Dennis Prager Was Right: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches
by Michael V. Clinton
August 2025
Ciprian Ivanof was in the Romanian Orphanage in Babadag before the Revolution of 1989, was adopted by an American, lived in a bad part of D.C. in the 1990s, returned to Romania, studied History at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and studied Law at Washington College of Law. He is a sole-practitioner attorney in D.C. and a political candidate in D.C. local elections.
At ACAT, we are delighted to interview him as one of our speakers. I had the privilege of learning about his experience through the Romanian orphanage system, the transition in Romania after the Revolution of 1989, and his life in the United States.
Michael: Would you be able to tell me a bit about yourself? How was your life in Communist Romania? How did you manage throughout the system? How did living under Communism affect and shape you as a person?
Mr. Ciprian Ivanof: My ancestors were Lipovan (Russian Old Believers). Their village was initially founded during Ottoman rule by Russian peasants fleeing serfdom and expanded after 1917. One of my grandfathers had been in the Soviet Red Army and later defected to Communist Romania (“brotherly states”), though I suspect the motive was personal, since I discovered I had a lot of cousins in the Ukraine. Another grandfather was tending to cattle in the collective farm. My father was a truck driver and crane operator on the farm. My mother was a housewife. My brother dropped out of school in fifth grade because he lost all respect for the adults, and he was smart enough to turn a washing machine engine into an irrigation system and learn English.
Half my siblings died in infancy due to poverty (dirt floors, lack of running water, poor hygiene, etc.). Some of the doctors did try to do their job, and the doctor for our area did not want any more children to die, so he took me away, treated me, and left me in the Babadag Orphanage. It was relatively good simply because the staff made a basic effort. I cannot comment on the social conditions at large because I did not experience them until later.
What I remember in the orphanage was soup. We sat in a big room with a metal table and had plastic bowls of soup. They brought out a big bag of toys, mostly broken, and dumped them out on the floor. Being a control freak, I started grabbing, organizing, and distributing the toys to the other children. I helped push the cart with the bowls of soup when we ate. So, the staff liked me because I was actually responding instead of rocking back and forth and constantly banging my head against the wall, which many children, needing stimulation, were doing. We had one teacher per thirty children on average, and she could not provide much emotional interaction.
Then, the Revolution of 1989 happened. Orphanages were places of extreme dependency on the state and were inevitably hit when the government’s priorities shifted. When I read the account of orphans who had not been adopted, they would say they missed the time of Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu was terrible for society in general, but they felt things were better and hated the orphanage staff. If the orphanage staff was glad that he had died, the children would celebrate him. It is a very simplistic but understandable response. Having experienced an extremely controlling environment and then coming to a high-crime area in the United States, I developed a kill-or-be-killed mindset.
That did not play well with many wealthy Americans, because they would say: “Anything can happen. Always be tolerant.” Anything can happen? Tolerant of what? There are certain presumptions of goodwill, stability, and positive outcomes that I do not have. I can look at history and presume that things would get horrible. Even in the United States, things can spiral out of control. I do not have any presumption of goodwill on the part of violent radicals. Most criminals are not good people. Their words and promises do not match their actions. Whatever their mental state, you have to look at the result, and the result is destruction. People say, “Oh, they mean well!” Who cares?
Michael: I agree. Judging a tree by its fruit and seeing the end results of one’s actions is a good principle.
Mr. Ivanof: Economists call it “revealed preference,” but a lot of people hesitate to apply that simply because a lot of Americans find social ease in the little lies they tell each other. It is easier to pretend someone is good and express hope than to utter an explicit condemnation. I think that is one difference between the way Eastern European and Anglophone societies tend to build cooperation. In Anglophone societies (read Jane Austen, for example), people would tell little lies (and then others would accept them) to try to smooth interaction. In Eastern Europe, you are honest with your friends and lie to your enemies. Thus, the dividing line of who is in the group and who is not, is very important.
