:39:52.240
You were chasing the you were cutting the bread to let the cockroaches out.
00:39:57.040
And we had butter top bread and we were joking with, you know, friends that we were trusting
00:40:09.440
As a military force, we would surrender immediately if only the American would come and drop loads
00:40:17.280
of Marlboro cigarettes, blue jeans and bottles of whiskey over.
00:40:26.040
You just need a Berlin lift and we would surrender.
00:40:32.400
The food situation was so bad that when you enlisted, part of boot camp was working on a farm,
00:40:39.060
Uh, on a, uh, we had pig farms, but where the pig meat, where the pig meat go, I never
00:40:47.620
found out because we only got like pieces of fat and pig skin in our, in our plates.
00:40:57.620
Probably went to, you know, not to the enlisted people to, but to, you know, to the people in.
00:41:19.220
Because I hear every, almost every day that 99% and 1% and, uh, you know, the rich people
00:41:26.340
are the 1% and in socials, there's not going to be 1% any longer.
00:41:30.300
Uh, it's, it's, it exasperates me because in socialism, there is a 1%, but the 1% are
00:41:42.800
not the people who deserve to be wealthy and to be in position of leadership.
00:41:52.380
The 1% who have all the wealth and all the privilege are not the people that work hard
00:42:01.800
for it, are the party privilege, the elite of the party.
00:42:05.960
The game players, the ones who know how to schmooze, how to work people.
00:42:11.140
Then another category of 1% are the people who enforce the regime.
00:42:17.580
Um, the securitate, the secret police, uh, those guys are going and shopping in special
00:42:32.760
They don't like, uh, they don't lack, uh, booze.
00:42:37.700
Uh, they basically, they, they have their children going to, uh, elite schools that your kids,
00:42:45.140
they don't have access to, and then there is another group of 1% or 1% or, and you're going
00:42:54.940
to laugh at this, but the last group is people that are selling potatoes in the stores and
00:43:05.120
And they, the people that the foodstuff and the consumer goods are, are the people who
00:43:14.460
are working in the stores where you go and buy, are trying to buy the stuff.
00:43:21.920
They can get the first and the best and they can trade what they have.
00:43:30.540
So they might have that rice that you couldn't get.
00:43:33.600
So for example, I had a colleague in high school, his father was a butcher.
00:43:41.700
But he was somebody, he was somebody, he had a Nike's shoes.
00:43:51.800
His father had a vacation home and a nice apartment downtown.
00:43:58.640
How could he get away with blue jeans for Levi's in particular when others would be picked
00:44:04.640
up for bell bottoms because they were too Western.
00:44:07.020
Because, uh, the, the cops, the police, they have to eat too, right?
00:44:10.380
Like the lower, you know, the, the, the cops on the beat, the ones that they arrest you
00:44:17.220
for, for wearing blue jeans or having a long, long hair.
00:44:20.680
So where's the, they know that that kid is this guys who is the butcher where I'm going
00:44:33.280
Where is the, the justice for the, I don't know.
00:44:36.820
Maybe Ocasio-Cortez can tell me or maybe Bernie because I didn't live that.
00:44:43.540
Socialism is, if we're talking about human exploitation, exploitation, okay, that's
00:44:55.000
And, uh, uh, what they are trying to sell the, the American kids that, uh, democratic
00:45:02.540
socialism is different than real socialism is not true.
00:45:13.540
So how do you, um, were you allowed to go hunt for your own food?
00:45:49.380
So hunting in Romania was reserved for the elite.
00:45:51.980
I had an uncle who was a doctor, kind of like a celebrity, a doctor for celebrities, for
00:46:03.580
And he was going from time to time to hunt bears and deers and, you know, but every time
00:46:11.160
when the dictator was in town, he had to surrender his gun to the police headquarters
00:46:22.160
But other than that, I never touched a gun until I, I got drafted in the Navy and it was
00:46:31.140
probably, I don't know if, if it was a capital offense to, to have an illegal gun, but probably
00:46:39.580
Did the, did the communists take the guns or is that part of the culture of Romania?
00:46:47.400
My grandfather, from what my, my dad told me, he had, uh, he had a shotgun and when the
00:46:55.280
Germans, they were retreating from Romania, his house was right next to the railroad and
00:47:01.560
the German troops were, were throwing their, all the stuff that they couldn't carry from
00:47:05.720
So he picked up a Luger pistol from, you know, from the railroad tracks.
00:47:09.920
When the communists came to power, the first law, one of, not the first, but one of the
00:47:16.320
first laws they passed was confiscations, registration and confiscations of all firearms.
00:47:33.280
And that didn't help him much because they took him and put him in prison anyway, because
00:47:40.140
And I remember what my, uh, father told me, uh, after the revolution, he told me if I would
00:47:46.240
have known, known what was going to happen after they did that, I would never allowed my
00:48:00.820
Communist, socialist, communist, they, they, they came to power or they tried to exceed
00:48:07.980
They have this policy of restricting gun rights.
