The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 36 ｜ Andy Ionescu ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Let me quote a not-often-watched movie from 1983, Twilight Zone.

00:00:04.240 It was a very young Dan Aykroyd, and he said,

00:00:06.760 Do you want to see something really scary?

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,

00:00:18.680 is probably a man you've never heard of,

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.

00:00:33.520 We watched it on this side, but he lived it.

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.

00:01:01.140 Now, why is that?

00:01:02.040 Because the younger generation has never had the experience of seeing what socialism really is firsthand.

00:01:09.420 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.

00:01:24.060 It's bizarre.

00:01:25.380 In short, it is the story of socialism.

00:01:28.240 So, here we go.

00:01:30.060 You want to hear something really scary?

00:01:32.800 Next, surviving socialism.

00:01:35.200 Andy, I have, we have so much to cover, and you, reading your blog is just so eye-opening.

00:01:58.280 But I want to do this in chunks.

00:02:03.000 I want to try to take it chronologically a little bit.

00:02:06.120 Okay.

00:02:06.980 Tell me about Romania before the communists come.

00:02:12.120 Because it wasn't a violent takeover.

00:02:17.760 Yes and no.

00:02:19.380 Okay.

00:02:19.620 Um, so, Romania was probably one of the most promising countries, uh, before the war, before World War II.

00:02:34.600 Okay.

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.

00:02:55.920 Mm-hmm.

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.

00:03:11.600 Um, Hungary got, uh, Transylvania.

00:03:15.900 Mm-hmm.

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. 0.85

00:03:34.400 Promised them, uh, they, they would, he would get them rid of, uh, of the Soviets. 0.98

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. 0.83

00:03:54.460 Yeah.

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.

00:04:09.980 They had to.

00:04:10.580 Did you ever see communists keeping their promises?

00:04:13.500 No, no, no.

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.

00:04:25.300 Uh, he was only, like, uh, 17 or 18 years old.

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.

00:04:55.300 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. 0.94

00:05:05.040 Mm-hmm.

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

00:05:43.800 the elections by 95%.

00:05:45.800 Why?

00:05:46.300 Because they counted the votes.

00:05:48.340 Right.

00:05:48.620 Okay.

00:05:48.760 And they were the ones that you, the reason why Romania joined Hitler was because you didn't 0.79

00:05:54.640 want to be communist with the Russians. 0.51

00:05:56.740 Exactly.

00:05:57.460 And Romanians have interesting.

00:05:59.320 Romanians are very, very strongly. 0.89

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

00:06:13.560 of Romania was only about 1,000 people strong.

00:06:17.120 That in a country was about 20 million at the time.

00:06:20.100 So they were, somehow they won.

00:06:23.780 So you were born in 66?

00:06:26.180 63.

00:06:27.040 63.

00:06:27.440 63.

00:06:28.020 Okay.

00:06:28.260 Um, boy, we've had wildly different lives.

00:06:31.720 I was born in 64 and, uh, born in America and your life and my life are completely different.

00:06:41.020 Yes.

00:06:41.600 I grew up in America that we were afraid of the Soviets, but not like you, we were afraid 0.55

00:06:45.680 of being vaporized.

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,

00:07:00.660 uh, communist, we want to take over the world.

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.

00:07:16.640 No, but the people wanted the same thing.

00:07:20.180 We never understood that when the wall was up, we thought everybody was in lockstep.

00:07:26.120 Well, yes, you're right.

00:07:27.720 But in the same time, what is funny is that we didn't understood you either.

00:07:33.540 Yeah.

00:07:33.960 I mean, we knew about the West freedom and the land of plenty and, you know, you can speak

00:07:40.900 up your mind.

00:07:41.500 But the funny thing is I'm in the generation, I was pretty young when it was the, the hippie

00:07:50.580 power flower generations here.

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.

00:08:16.720 Yes, absolutely.

00:08:19.700 And for wearing those pants with the, how do you call it?

00:08:23.580 The bell bottoms?

00:08:24.160 Bell bottoms.

00:08:25.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:26.100 You would go to jail for bell bottoms?

00:08:28.100 Well, not go to jail.

00:08:28.680 I mean, I might actually agree with that.

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.

00:08:48.420 And then after, what was the crime?

00:08:50.100 Because he was subversive.

00:08:52.000 He was subversive.

00:08:52.940 He was too Western.

00:08:54.420 Okay.

00:08:54.900 You were trying to be like, uh, the enemy.

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 0.86

00:09:10.900 upside down things were.

00:09:12.720 And yet there was this underground.