Many left-wing Americans are uncomfortable with dividing lines and clear standards. Well, that is a problem when you are an immigrant. How can you understand the social norms if people do not express them explicitly? One could look at what people do, and what people did was pretty nasty. This is an area where left- and right-wing American cultures diverge dramatically. Left-wingers tend to favor indirect communication; right-wingers favor directness. The mechanisms for trust are completely different, and I think that the left-wing system cannot work.
Michael: This is very perceptive. I noticed that the Left eats itself, unlike the Right, which has an easier time recognizing allies and enemies. You have authoritarians who end up purging the revolutionaries in Communist societies. Leftists end up purging each other. You see this presently, too.
by Michael V. Clinton
August 2025
- In this wide-ranging interview, ACAT Speaker Ciprian Ivanof describes the ill effects of Communist Left ideology on economics, health, morality, and other spheres of life in the United States and Romania. For the Communist Left, the destructive ends justify the destructive means.
Ciprian Ivanof was in the Romanian Orphanage in Babadag before the Revolution of 1989, was adopted by an American, lived in a bad part of D.C. in the 1990s, returned to Romania, studied History at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and studied Law at Washington College of Law. He is a sole-practitioner attorney in D.C. and a political candidate in D.C. local elections.
At ACAT, we are delighted to interview him as one of our speakers. I had the privilege of learning about his experience through the Romanian orphanage system, the transition in Romania after the Revolution of 1989, and his life in the United States.
Michael: Would you be able to tell me a bit about yourself? How was your life in Communist Romania? How did you manage throughout the system? How did living under Communism affect and shape you as a person?
Mr. Ciprian Ivanof: My ancestors were Lipovan (Russian Old Believers). Their village was initially founded during Ottoman rule by Russian peasants fleeing serfdom and expanded after 1917. One of my grandfathers had been in the Soviet Red Army and later defected to Communist Romania (“brotherly states”), though I suspect the motive was personal, since I discovered I had a lot of cousins in the Ukraine. Another grandfather was tending to cattle in the collective farm. My father was a truck driver and crane operator on the farm. My mother was a housewife. My brother dropped out of school in fifth grade because he lost all respect for the adults, and he was smart enough to turn a washing machine engine into an irrigation system and learn English.
Half my siblings died in infancy due to poverty (dirt floors, lack of running water, poor hygiene, etc.). Some of the doctors did try to do their job, and the doctor for our area did not want any more children to die, so he took me away, treated me, and left me in the Babadag Orphanage. It was relatively good simply because the staff made a basic effort. I cannot comment on the social conditions at large because I did not experience them until later.
What I remember in the orphanage was soup. We sat in a big room with a metal table and had plastic bowls of soup. They brought out a big bag of toys, mostly broken, and dumped them out on the floor. Being a control freak, I started grabbing, organizing, and distributing the toys to the other children. I helped push the cart with the bowls of soup when we ate. So, the staff liked me because I was actually responding instead of rocking back and forth and constantly banging my head against the wall, which many children, needing stimulation, were doing. We had one teacher per thirty children on average, and she could not provide much emotional interaction.
Then, the Revolution of 1989 happened. Orphanages were places of extreme dependency on the state and were inevitably hit when the government’s priorities shifted. When I read the account of orphans who had not been adopted, they would say they missed the time of Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu was terrible for society in general, but they felt things were better and hated the orphanage staff. If the orphanage staff was glad that he had died, the children would celebrate him. It is a very simplistic but understandable response. Having experienced an extremely controlling environment and then coming to a high-crime area in the United States, I developed a kill-or-be-killed mindset.
That did not play well with many wealthy Americans, because they would say: “Anything can happen. Always be tolerant.” Anything can happen? Tolerant of what? There are certain presumptions of goodwill, stability, and positive outcomes that I do not have. I can look at history and presume that things would get horrible. Even in the United States, things can spiral out of control. I do not have any presumption of goodwill on the part of violent radicals. Most criminals are not good people. Their words and promises do not match their actions. Whatever their mental state, you have to look at the result, and the result is destruction. People say, “Oh, they mean well!” Who cares?