00:48:20.520
When Maduro came to power, he did the same thing.
00:48:24.020
When you start to lose power, you have to, you have to stop the democratic part of socialism
00:48:34.340
Um, uh, tell me how, um, homosexuals and, and gays and women and all this.
00:48:42.940
Because you, if you were identified as a gay, lesbian, transvestite or whatever, you were going
00:49:00.240
It was a decree in which homosexuality was criminalized.
00:49:07.880
And that was the law in Romania, believe it or not, they only got rid of that law way in
00:49:19.260
So it was another for another seven years after communists fell.
00:49:25.600
Um, from what I heard, they were meeting underground, but it was very, very, uh, risky to be outed
00:49:36.000
No, you, you, they were going, and the thing is they were, if they were arrested, the survival
00:49:43.260
expectancy in, in prison as a gay person, it was probably weeks.
00:49:51.160
They were usually killed by other inmates under the orders of the prison guards.
00:49:57.800
What would have happened to a guy like Martin Luther King?
00:50:09.400
And this is an injustice and, uh, beaten, um, within an inch of his life.
00:50:17.660
Um, if that would have happened after 1960s, because if, if he would have been arrested,
00:50:29.340
let's say he would have been arrested before 1960s, he would have been just disappeared.
00:50:36.860
But when Ceausescu came to power, he didn't actually, he killed people, but he wasn't like Maduro
00:50:49.740
He was arresting them, beating them, uh, keeping them, uh, in home arrest.
00:50:55.620
If he was something like, um, Doina Corna, like, uh, uh, dissident, uh, Doina Corna, who had,
00:51:05.080
uh, her son who lived in France and he was a personality, uh, house arrest, 24 hour surveillance
00:51:20.180
Um, um, Ceausescu wasn't, I mean, he was a, absolutely a dictator.
00:51:30.740
I mean, he was, he, he was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide.
00:51:36.140
Yeah, he was because he practically starved a lot of people to, to death and he killed
00:51:41.680
people, especially when he was young before becoming president.
00:51:45.400
He was the head of the communist party security services.
00:51:50.280
I know because I had an uncle who actually, he was, he, uh, was one, he was in the military
00:52:00.460
And my uncle witnessed Ceausescu ordering killing of the people.
00:52:06.780
There were a couple of, uh, peasants revolts in Romania, people that didn't want to give up
00:52:11.380
their lands and Ceausescu led, uh, the repression and he gave the order for, uh, for, uh,
00:52:20.280
the security, uh, forces to, to machine gun those, uh, those peasants.
00:52:24.980
When I, when I listened to the people in Washington, uh, on the left, I think
00:52:38.440
They're so separated from the people that they don't even realize how out of step they are.
00:52:45.500
And it brings me to, uh, 1989 and the revolution.
00:52:50.780
The way I remember this and correct me if I'm wrong.
00:52:53.700
The way I remember this is, uh, the dictator walks out onto a balcony.
00:53:00.720
I think it was his wife and he's giving a speech and, uh, he's used to everybody praising
00:53:08.180
And I think it was one like old woman in the crowd or something that said liar or freedom
00:53:14.880
And then the whole crowd turned on him for the first time.
00:53:23.920
I mean, uh, the revolution started, uh, about a week before in the city of Timisoara.
00:53:30.020
And he sent there, the, the securitator troop to try to repress the people, shot them in
00:53:40.300
He sent people in and shot people wounded in the hospital beds.
00:53:49.420
Everything else, you know, was rocky, but this was awful.
00:53:55.960
He didn't want to listen to what Gorbachev told him.
00:54:00.380
He didn't want to believe that the people had enough of him.
00:54:04.320
He, he gathered the people when he started, he, he gathered those people in the, in the
00:54:10.740
government plaza in Bucharest where the government building was.
00:54:14.100
And you remember that from the TV, what he actually tried to do that.
00:54:23.780
He said that he's going to raise the, the salaries, the minimum salary on the, on the, on the economy
00:54:29.800
with, I don't know, a couple of dollars a month and stuff like that.
00:54:34.280
And actually nobody's very clear or what happened, but somebody yelled something, something.
00:54:45.600
And then that's when the people, they just lost their mind.
00:54:50.020
He, uh, they broke, uh, through the police line.
00:54:54.720
Uh, and I think the police didn't offer much of a resistance because the police was pretty
00:55:02.280
The cops were pretty sick and tired of him also.
00:55:05.400
Uh, and people rushed into the government building.
00:55:08.600
He went out on the top of the building and took off with his wife in a military helicopter, which only the flight only took about half an hour because the pilot was alerted by the, um, flight control or something that they're going to be downed if they don't land.