00:09:14.400 I don't know if you've ever seen, uh, Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris versus communism.

00:09:19.180 As a matter of fact, uh, yes, I did.

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

00:09:36.420 it, but he had never heard of it.

00:09:37.860 And I said, no, no, no, Chuck, you don't understand.

00:09:40.760 It's not about you.

00:09:43.800 It's about, it's about the underground.

00:09:45.960 It's about the underground, um, uh, movement of, uh, dubbing movies, uh, Western movies,

00:09:53.940 Hollywood movies.

00:09:54.920 And, uh, because they, everything was censored by the government, by the party.

00:10:01.260 And, um, yeah, it's a great movie.

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

00:10:25.140 something that maybe lay ahead.

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 1.00

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.

00:10:56.420 And is there any feeling like that?

00:10:58.720 No.

00:10:58.920 Why do the people, they, they, they, they try to get here so hard, Glenn.

00:11:06.400 I know.

00:11:06.920 If it's like on the other side.

00:11:09.320 Yeah.

00:11:10.080 You tell me that.

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.

00:11:27.100 Okay.

00:11:28.060 People on the other side, people in Romania, people in the Eastern countries, they love

00:11:33.380 America.

00:11:34.080 There's no question about that.

00:11:35.980 It's a symbol.

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,

00:11:46.640 I believe in Hungary.

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.

00:12:56.380 Okay.

00:12:57.800 There is still allowed a certain amount, different from country to country, a certain amount of

00:13:03.600 private property.

00:13:04.740 For example, you are allowed to own a home or you are allowed to own a little piece of

00:13:11.460 land to supplement your, you know, food.

00:13:16.420 In communism, every, all, all this disappears.

00:13:20.400 There is no private property whatsoever.

00:13:24.900 There is no salary.

00:13:26.680 There's nothing like that.

00:13:27.760 Every body works to the best of his ability and he's rewarded according to what his needs,

00:13:36.160 his needs are.

00:13:37.620 Okay.

00:13:38.640 So what's the difference?

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.

00:13:50.260 Uh, so they're all social.

00:13:52.720 The reason why, uh, they, they called, they, they are say they're communist countries is

00:14:00.120 because the government is communist.

00:14:02.420 The party, the leaders are communists.

00:14:05.940 Why?

00:14:06.280 Because they represent themselves as the trailblazers of the people in their march towards communism.

00:14:15.820 So it's normal.

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.

00:14:28.300 So what is Venezuela?

00:14:43.240 How close is Venezuela to what you grew up in?

00:14:46.440 Venezuela is a socialist country.

00:14:49.940 Obviously, uh, they still have private property to a certain degree, but it has a planned economy.

00:14:55.740 Uh, how close it is to socialist Romania.

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

00:15:34.120 was.

00:15:34.880 Holy cow. 0.89

00:15:35.440 Yeah.

00:15:36.580 We'll get back to him in a little while.

00:15:38.240 Cause that's quite a statement.

00:15:39.360 Yeah.

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.

00:15:47.440 We don't want communism.

00:15:48.700 We don't want all of that.

00:15:50.300 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:15:51.260 All we want is Sweden.

00:15:52.960 All we want is Denmark.

00:15:54.820 Are those socialist countries?

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

00:16:08.300 one that is like Sweden?

00:16:11.740 What's the difference?

00:16:12.380 Sweden is a capitalist economy, period.

00:16:15.860 They don't have a planned economy.

00:16:18.840 That's number one.

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.

00:16:38.500 Okay.

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.

00:16:49.960 Yes.

00:16:50.700 Yes.

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

00:17:03.780 socialists, not socialist period.

00:17:05.640 They are capitalist countries which have a wide, uh, social safety net.

00:17:11.280 Okay.

00:17:12.500 Um, tell me about your parents.

00:17:14.340 What did your parents do?

00:17:16.080 What was your life like?

00:17:17.380 Your earliest memory.

00:17:18.380 Let's start in the 1970s.

00:17:20.060 What was it like being a kid?

00:17:22.680 So my parents, uh, unfortunately divorced. 0.97

00:17:26.340 My mother, uh, was, uh, an attorney and, um, uh, my father was the son of a capitalist pig. 0.96

00:17:39.500 Or a Khabur. 0.99

00:17:41.440 It's the name you probably heard about the name Kulak in Ukraine.

00:17:47.580 Mm-hmm.

00:17:48.540 Okay.

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.

00:17:58.540 He was a farmer.

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.

00:18:09.920 He was arrested.

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.

00:18:43.700 And your dad, uh, took on that shame?