Michael: I agree. Judging a tree by its fruit and seeing the end results of one’s actions is a good principle.
Mr. Ivanof: Economists call it “revealed preference,” but a lot of people hesitate to apply that simply because a lot of Americans find social ease in the little lies they tell each other. It is easier to pretend someone is good and express hope than to utter an explicit condemnation. I think that is one difference between the way Eastern European and Anglophone societies tend to build cooperation. In Anglophone societies (read Jane Austen, for example), people would tell little lies (and then others would accept them) to try to smooth interaction. In Eastern Europe, you are honest with your friends and lie to your enemies. Thus, the dividing line of who is in the group and who is not, is very important.
Many left-wing Americans are uncomfortable with dividing lines and clear standards. Well, that is a problem when you are an immigrant. How can you understand the social norms if people do not express them explicitly? One could look at what people do, and what people did was pretty nasty. This is an area where left- and right-wing American cultures diverge dramatically. Left-wingers tend to favor indirect communication; right-wingers favor directness. The mechanisms for trust are completely different, and I think that the left-wing system cannot work.
Michael: This is very perceptive. I noticed that the Left eats itself, unlike the Right, which has an easier time recognizing allies and enemies. You have authoritarians who end up purging the revolutionaries in Communist societies. Leftists end up purging each other. You see this presently, too.
Mr. Ivanof: Look at the way Trotsky handled the railroads in the Russian Civil War. He was effective at driving a train into a town, taking it over, and then moving on. He was combat-effective, but he was so terrible at administering food deliveries and logistics that some even suspected sabotage. The Communists did not recruit people who cared about the minutiae of logistics. That is one of the reasons why Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy. Trotsky’s followers were goons with leather jackets, fast cars, fast women, shaking people down. Farmers did not want to cede their food, not even their grain. So, Trotsky sent his men to shoot them. You cannot have a stable government with someone like Trotsky; he wanted immediate war with the West, when the Soviet government was already completely unstable. He wanted revolution and a takeover, but he could not actually administer one. Hence, Trotsky was purged. The purges of the initial revolutionaries were not only internal power struggles, but rather a practical matter of competence. Everybody depended on the system existing. If this group of psychopaths is slightly more competent than the other one, what are people going to do?
Western Communist groups, however, have not seized power. So, utopian socialists, who hate the social order, simply want it torn down and do not want to be controlled by anybody else. For those who have a disciplined party organization and want to seize control, their first target is to take over the socialist movements in Western countries, because most people are not all that keen to work for a foreign government or force their men to do criminal acts. This is not because they are ethical (many Western socialists are horrible people), but because they do not want the risk. The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) started from the effort to co-opt genuinely democratic socialists and was ultimately itself co-opted by those who had strong autocratic impulses and wanted dictatorship.
Michael: What is a “genuine democratic socialist”?
Mr. Ivanof: Probably someone such as Fiorello La Guardia or George Orwell, who believed that central planning was economically more efficient but wanted it to benefit everybody. They wanted that power in democratic hands by majority vote, as opposed to a small cadre of elite planners. Now, as it turns out, central planning is horribly inefficient, with many injustices involved. We see that more clearly now than in the past. Nevertheless, there were people who genuinely believed that the two could be merged. Nowadays, all the practical experience and academic analyses, such as “public choice theory,” have shown that one cannot have strong central planning and a vibrant democracy.
“There but for the grace of God go I” was a common sentiment for my fellow orphans. The more highly functional ones were sent to be in the Securitate paramilitary units. I often reflected on the comparison between the relative sanity of the Communist crooks in Romania and the insane ones in the U.S., as well as on my upbringing compared to my brother’s. The distrust in the system he felt led to his evading conscription in the Romanian Army even after Communism, while I served in the Minnesota and D.C. National Guard.