00:55:31.720
So they landed in the middle of, uh, of, uh, highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere and they were picked up by a military vehicle, took in, uh, into a military unit.
00:55:44.280
And, uh, this, you probably already see the, like the two hour trial.
00:55:51.440
I was in Constanza, but the circus in my hometown started actually the moment he is, he left.
00:56:10.020
Well, after immediately after he started saying, quiet, quiet, quiet, please.
00:56:15.360
The moment when that happened, they cut the transmission.
00:56:22.720
I knew something was, was going on because that never happened.
00:56:26.340
And then probably if I remember correctly, about half an hour to an hour later, later, late, less than an hour, uh, people took over the television stations and new faces came.
00:56:37.660
And the dictator ran away and everybody was happy.
00:56:41.380
Everybody was trying to get in the front of the camera to express their feelings and stuff.
00:56:45.840
So this, when I, we got out, um, I tried to go to pick up my, uh, wife from work.
00:56:52.080
And, um, we went to the party, um, uh, building in downtown of my hometown, chaos, uh, things flying through the broken windows, telex machines and, and the tables and chairs and stuff like that.
00:57:12.840
People were like, uh, people were like pretty wild, you know, expressing that.
00:57:15.740
Then we went, uh, marching to the secret police headquarters.
00:57:20.440
Um, we freed a couple of guys that were in one of their jail, jail cells underground from under the, the first floor, uh, broke the bars and let them out.
00:57:34.140
And then I remember, uh, millions of sheets of paper flying from the windows.
00:57:44.340
Those were the dossiers that they had on each one of us.
00:57:49.600
And the second day, that's when the shooting started in my hometown.
00:57:52.600
Um, because they had probably, they had, from what I heard, they had, um, uh, his loyalists, which were, we believe at the time they were actually Palestinian.
00:58:12.360
Hired by Ceausescu because he was put in such a situation that he wasn't trusted even if his own, uh,
00:58:22.600
um, um, uh, people in, in the secret service, he was distrusting them too.
00:58:27.780
And from what I heard, he actually was, he had a plan with Yasser Arafat, um, in case something happens, um,
00:58:42.100
people from the PLO living in Romania as foreign students undercover would fight for him, would try to, um, help him, uh, uh,
00:58:55.520
We had, uh, people shooting from top of the buildings.
00:59:09.820
We heard that a bunch of them, they were, but we never saw them.
00:59:24.180
They open up the, each company, uh, they had a room with the arms and ammo for the, what they call the patriotic guards, the militia.
00:59:39.960
And we went on patrol in the harbor because, uh, they were saying he's going to try to escape aboard the ship.
00:59:46.140
He's going to go to Iraq to his, uh, Saddam Hussein friend or Yasser Arafat, whatever.
00:59:55.880
They already apprehended him, uh, the days before, but that didn't stop the shooting.
01:00:01.400
And we had, uh, in, since the revolution started, uh, up until it started quieting down, um, early January, around 2,500 people were shot.
01:00:28.780
I mean, so we were, you know, what, did you all know what a monster he was and you just ignored it?
01:00:38.320
We, everybody knew what a monster we had, but you asked me, we were terrified.
01:00:45.800
The only thing we were terrified that he's going to come back.
01:00:55.440
We were not terrified of anything, but we were terrified.
01:00:58.780
That tomorrow morning, we're going to wake up and we're going to see the guy back on television.
01:01:03.080
Uh, and the, the, the, the cops are going to come and get us.
01:01:08.860
And one of the reasons there are not too many pictures of the revolution and not too many, uh, um, uh, videos shot, film shot of that, because people were afraid to, to, when, when you were seeing a guy with a camera shooting, you automatically thought is one of the security guy.
01:01:33.800
And he's taking your picture and, you know, and after the churches who come back, he's going to get you because he knows it was you on the street.
01:01:44.160
So as somebody who came here with that understanding and that lifestyle, that life.
01:02:15.960
It's, I mean, it's without freedom of speech, there is nothing.
01:02:27.760
The, the fact that I can, I can criticize the president, which I don't because I like him.
01:02:37.260
So, uh, the freedom of speech is, is extremely important without freedom of speech.
01:02:48.800
And I'm looking at this, uh, this, uh, millennials, which are trying by all the means to say, Oh, this is, uh, offensive.
01:02:59.040
You cannot say this, you know, you cannot say that freedom of speech is made to protect speech that you don't agree with speech that you might consider offensive.
01:03:11.040
If, if it's not freedom of speech, it doesn't protect speech that everyone agrees with.
01:03:22.780
It's freedom of speech protects people, uh, protects the speech that, uh, people might not agree with.
01:03:31.760
And second amendment is also very important because second amendment protects the first.
01:03:40.800
And I know because I live to that without what the, when the communists came to power, they got rid of the second, uh, second.