00:18:47.420 My dad, he was very young when they arrested my grandfather.

00:18:51.220 And fortunately he was out of town.

00:18:53.460 He was out of the village.

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.

00:19:11.880 Because they would have arrested him?

00:19:13.220 Yes.

00:19:13.660 Just because of who his father was.

00:19:14.840 Exactly.

00:19:16.880 And they finally caught up with him.

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,

00:19:46.160 you know, to relax a little bit.

00:19:47.900 They were the years in which Ceauses could try to appear more, uh, you know, westernized

00:19:54.180 being the rebel kid of the communist bloc.

00:19:57.580 Uh, but, uh, nevertheless, they kicked him out in, uh, from college.

00:20:01.640 So he took a job as a machinist in a factory.

00:20:05.940 Any doubt with the technology that we have now that your dad would have lived?

00:20:09.840 Uh, excuse me?

00:20:10.580 With the technology that we have now being able to find anybody anywhere.

00:20:14.180 Oh, no, absolutely, absolutely not.

00:20:17.440 With the face recognition and stuff like that?

00:20:19.700 No, absolutely not.

00:20:21.800 Um, so what's school like for you when you're a kid?

00:20:27.880 What's school like?

00:20:28.920 Is it full of indoctrination, anti-West?

00:20:31.500 Is it, is it good?

00:20:32.960 Is it the perfect school?

00:20:34.340 What, what, what is school like?

00:20:35.900 Okay, school was not bad.

00:20:40.140 Leaving aside the indoctrination part, because.

00:20:43.640 Let's come back to that in a minute.

00:20:45.120 Every classroom had the portrait of the dear leader.

00:20:50.180 Mm-hmm.

00:20:50.900 Okay.

00:20:51.880 Over the blackboard.

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.

00:21:24.100 Mm-hmm.

00:21:24.620 It was really good over there.

00:21:26.740 Uh, of course, a lot of discipline.

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.

00:21:47.640 Mm-hmm.

00:21:48.420 Mm-hmm.

00:21:48.480 Mm-hmm.

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

00:22:01.160 were not socialists.

00:22:02.480 Is there a difference between the Nazis and the socialists?

00:22:05.360 No, there is.

00:22:06.640 Okay.

00:22:07.740 The Nazis are national socialists. 0.87

00:22:10.540 Right.

00:22:10.760 The communists are international socialists.

00:22:12.640 Socialists, so they're, they're cousins.

00:22:15.140 Yeah, okay.

00:22:15.620 Okay, yeah.

00:22:16.140 And there is no wonder why Hitler and Stalin was best, were best buddies before, uh, you 0.96

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. 0.51

00:22:28.620 Exactly.

00:22:29.140 To show you, we're on the same team here.

00:22:30.960 Um, the, uh, uh, you know, we know in the West about Hitler.

00:22:37.100 We know less about Stalin.

00:22:40.020 But he just seemed to do more of what Hitler was doing. 0.89

00:22:45.040 Um, we know Hitler was, he, um, bred fear, neighbor against neighbor. 0.97

00:22:51.280 You never knew who anybody was.

00:22:52.920 There were informants.

00:22:54.100 He was using kids to inform on their parents in school.

00:22:57.940 Was, was that a part?

00:22:59.880 Yes.

00:23:00.340 It was.

00:23:01.300 It was the same thing.

00:23:03.020 The same methods.

00:23:04.020 Informants, informants everywhere.

00:23:06.360 You could have, um, your best friend or your neighbor, or even a member of the family informing

00:23:13.420 on you.

00:23:14.420 I remember when I was, uh, 20 something, I was working on an offshore drilling rig, um,

00:23:22.560 as a radio man.

00:23:23.780 And I had, I was dating my, uh, my colleague that I was sharing the same cabin on the rig.

00:23:30.640 I was dating his daughter.

00:23:32.580 And after the revolution, I found out that actually he was an informant.

00:23:37.160 Really?

00:23:38.840 Wow.

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

00:24:12.620 keep your mouth shut. 0.65

00:24:13.760 You couldn't express your disgust with how long the line is because you, you never knew 0.56

00:24:20.420 the guy behind you could be one of them.

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

00:24:34.480 been really open.

00:24:35.220 We trust each other.

00:24:35.980 We trust neighbors.

00:24:36.820 We trust everybody.

00:24:37.880 Not us.

00:24:38.560 Not us, Glenn.

00:24:39.500 Yeah, I know.

00:24:40.260 Because of that history.

00:24:42.940 But we've never had that here until recently.