Michael: Could you share more details about your service?
Mr. Ivanof: My adoptive father was in the Navy Reserve and worked at the Naval Historical Center. He took me along, so I witnessed the study of history. There are many reasons to study history—the drama of heroes, seeking justification for your side, but also understanding the past and predicting future trends. I saw history as a very practical subject. Then, I was put in Rock Creek International School for two years. So, that is probably where the cultural clash became most intense.
Then, I experienced the French international school system from the second through the fifth grade. I learned to think in a more French than American way. They had very different standards of formality, ideology about authority, etc. I went to a Christian private school in Wisconsin for the sixth grade. I had been in public school in the seventh grade—oh boy, what a nasty experience! Even though it was relatively good, someone like me did not do well in public school. Then, I spent two years in an Evangelical missionary school in Bucharest, Romania. I then spent one year at the American International School of Bucharest (which is ground zero for where many globalist children learned) and another year at the French International School. Then, I turned eighteen, and my adoptive father was not worried about me being taken away from him again.
I went off to Minnesota, where I studied history and joined an ROTC. I then became too fat and became a civilian. I thinned down and joined the Guard. I obtained a B.A. in History with a Political Science minor. My main focus was Eastern European military history and preparing myself for Iraq. My unit deployed, but I did not. I was in Bravo Battery 1-151 FA. That was a sister unit to the one of Tim Walz. When Walz’s successor appeared in a video call from Iraq, he got a cheer. It seemed that everybody was glad to have him but not his predecessor.
I liked the Minnesota National Guard, because the people whom I managed were mostly rural and down to earth, focused on practicality over the urban Minneapolis and student culture. Working with explosives, one learns to pay attention and be precise. I felt much better suited to military life. Then, I graduated; considered becoming a county assessor; was accepted to Washington College of Law; went to D.C.; and worked as a paralegal (27 Delta Slot) for a while.
Michael: You mentioned that you lived in D.C. for fourteen years and watched its rapid decline. Could you tell us, having first-hand experience, what led to the city's rapid decline? Has your experience under Communism given you a special insight into the city's problems?
Mr. Ivanof: After adoption, we went from Texas to D.C. and lived in a bad neighborhood. D.C. was terrible in the 1990s. The block I lived on had needles, dime bags, broken liquor bottles, and the glass from cars being robbed.
Michael: Where did you live in D.C.?
Mr. Ivanof: Fourteenth Street NW. If you know of Meridian Hill Park, that place was wild during the 1990s. I lived in a bad neighborhood in between two good neighborhoods. But then various mayors decided that they had to clean the city up to promote revenues. So, they enforced the laws, then crime dropped, rents went up, the area has gentrified now.
The city worked to some extent, but it was always a big city and an East-Coast political machine. The Democrats relied on stoking racial hostility to garner support from one side of town; hidden business carveouts to get votes from the other side; and left-wing politics to attract other people. Fundamentally, it was a system that seemed to work so long as people did not look too closely. That was still at a time when the Democrats were coming to terms with the real necessities of cracking down on crime, because they needed their business allies not to be robbed all the time. So, the people running the city tended to be from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, who were more concerned about practical results than progressives were.
Western Communist groups, however, have not seized power. So, utopian socialists, who hate the social order, simply want it torn down and do not want to be controlled by anybody else. For those who have a disciplined party organization and want to seize control, their first target is to take over the socialist movements in Western countries, because most people are not all that keen to work for a foreign government or force their men to do criminal acts. This is not because they are ethical (many Western socialists are horrible people), but because they do not want the risk. The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) started from the effort to co-opt genuinely democratic socialists and was ultimately itself co-opted by those who had strong autocratic impulses and wanted dictatorship.
Michael: What is a “genuine democratic socialist”?