01:03:49.740
We didn't have the second amendment per se, but they got rid of guns.
01:03:54.720
So they can, can shut up us later after they got the guns.
01:04:04.580
So if, if Romania won, why'd you leave to America 10 years later?
01:04:16.340
Glenn, in, in what happened after, and what happened after was second line party activists, Ceausescu's bodies that they were like behind him.
01:04:33.740
They, they, all of a sudden dropped the name of communists and they called themselves socialists and, uh, Democrats.
01:04:47.860
And all of a sudden using their connections that they had before from the previous regime, they became capitalists and they started getting not only the political power, but also the economic power.
01:05:02.380
So practically Romania became, uh, uh, corruptocrat country, uh, republic of, uh, former, uh, communist party activists turned socialists who control the economy and control everything, control the system.
01:05:21.800
Uh, uh, the governing, uh, the governing, uh, the governing party in Romania right now is, uh, called, uh, uh, the social Democrat party.
01:05:31.020
And, um, I would say probably Bernie would be proud to lead that party.
01:05:43.160
It's, um, when we realized that actually we, we had free speech.
01:05:51.800
You could, you could, after 1989, you could criticize the government.
01:05:55.500
We had a free press, but in fact, if you went on the streets and try to say, I disagree with the government and they were gathering too many people like it was in 1990 during the Minariada.
01:06:11.020
I don't know if you remember that, what happened.
01:06:13.040
Um, they sent the minors and they sent the police and they beat the crap out of everybody, everybody just for wearing glasses or having a beard.
01:06:24.960
You look like an intellectual, therefore you're against the regime.
01:06:28.880
Students put in the hospital, intellectuals, libraries destroyed.
01:06:34.300
It was the same thing with second party activists in charge.
01:06:40.100
How much do you think this stuff is happening here in America now?
01:06:43.640
I mean, you, you look at the political landscape, people who are the most awake, generally speaking, I think are the people from the former Soviet bloc.
01:06:54.920
Because we recognize the, the, the rhetoric and the side rhetoric, because we recognize the rhetoric.
01:07:04.040
So we know when, when Ocasio-Cortez or Benny Sanders or Hillary speaks about, it takes a village.
01:07:20.600
Socialism was tried in 40 countries around the world.
01:07:28.440
What does it make you believe that is going to succeed the 41st time?
01:07:38.220
Because the right people were in charge this time.
01:07:41.820
So are you telling me that the American socialists are somehow smarter than any other socialists on the planet?
01:07:50.720
That Bernie Sanders is smarter than every other leader of the party in other 40 countries that tried and failed?
01:08:30.580
What, what, what, I mean, the Impaler Army, that's pretty dark.
01:08:42.920
He's a national, he's a national hero in Romania.
01:08:48.040
He fought against the Ottomans, the Muslim Turks.
01:08:52.200
And he beat them several times up until he died being betrayed by his people in his inner circle.
01:09:09.420
He was transformed in a fictional character by an English writer in a vampire.
01:09:19.260
He was, he was a prince and he was pretty badass.
01:09:28.060
He beat what was probably at the time the, the greatest armed army in the world, which were the Ottomans.
01:09:38.780
They were, I would say the America, the American power of the day.
01:09:55.780
He learned actually the art of impaling from the Turks when he was imprisoned by them as a child.
01:10:03.320
So this is my respect for him and combined with my anti-communist stance.
01:10:21.240
Nick Searcy has one which says, wish of communist pop your ass.
01:10:34.340
So, why don't you leave us, talk directly to somebody.
01:10:43.740
And speak directly to somebody who is 20 and says, look, I appreciate that happening in your country, but it's not going to happen here.
01:10:53.520
That's not what the democratic socialists want to do here.
01:11:00.080
Well, it's exactly that because always without fail socialism, either socialism or democratic socialism or call it as you may want.
01:11:21.540
It can end that way in Sweden, in Denmark, in Norway.
01:11:25.960
You try to make Sweden government to abandon free property and try them to plan their economy in five years.
01:11:44.400
And you're going to see Sweden becoming a third world country in less than a decade.
01:11:50.920
So, you can tell goodbye to your IKEA furniture and your Volvo car.
01:12:04.280
People stealing other people's wealth and redistributing it.
01:12:25.960
You replace the 1%, which is based on merit most of the time, and on people who work their asses out, and who open businesses, and who have great ideas.
01:12:47.540
You replace them with people who don't deserve to be 1%.
01:12:53.580
You replace them with people who are high up in the party, people who can do, who have control of the goods on the market, and you replace them with people who will put the boot on your neck and keep you down.
01:13:12.640
Those are the 1% over there, and this is what you're going to get if you manage to get socialism in the United States.
01:13:27.280
This is the last country in the world that is keeping socialism at bay.
01:13:37.700
My wife told me we stop running from socialism too soon.
01:13:49.920
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