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

00:25:11.580 in America.

00:25:12.680 That is there is no real justice.

00:25:16.360 If the accusation is out there, you'll be destroyed.

00:25:20.220 Exactly.

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.

00:25:45.200 Now, it was it was that prevalent at all?

00:25:47.960 Very, very, Glenn.

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

00:26:03.220 everything it was said.

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

00:26:18.060 shocking for me.

00:26:19.220 That didn't happen anywhere in the communist bloc.

00:26:22.340 Everything can have double meaning.

00:26:24.880 Everybody can be the guy who is going to rat on you.

00:26:29.180 So you always had to be on guard.

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.

00:26:44.460 Yes.

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

00:26:57.300 what they hear inside the home.

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.

00:27:09.720 Because you never know.

00:27:11.120 You never know.

00:27:11.660 They could have gone outside the home, tell their friends, their parents might be informers.

00:27:19.000 They hear and there you go.

00:27:20.800 You're gone.

00:27:21.240 You know, this I just saw somebody say, oh, communism has gotten a bad name because I love this because

00:27:42.420 of a few famines.

00:27:43.880 Um, uh, it's not that there was a drought.

00:27:50.360 It's not that the farming, the centralized planning doesn't work.

00:27:56.720 And it's not just a few famines.

00:28:00.180 Tell me what the good times were like in a grocery store.

00:28:06.400 The good times.

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

00:28:57.800 cart.

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,

00:29:18.980 oil, rice and stuff like that.

00:29:21.180 OK, but the fact that you had them, you had the right on your ration cart didn't guarantee

00:29:28.680 that you're going to get them every month.

00:29:33.560 So you could go to the store and tell the the I have my ration cart.

00:29:40.320 Yeah, I have a ration cart.

00:29:41.360 Give me my my kilo of rice.

00:29:43.940 I'm sorry, we don't have it.

00:29:47.200 Come back and might be here like three days from now.

00:29:52.000 You come here like three in the morning.

00:29:55.040 Make sure you bring your little chair, stay in line.

00:29:57.520 And if you're lucky, you're going to get it.

00:30:00.700 So this was after it's 70s.

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. 0.87

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.

00:30:33.980 Yes.

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.

00:30:48.200 It was the same line.

00:30:49.540 I don't know if this was the case ever in America, like two families.

00:30:53.520 Yeah.

00:30:54.760 Very early on in my life, I remember some people would have what was called a party line.

00:31:02.140 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?

00:31:14.160 So you couldn't you couldn't call the store.

00:31:16.620 And if you would have called the store.

00:31:19.160 OK, there was. 0.99

00:31:20.380 Are you crazy? 0.99

00:31:21.600 OK, so. 0.99

00:31:23.060 So no phones.

00:31:23.920 No phone.

00:31:24.400 So you get.

00:31:24.860 So all you have to do is just get into your car.

00:31:28.560 What drive down?

00:31:29.860 What car?

00:31:30.780 You know, your family car.

00:31:32.400 OK.

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.

00:31:46.940 One car.

00:31:47.800 Why?

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.

00:32:25.080 You save your whole salary, every penny.

00:32:28.920 And you live out of your wife income for about seven years.

00:32:34.960 Wait, wait, wait.

00:32:36.500 Seven years.

00:32:37.380 The car, you would have to pay your entire salary for seven years.

00:32:42.040 Seven years.

00:32:42.720 Put it in a savings account special design for buying a car with a with a national bank.

00:32:51.740 OK.

00:32:52.180 You couldn't touch those money.

00:32:54.160 You didn't have interest earned on those.

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. 0.98

00:33:16.560 Shut up. 0.95

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. 0.99

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.

00:33:52.920 Right.

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.

00:34:04.080 They give you the key.

00:34:05.600 Wow.

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.

00:34:30.020 What's like in gallons, like three gallons?

00:34:32.160 That's crazy.

00:34:33.280 So I'm going anywhere.

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.

00:34:49.160 This is how it was to be a car owner.

00:34:51.740 I my family never had a car.

00:34:55.080 I got my first car when I was 27, 28, a year after the revolution.

00:35:02.600 That's when I bought my first car.

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.

00:35:19.080 You had to calculate.

00:35:20.100 First of all, you had to save the gasoline.

00:35:27.240 Money or.

00:35:28.600 Yes.

00:35:29.240 Yeah.

00:35:29.560 OK.

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.

00:36:03.840 Why?

00:36:06.060 To save.

00:36:08.800 I don't know.

00:36:10.200 To to save the planet.