Mr. Ivanof: Probably someone such as Fiorello La Guardia or George Orwell, who believed that central planning was economically more efficient but wanted it to benefit everybody. They wanted that power in democratic hands by majority vote, as opposed to a small cadre of elite planners. Now, as it turns out, central planning is horribly inefficient, with many injustices involved. We see that more clearly now than in the past. Nevertheless, there were people who genuinely believed that the two could be merged. Nowadays, all the practical experience and academic analyses, such as “public choice theory,” have shown that one cannot have strong central planning and a vibrant democracy.
“There but for the grace of God go I” was a common sentiment for my fellow orphans. The more highly functional ones were sent to be in the Securitate paramilitary units. I often reflected on the comparison between the relative sanity of the Communist crooks in Romania and the insane ones in the U.S., as well as on my upbringing compared to my brother’s. The distrust in the system he felt led to his evading conscription in the Romanian Army even after Communism, while I served in the Minnesota and D.C. National Guard.
Michael: Could you share more details about your service?
Mr. Ivanof: My adoptive father was in the Navy Reserve and worked at the Naval Historical Center. He took me along, so I witnessed the study of history. There are many reasons to study history—the drama of heroes, seeking justification for your side, but also understanding the past and predicting future trends. I saw history as a very practical subject. Then, I was put in Rock Creek International School for two years. So, that is probably where the cultural clash became most intense.
Then, I experienced the French international school system from the second through the fifth grade. I learned to think in a more French than American way. They had very different standards of formality, ideology about authority, etc. I went to a Christian private school in Wisconsin for the sixth grade. I had been in public school in the seventh grade—oh boy, what a nasty experience! Even though it was relatively good, someone like me did not do well in public school. Then, I spent two years in an Evangelical missionary school in Bucharest, Romania. I then spent one year at the American International School of Bucharest (which is ground zero for where many globalist children learned) and another year at the French International School. Then, I turned eighteen, and my adoptive father was not worried about me being taken away from him again.
I went off to Minnesota, where I studied history and joined an ROTC. I then became too fat and became a civilian. I thinned down and joined the Guard. I obtained a B.A. in History with a Political Science minor. My main focus was Eastern European military history and preparing myself for Iraq. My unit deployed, but I did not. I was in Bravo Battery 1-151 FA. That was a sister unit to the one of Tim Walz. When Walz’s successor appeared in a video call from Iraq, he got a cheer. It seemed that everybody was glad to have him but not his predecessor.
I liked the Minnesota National Guard, because the people whom I managed were mostly rural and down to earth, focused on practicality over the urban Minneapolis and student culture. Working with explosives, one learns to pay attention and be precise. I felt much better suited to military life. Then, I graduated; considered becoming a county assessor; was accepted to Washington College of Law; went to D.C.; and worked as a paralegal (27 Delta Slot) for a while.
Michael: You mentioned that you lived in D.C. for fourteen years and watched its rapid decline. Could you tell us, having first-hand experience, what led to the city's rapid decline? Has your experience under Communism given you a special insight into the city's problems?
Mr. Ivanof: After adoption, we went from Texas to D.C. and lived in a bad neighborhood. D.C. was terrible in the 1990s. The block I lived on had needles, dime bags, broken liquor bottles, and the glass from cars being robbed.
Michael: Where did you live in D.C.?
Mr. Ivanof: Fourteenth Street NW. If you know of Meridian Hill Park, that place was wild during the 1990s. I lived in a bad neighborhood in between two good neighborhoods. But then various mayors decided that they had to clean the city up to promote revenues. So, they enforced the laws, then crime dropped, rents went up, the area has gentrified now.
The city worked to some extent, but it was always a big city and an East-Coast political machine. The Democrats relied on stoking racial hostility to garner support from one side of town; hidden business carveouts to get votes from the other side; and left-wing politics to attract other people. Fundamentally, it was a system that seemed to work so long as people did not look too closely. That was still at a time when the Democrats were coming to terms with the real necessities of cracking down on crime, because they needed their business allies not to be robbed all the time. So, the people running the city tended to be from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, who were more concerned about practical results than progressives were.
