There’s a noticeable inconsistency in how Hacker News community reacts to electoral controversies in Romania and Turkey. In Romania, the Constitutional Court disqualified candidate Călin Georgescu based on unproven allegations that he was influenced by Russia. In Turkey, opposition leader and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was barred from running after his university degree was annulled under dubious circumstances.
Both cases involve actions that directly impact democratic processes—effectively ensuring that those in power remain in power. Yet, the reactions to these events seem to differ significantly.
Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking? If HN represents a community of intellectuals, are we truly guided by reason and intellectual honesty, or are our responses shaped more by instinct and bias?
Here's the link to the relevant discussion so people can decide for themselves if there actually is a significant difference and come to their own conclusions about why that difference might exist:
Also, in general I find that people who weigh in with this kind of comment trying to draw parallels and implying that there was some kind of consensus in favor of X which is inconsistent with the opposition to Y both misremember the earlier conversation and forget that these conversations feature totally different people. Judging an extremely heterogenous community for the consistency of its political views is an exercise in futility.
Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
However, there’s a noticeable lack of discourse regarding Turkish President Erdoğan’s actions to maintain power. Nobody is arguing he is right.
Anyway both scenarios involve incumbent authorities taking measures that consolidate their hold on power, yet the disparity in our community’s reactions is striking. This raises questions about potential biases within our intellectual circles. Are we, as a community that prides itself on rational discourse, sometimes swayed by tribal instincts rather than objective analysis? It’s crucial to reflect on this to ensure our discussions remain balanced and rooted in intellectual honesty.
>Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
There is difference, Romanian constitution and laws do not allow unfair elections and the Constitutional Court has the final say. Since the election cancelling a lot more evidence was released to the public , and the Kremlinescu guy with his fascist mercenary friends attempted a violent protest, searches were done , illegal weapons were found, illegal money and finally Kremlinescu after confronted with video evidence admitted he lied all the time when he said he does not know the fascist and mercenary who gave him cache money, cars, protection and threaten the journalist and opponents like a good fascist tradition christian does.
> Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking?
Yes, it does. We are humans too, not some upper cast of society that is permanently immune to prejudice, emotions and media influence reinforcing the former two. Unfortunately, it is not only Romania that is straying away from democracy. Bulgaria, another EU member state, and by coincidence (or not) a neighbor to Romania, has also been degrading significantly in this regard. To quote a couple of examples:
- A referendum on the topic of delaying Bulgaria's entry into the Euro zone (replacing national currency with EUR) was not allowed to take place by the parliament and subsequently the constitutional court (with really hard to understand and controversial argumentation).
- There were lots of violations during the last elections that were investigated selectively and following a questionable and non-transparent process
- Protesters being detained for a month for throwing eggs on a building - a highly disproportional measure, given the severity of the violation.
There’s a few things wrong here. Being a community of intellectuals doesn’t equal a community of rationalists. And even rationalists may use different criteria than you in matters of international security, arriving at conclusions you may see as inconsistent and biased.
Many academics, including professors and students, endorsed Nazi ideology. For instance, in 1933, approximately 900 professors signed the “Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State,” publicly expressing their support for the Nazi government.
In Romania you had the constitution and constitutional court involved.
The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
But let me inform you that MAGAs and president Elon did not like what the constitutional court decided (if only they knew the guy they supported is a conspirationist that thinks Trump is a joke and faked his shooting in the ear and 911 was an inside job)
> The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
The “constitutional court” is a joke. They made a decision under pressure form the EU. They made a completely unprincipled decision to deny the people of Romania their right to vote. They realized at the last minute that a redo of the election would result in the same outcome according to polls, which is why they kept making up new excuses and ended up banning the candidate. This is obviously a situation where the outcome is artificially manipulated and there’s no real democracy left there. It’s too bad because for about 10-15 years, it really looked like Romania was headed in the right direction, towards democracy and freedom and away from its past.
The constitution demands fair elections
declaring ZERO campaign money while in secret getting cacs from a mercenary, getting cars and protection from the same mercenary invalidates the marketing claim he used ZERO money.
Other undeclared funds were spend to pay TikTok influencers to produce content for Kremlinescu , content that was not labeled as sponsored but the inflencers pretended to do it for free
Then TikTok bot farms were used to share the paid TikTok content ,
there is enough evidence and TikTok also admitted that there were bots and that political content as still pushed in the days where it is illegal to do this.
He was also disqualified because he and his fascist mercenary friend attempted a violent coup.
If you are a MAGA I need to remind you that he shit a lot on Trump, and USA so either Elon is stupid to push so hard for Kremlinescu or is because Ptin is demanding it.
There are more facts to show this guys character of a traitor slut, like admiring Putin, sucking on Trump after he shit on him, dening video proof for months until he had to admit it
Both cases involve actions that directly impact democratic processes—effectively ensuring that those in power remain in power. Yet, the reactions to these events seem to differ significantly.
Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking? If HN represents a community of intellectuals, are we truly guided by reason and intellectual honesty, or are our responses shaped more by instinct and bias?