00:36:11.660 I have no idea.

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.

00:36:26.860 Yeah.

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.

00:36:33.860 So you're telling me that he copied the model?

00:36:36.520 Yeah.

00:36:36.820 He even an odd.

00:36:38.020 Yeah.

00:36:38.440 You could only buy.

00:36:39.940 No, I think it was.

00:36:40.680 You could only buy gas.

00:36:42.500 But on certain days.

00:36:44.000 But you could drive every every weekend.

00:36:45.600 You could drive as much as you want, but you're not going to get any gas.

00:36:48.120 Oh, well.

00:36:50.880 So as you're going as you're going through this.

00:36:54.920 Well, first of all, you're 18 years old.

00:36:56.780 Let me take you to 18 years old.

00:37:00.380 You're going to college.

00:37:01.440 You go into work.

00:37:02.440 You was in.

00:37:04.140 I was finishing high school.

00:37:07.060 And then I got drafted in the armed forces.

00:37:12.860 I was in the Navy.

00:37:14.600 OK.

00:37:14.780 So it was mandatory to to serve your country.

00:37:19.480 Once you turn 18, you got your must have been an exciting time.

00:37:25.440 I mean, yes, absolutely.

00:37:28.400 I have a feeling that's sarcasm.

00:37:31.860 So they called you.

00:37:34.200 I they called me.

00:37:35.940 They sent me a letter.

00:37:36.840 I went to the recruitment center.

00:37:38.740 It was in a high school gym.

00:37:40.500 They look at me and say, well, you have big ears.

00:37:45.720 You might be a good radio man in the Navy.

00:37:48.020 Oh, my gosh.

00:37:48.740 So they examined us.

00:37:51.040 And a month later, I was I was in the Navy, in the Romanian Navy.

00:37:56.280 Went right to the ship.

00:37:57.540 You go to boot camp.

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.

00:39:01.740 So it was a it was a dark period of my life.

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.

00:39:20.680 We were in the morning for breakfast.

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.

00:39:33.260 So the cockroaches could have enough time to. 1.00

00:39:37.160 Oh, my gosh.

00:39:38.540 This is night.

00:39:39.280 This is at the time when we were having Reagan.

00:39:43.100 Yeah, probably.

00:39:45.100 Yes, probably the first 18.

00:39:47.280 Yeah, would have been 81, 80, somewhere in that area.

00:39:50.540 That's right.

00:39:51.140 Ronald Reagan.

00:39:52.240 You were chasing the you were cutting the bread to let the cockroaches out.

00:39:56.060 Get out.

00:39:56.680 Yes.

00:39:57.040 And we had butter top bread and we were joking with, you know, friends that we were trusting

00:40:04.660 that.

00:40:09.440 As a military force, we would surrender immediately if only the American would come and drop loads 1.00

00:40:17.280 of Marlboro cigarettes, blue jeans and bottles of whiskey over.

00:40:23.640 He didn't need to drop bombs on us.

00:40:26.040 You just need a Berlin lift and we would surrender. 0.82

00:40:32.400 The food situation was so bad that when you enlisted, part of boot camp was working on a farm,

00:40:38.600 wasn't it?

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. 0.96

00:40:57.620 Probably went to, you know, not to the enlisted people to, but to, you know, to the people in.

00:41:03.840 No, but you don't understand.

00:41:05.800 That's what socialism is all about.

00:41:08.160 Giving it to the 99 instead of the 1%. 0.93

00:41:12.020 The 1%. 0.99

00:41:13.440 Uh, yeah.

00:41:14.780 The 1% in socialism, uh, Glenn.

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 0.77

00:41:42.800 not the people who deserve to be wealthy and to be in position of leadership.

00:41:49.420 And they are practically in socialism.

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.

00:42:09.940 Exactly.

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

00:42:25.620 stores where you, you don't have access.

00:42:29.060 They never have, they never lack anything.

00:42:31.920 They don't like food.

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

00:43:04.700 meat.

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.

00:43:19.100 Because they can get the first and the best.

00:43:21.320 Exactly.

00:43:21.920 They can get the first and the best and they can trade what they have.

00:43:26.020 Right.

00:43:26.840 With other people who have other stuff.

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.

00:43:38.140 Okay.

00:43:38.420 Now what's a butcher in the United States.

00:43:41.260 Okay.

00:43:41.700 But he was somebody, he was somebody, he had a Nike's shoes.

00:43:48.240 He had, uh, uh, Levi's, uh, blue jeans.

00:43:51.800 His father had a vacation home and a nice apartment downtown.