When more people came into D.C., and when the progressive faction gained ascendancy in the Democratic Party with the election of Barack Obama, progressive influences became more dominant. That included council members who were very influential such as Charles Allen, who decided to go all in on “criminal justice reform,” which ironically made things much easier for criminals in influencing academic activists to give them more leeway. The policy was soft on crime and lowered penalties for people under 25. The gangs are not idiots; they are going to recruit people who qualify for lower penalties.
D.C. has always been a leftist area, with much of the white population being very left-wing. Much of the black population is either in it for the patronage, race politics, or the presumed benefits of central planning. However, the black population does not like crime, but the white population likes the noblesse oblige of idiots who feel sorry for criminals over victims.
I went to the French International School in D.C. Social workers were involved, and I moved to Wisconsin, and my adoptive father got custody of me again. When I went to the University of Minnesota for an undergraduate degree in 2006, I saw a city with one-party rule with more sane people trying to keep the money flowing, crime down, and vaguely signaling left-wing politics in favor of the welfare state without an appetite for chaos. The people in rural Minnesota were more congenial, with a justified distrust of centralized political power. However, the red flags were there. I recognized some people from Socialist Alternative (who hung out on campus and had an off-campus bookstore) organizing the Occupy Minneapolis protest outside my window.
When the 2020 riots happened, I recognized they were not organic. One faction was trying to use intimidation to quell opposition by pretending the violence was spontaneous and force the more moderate faction into being inactive, while the more radical one would gain a free hand. My favorite science-fiction bookstore was burned. A church near mine had a Molotov cocktail thrown in it.
Harnessing resentment for political power is an old game, but it has its own logic. I was horrified to see U.S. politicians relying on such destructive tactics and was depressed for months after the Minneapolis riots, even though I had left for law school in D.C. after that.
I went to law school because I believed that a productive stability needed an awareness of how the legal system worked and that the mechanism of civil claims could resolve conflict more effectively than top-down politician-driven policies. The Left has cultural dominance in the U.S., so the shifts in their problem-solving doctrines and mania shape American life more than their numbers.
What I saw in D.C. was similar to Minneapolis. D.C. has a lot of power invested in the mayor, and those from 1999 to 2015 focused on economic growth by cracking down on crime. It worked, and money poured in and benefited even Ward 8. However, the rich progressives on the Council actually hold legislative power, and they passed many pro-crime policies in 2019. The result was rising crime, rising murders, and the gradual decay of the private sector. In effect, progressive policies result in a stark divide between the rich and the poor and the total dependency of the poor on the state.
There was ample evidence that decriminalizing fare evasion would be catastrophic for safety since New York City had discovered that fare enforcement caught a lot of criminals. Also, since fare evasion rendered bus routes unprofitable (despite federal subsidies), there was pressure to eliminate bus routes upon which poorer workers relied. That was such a morally and practically indefensible policy that I felt I had to act. The decision-making process that resulted in such a bad policy indicated not a one-off problem but a sign that the entire political process had failed.
Michael: You have been politically involved in Washington, D.C. Did you observe any elements of Communism or socialism in D.C. political life? Could you tell us a bit about what motivated you to run for office and what you have found out from your political experience?
Mr. Ivanof: My experience from Romania has taught me that politics is rather dangerous. The husband of one of my tutors was under house arrest, despite being a party member, because he disagreed with a party decision. He was lucky to be alive. The husband of another tutor was assaulted. I do not actually want to be involved in politics, but some decisions are so inexcusable that I thought I must. Politics is dangerous!
The ideology of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) seems more Trotskyite than Marxist-Leninist, but they support the wide variety of anti-Western and autocratic states. In effect, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and Third-Worldism have all blended together. Because of their cultural influence, they are seen as progressive rather than as a threat to society and thus can freely operate as if they were loyal members of the Democratic Party by rebranding themselves as the DSA. Most people in D.C. do not understand enough about ideologies or economic effects to be concerned. The wealthy are almost all left-wing and like the social status of supporting whatever is labeled as progressive.
The Cuban Embassy has connections with the DSA in D.C. For example, my rival for Shadow Representative, Oye Owolewa, had spoken from a podium at the Cuban embassy. I caught the DSA advertising a meeting with the Cuban embassy to be held at “Busboys and Poets” [a progressive D.C. bookstore], which was in violation of an agreement with the Cuban government whereby the U.S. Embassy in Cuba would not reach out to the Cubans if the Cuban Embassy would not reach out to Americans. If they were chummy enough to organize a meeting with the Cuban embassy, they are probably chummy in other ways as well.
It is suspected that the Cuban government has been funneling money to various Antifa groups. There is less overt political violence by Antifa in D.C., compared to the West Coast. Nevertheless, I suspect that they engage in Code Pink, basically a Communist Chinese outlet at this point (their founder married a man who profited from the Chinese Communist Party). I saw them in various executive office buildings by the Capitol, trying to lobby Congressmen. Code Pink seems to be one of the more palatable Communist Front groups. The general population is not thinking in terms of Communism, Marxism, or the ultimate goal of these ideas, but in terms of immediate promises and claims. The DSA, however, is very aligned with actual Communism; for example, they have socialist reading groups with books such as Das Kapital.
Michael: I am somewhat familiar with the revolution against the Communist regime in Romania. Could you inform us a bit more about what happened? What is your opinion about the events that transpired?
Mr. Ivanof: The Revolution was a net positive but suboptimal.
Ceauşescu was bad, but people speculate that the rapid revolution was due to a clique of power-hungry coup plotters rather than a genuine desire to end Communism. The National Salvation Front was filled with Securitate and Army generals as crooked as the old regime, though they allowed more freedom. The presumption is that the protests in Timisoara were organic, but that a preexisting group (hoping to pose as defenders of Communism and re-align with the USSR) realized Communism was dying and could seize power under the guise of anti-Communism.
People were furious at the government then. Food quality had been falling; basic amenities were declining; malnutrition was rough. For comparison, I am a head taller than my brother, because, spending time in America, I ate more food than he. Ceauşescu organized a rally in front of the Palace of the People, consisting of those in the front clapping and giving illusions of support and people behind who were angry. Then there was gunfire… When the bulk of the Army and the population joined in, it revealed to the coup plotters that they could not retain power with complete top-down control. They needed to actually persuade people and, if they wanted U.S. support, not be overtly brutal. When the mass protests neared the Parliament building, they let them continue for weeks before (unofficially) calling on the miners to beat up their opponents.
After the Revolution, people were optimistic but unsure of what to do. They decided to hold elections, but the problem was that they did not know whether they were going to be real or fake elections. There was a strong, reasonable suspicion that the Iliescu government was planning on rigging the vote in favor of the Partidul Social Democrat (PSD). Many people gathered in Piața Victoriei to protest, and there were many famous clips of Iliescu calling them hoodlums. The Army and much of the police refused to clear them out. So, the miners were brought in to disperse them. Those were the same old thuggish tactics but not quite as brutal as before.
The change was absolutely a net positive! People could actually complain. Just a year earlier, it was unthinkable to hold up signs in protest in front of the Parliament, and now people were actually debating in Parliament. So, that was a massive improvement. Still, it was not as good as people hoped. One of the biggest problems during Communism was the rise in selfishness. Now, self-interest is generally good, but it was so dysfunctional that lying was a survival skill. Without a moral center, people would steal, distort production, and be corrupt. The result was a complete lack of faith in social institutions. So, when people have no moral center, what can they rely on? The answer is: not much. For all the talk about nationalism and selflessness, it just became a seething pot of resentment.
Michael: What is Romania like presently; how has the country fared since the fall of Communism? In recent years, nostalgia for the Communist system grew in Eastern Europe. Did that happen in Romania and where do things stand now?