00:43:57.060 Uh, they had two cars.

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

00:44:26.780 to buy, uh, meat.

00:44:28.900 So they're not going to touch that.

00:44:30.920 So where is the Marx social justice?

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.

00:44:42.280 There is nowhere.

00:44:43.540 Socialism is, if we're talking about human exploitation, exploitation, okay, that's

00:44:53.280 socialism.

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. 0.93

00:45:07.800 It's just lipstick on a pig. 1.00

00:45:13.540 So how do you, um, were you allowed to go hunt for your own food?

00:45:32.040 Could you have guns and rifles and?

00:45:35.240 No.

00:45:36.780 Uh, guns were prohibited.

00:45:38.680 My uncle had, uh, a shotgun.

00:45:44.920 Was he on the capitalist?

00:45:46.780 Double bear.

00:45:47.420 He was a doctor.

00:45:48.680 Okay.

00:45:49.040 He's a doctor.

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

00:45:57.560 actors and stuff.

00:45:59.060 And he was kind of like a upper crust.

00:46:01.880 He had a double barrel shotgun.

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

00:46:19.040 under lock and key.

00:46:20.640 He was not allowed to keep it at home.

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

00:46:38.160 you were going to jail for life.

00:46:39.580 Did the, did the communists take the guns or is that part of the culture of Romania?

00:46:45.560 The communists took the guns.

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

00:47:05.560 him.

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.

00:47:25.020 So, you know, did he keep it?

00:47:29.060 Did he hide it?

00:47:29.680 No, he, he surrender it.

00:47:32.340 He surrender it.

00:47:33.280 And that didn't help him much because they took him and put him in prison anyway, because 1.00

00:47:37.480 he was a capitalist pig. 0.97

00:47:40.140 And I remember what my, uh, father told me, uh, after the revolution, he told me if I would 0.98

00:47:46.240 have known, known what was going to happen after they did that, I would never allowed my

00:47:54.220 father. 0.99

00:47:54.520 I would have taken those guns and hit them. 0.99

00:47:59.060 That's, that's everywhere. 0.98

00:48:00.820 Communist, socialist, communist, they, they, they came to power or they tried to exceed

00:48:07.120 to the power.

00:48:07.980 They have this policy of restricting gun rights.

00:48:13.100 And it's absolutely every time it happens.

00:48:17.880 It happened right now in Venezuela.

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

00:48:29.160 goes away quickly.

00:48:30.360 Exactly.

00:48:31.320 And you, and then you have to use force.

00:48:33.340 Correct.

00:48:34.340 Um, uh, tell me how, um, homosexuals and, and gays and women and all this. 1.00

00:48:42.940 Because you, if you were identified as a gay, lesbian, transvestite or whatever, you were going 0.59

00:48:58.660 to prison, period. 0.92

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

00:49:17.480 2006.

00:49:19.260 So it was another for another seven years after communists fell.

00:49:23.380 They still had, had the law.

00:49:25.600 Um, from what I heard, they were meeting underground, but it was very, very, uh, risky to be outed

00:49:35.400 as one.

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?

00:50:02.400 In Romania?

00:50:03.880 Romania.

00:50:06.000 Guy who stood up and said, this is wrong.

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.

00:50:36.420 Okay.

00:50:36.860 But when Ceausescu came to power, he didn't actually, he killed people, but he wasn't like Maduro

00:50:47.380 style, like shooting people on the streets.

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

00:51:13.220 and period, period, periodical beatings.

00:51:18.420 This is, this is how it was.

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

00:51:58.240 and he was one of his bodyguards.

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. 0.88

00:52:24.980 When I, when I listened to the people in Washington, uh, on the left, I think

00:52:31.000 they have no idea what's going on.

00:52:36.440 They have, they're, they're, they're clueless.

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

00:53:07.940 him.

00:53:08.180 And I think it was one like old woman in the crowd or something that said liar or freedom 0.81

00:53:14.340 or something.

00:53:14.880 And then the whole crowd turned on him for the first time.

00:53:17.920 And he was shocked.

00:53:19.560 He had no idea.

00:53:21.500 Right.

00:53:22.040 Yeah.

00:53:22.540 He was trying.

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

00:53:37.160 the street.

00:53:37.880 Uh, he shot the wounded in hospitals.

00:53:40.300 He sent people in and shot people wounded in the hospital beds.

00:53:46.260 Yes.

00:53:46.700 Why is this the only violent revolution?

00:53:49.420 Everything else, you know, was rocky, but this was awful.

00:53:54.300 Why?

00:53:54.600 He tried to hold on to power.

00:53:55.960 He didn't want to listen to what Gorbachev told him.

00:53:58.580 It's time to go probably.

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.

00:54:19.580 He was trying to bribe the population.

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.

00:54:40.700 And then some kind of loud noise happened.

00:54:45.600 And then that's when the people, they just lost their mind.

00:54:48.740 And then what happened to him?

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

00:55:00.880 sick and tired.

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.

00:55:50.320 And where were you?

00:55:51.440 I was in Constanza, but the circus in my hometown started actually the moment he is, he left.

00:56:00.760 In the air.

00:56:02.040 Yes.

00:56:02.900 That's what was a power.

00:56:04.080 Did you see that moment on television?

00:56:05.700 Yes.

00:56:05.900 I've seen it on television.

00:56:07.260 Did you see it then though?

00:56:08.360 Yes.

00:56:08.800 And, and what was that?

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.

00:56:19.980 And what did you think where you were?

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.

00:57:48.100 And that was the first day.

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.

00:58:11.440 Hmm.

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,

00:58:52.440 you know, escape.

00:58:53.920 So it was chaos.

00:58:55.520 We had, uh, people shooting from top of the buildings.

00:59:02.460 Um, we call them terrorists.

00:59:07.460 I don't know how many they were apprehended.

00:59:09.820 We heard that a bunch of them, they were, but we never saw them.

00:59:14.120 Um, I got a call from my company.

00:59:16.960 Uh, and, uh, I had military experience.

00:59:20.740 They called me if I want to go on patrol.

00:59:22.900 I went to the company.

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.

00:59:32.060 Uh, so they open up that room.

00:59:34.440 They open up the cans of ammo.

00:59:36.220 They gave me an AKM 47, uh, two mags of ammo.

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.

00:59:54.840 That didn't happen.

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.

01:00:17.640 Wow.

01:00:18.520 Killed.

01:00:20.480 Terrifying?

01:00:22.700 Uh, no, actually.

01:00:25.960 Why?

01:00:27.420 Because we were so happy.

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?

01:00:38.040 Yes.

01:00:38.320 We, everybody knew what a monster we had, but you asked me, we were terrified.

01:00:42.660 We were terrified of only one thing, Glenn.

01:00:45.800 The only thing we were terrified that he's going to come back.

01:00:50.480 We're not terrified of the bullets.

01:00:52.760 We're not terrifying that people shooting us.

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.

01:02:07.800 What does freedom of speech mean to you here?

01:02:14.400 Oh, it's everything.

01:02:15.960 It's, I mean, it's without freedom of speech, there is nothing.

01:02:23.820 I live 26 years without having it.

01:02:27.760 The, the fact that I can, I can criticize the president, which I don't because I like him.

01:02:34.240 Um, I didn't like the previous one.

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. 0.75

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.

01:03:10.220 Why is that important?

01:03:11.040 If, if it's not freedom of speech, it doesn't protect speech that everyone agrees with.

01:03:18.980 It wouldn't be necessary.

01:03:20.700 Agree with me.

01:03:21.620 Okay.

01:03:22.780 It's freedom of speech protects people, uh, protects the speech that, uh, people might not agree with.

01:03:29.500 They might consider it offensive.

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. 1.00

01:03:53.500 Why?

01:03:54.720 So they can, can shut up us later after they got the guns. 0.88

01:03:59.360 They were not afraid of us any, any longer.

01:04:01.920 So they took the freedom of speech too.

01:04:04.580 So if, if Romania won, why'd you leave to America 10 years later?

01:04:11.700 Because of disappointment, Glenn?

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.

01:05:30.440 Mm-hmm.

01:05:31.020 And, um, I would say probably Bernie would be proud to lead that party.

01:05:39.780 Wow.

01:05:40.940 Yeah.

01:05:41.600 Bernie Sanders.

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.

01:06:51.620 I talk to them all the time.

01:06:53.000 They'll stop me in the street.

01:06:54.920 Because we recognize the, the, the rhetoric and the side rhetoric, because we recognize the rhetoric.

01:07:02.600 We live with it in our youth.

01:07:04.040 So we know when, when Ocasio-Cortez or Benny Sanders or Hillary speaks about, it takes a village.

01:07:10.760 We heard that before.

01:07:13.560 Okay.

01:07:14.040 But this time it'll be done, right?

01:07:17.160 When did that happen, ever happen?

01:07:20.600 Socialism was tried in 40 countries around the world.

01:07:26.700 It failed every time.

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?

01:08:01.760 That's kind of an elitist, don't you believe?

01:08:07.040 I am struck by your t-shirt.

01:08:09.980 I've been looking at it the whole time.

01:08:11.820 You got one.

01:08:13.460 I have one?

01:08:14.260 I brought you one.

01:08:14.900 You brought me one?

01:08:15.640 Yes.

01:08:15.900 I'll proudly wear that.

01:08:18.660 Romania, that's the home of Vlad the Impaler. 0.78

01:08:23.520 Correct.

01:08:23.880 Who is the inspiration for, for Dracula.

01:08:27.680 It is.

01:08:30.580 What, what, what, I mean, the Impaler Army, that's pretty dark. 0.99

01:08:36.440 No, it's fun.

01:08:37.380 Vlad the Impaler.

01:08:41.020 Vlad the Impaler.

01:08:42.440 Yes.

01:08:42.920 He's a national, he's a national hero in Romania.

01:08:45.660 He's a historic, a real prince.

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.

01:09:01.240 But he's a national hero.

01:09:03.040 He's very, very respected.

01:09:05.020 Unfortunate.

01:09:05.560 Well, I wouldn't say unfortunate.

01:09:09.420 He was transformed in a fictional character by an English writer in a vampire.

01:09:17.120 He wasn't a vampire by any means.

01:09:19.260 He was, he was a prince and he was pretty badass.

01:09:22.300 He, he kept the country free.

01:09:28.060 He beat what was probably at the time the, the greatest armed army in the world, which were the Ottomans.

01:09:36.840 They were ruling at the time.

01:09:38.780 They were, I would say the America, the American power of the day.

01:09:44.000 And he managed to beat them several times.

01:09:48.480 He was a just ruler.

01:09:50.600 He was tough.

01:09:52.080 But hey, those were the times.

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.

01:10:11.280 Raising commies to new heights.

01:10:12.620 Exactly.

01:10:14.000 And there is another one, if I may say.

01:10:19.060 I don't know if that's going to pass.

01:10:20.380 No, it's not. 1.00

01:10:21.240 Nick Searcy has one which says, wish of communist pop your ass. 1.00

01:10:29.640 You can cut that. 1.00

01:10:30.640 Well, tell me what you really think.

01:10:31.980 Tell me what you really think.

01:10:33.140 You don't want to know.

01:10:34.340 So, why don't you leave us, talk directly to somebody.

01:10:40.720 Look into, look into that camera.

01:10:43.460 Okay.

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.

01:10:57.360 It's different.

01:10:58.300 It's not that.

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.

01:11:14.560 It always ends up like that.

01:11:18.180 You just cannot share the wealth.

01:11:21.540 It can end that way in Sweden, in Denmark, in Norway.

01:11:24.180 Because there's not socialism.

01:11:25.960 You try to make Sweden government to abandon free property and try them to plan their economy in five years.

01:11:40.840 Like in five years, like in five years, plans.

01:11:43.460 Try to do that.

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.

01:11:56.180 I can guarantee you that.

01:11:58.980 Socialism fails every time without fail.

01:12:03.480 That's period.

01:12:04.280 People stealing other people's wealth and redistributing it.

01:12:16.900 That's just not working.

01:12:18.620 It's not how it's going to work.

01:12:20.120 You cannot get rid of the 1%. 1.00

01:12:22.240 You just can replace it in socialism.

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.

01:12:42.900 You replace them as the 1%ers of capitalism. 1.00

01:12:47.540 You replace them with people who don't deserve to be 1%. 0.99

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.

01:13:21.800 Where are you going to go if we become that?

01:13:24.620 There is nowhere else to go.

01:13:27.280 This is the last country in the world that is keeping socialism at bay.

01:13:35.740 There is nowhere else to go.

01:13:37.700 My wife told me we stop running from socialism too soon.

01:13:42.780 There is nowhere else to run.

01:13:44.780 Nowhere else.

01:13:46.520 Andy, it's great to meet you.

01:13:49.000 Thank you very much, Glenn.

01:13:49.920 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:14:02.780 It's good to meet you.

01:14:03.240 I want you.

01:14:03.420 You're welcome.

01:14:08.520 We'll see you next time.

01:14:16.800 Bye-bye.

01:14:16.940 Bye-bye.

01:14:18.820 Bye-bye.

01:14:19.500 Bye-bye.

01:14:22.780 Bye-bye.

01:14:24.700 Bye-bye.

01:14:25.000 Bye-bye.

The Glenn Beck Program - May 11, 2019

Ep 36 ｜ Andy Ionescu ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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