Mr. Ivanof: Back in the 1990s, there was definitely overt nostalgia but mostly from older people who had stable jobs and lives such as generals’ wives or manual laborers. I heard the wife of a privileged academic remark on how the old regime prevented crime though she did not want a return of the system. My birth father liked the old system mainly because he was employed. Other people called the Communist era “the bad old days” to avoid the dangerous nostalgia some people feel by remembering their youth, confidence, and ignorance.
Of the more recent generation, I see some naive adulation for central planning and the supposed efficiency of large-scale projects, ignoring its routine injustices, inefficiencies, and lack of alternatives. From more anti-totalitarian people, I do see some nostalgia for a time when the crooks and thugs were less stupid. The Communist regimes of the past were brutal, inefficient, and dishonest but not nearly as stupid as the Western radicals now. Wokeism is a mental illness in the guise of ideology with elements more self-contradictory than Communism.
This is not explicitly mentioned, but one issue was whether Romania could become totalitarian again. There was definitely some fear that Romania might go totalitarian in the 1990s and 2000s. Some analysts thought that this could be Romania’s Weimar period. No. There simply was not the stomach for that kind of stupidity, not at that time. There is a risk of any country becoming totalitarian again. However, a generation that grew up under pervasive control, lack of standards, and unpredictability would not be fond of repeating that. What is a bigger risk is that many in the PSD and many young people assume the West to be less corrupt than Romania. They are inclined to believe the West more than internal, rational criticism. When Western institutions become corrupted and governed by utopian fanatics, those ideas pass on to Romanian elites, who are then inclined to follow them. What the E.U. is doing right now looks not quite as rigid as Communism but is definitely autocratic, technocratic, and ideological rather than functional.
Michael: Observing the recent elections in the E.U. and Romania, I have noticed a more conservative turnout in voting. Would you be able to elaborate a bit upon that?
Mr. Ivanof: The PSD is not what it used to be. They were pragmatic crooks with some skill in government. Their policies now tend to be less pragmatic and more focused on copying the E.U. That looks more like Western wokeism than any Romanian political mindset. Effectively, it was a fight between Romanian and E.U. cultural and political norms. Georgescu, the prominent opposing candidate, was painted as pro-Russian and, in Romania, there is a lot of antipathy towards Russia. Remember that my ethnicity is Lipovan (Russian Old Believers), so that was not always a fun time for me.
Because societies are information networks, excluding information is often a path to victory for people who cannot kill each other. Georgescu was a bit softer on Putin than the PSD-aligned candidate, but there is another problem. At one point, he said that Ion Antonescu did some good. Antonescu was the somewhat pro-German dictator in the 1930s and World War II, implicated in 600,000 dead in the Holocaust. Praising that figure is the dark side of Romanian politics. Now, that is in the past, and Georgescu was much more likely to be more focused on the concerns of modern Romanians as opposed to bowing down to the E.U. Georgescu was not an ideal candidate, but he did represent much of the frustration of voters who felt dismissed and suppressed by the dominance of the PSD. As in the U.S., people simply would not talk if they felt their views to be a basis for condemnation.
Michael: Did Georgescu win the elections?
Mr. Ivanof: He won the first round. Then, it was annulled. There was a fight to have another round of elections. It happened, and he lost. Whether he lost legitimately is a different question.
Michael: So, is the PSD back in power now?
Mr. Ivanof: Yes, they are back in power. What is striking to me is the parallel in tactics. There are allegations of Russian interference, using social media, particularly TikTok. I have not heard that allegation before!
Michael: So, they just annulled the election?
Mr. Ivanof: Yes.
Michael: How is that possible?
Mr. Ivanof: That is a good question. Allegedly, it was illegitimate because of Russian interference. America has stronger democratic norms, so allegations of interference were not enough to stop Trump from being elected in 2016. However, Romania has much weaker norms, so using that excuse to annul the results is a much larger risk there. What I find striking is that the man who is trying to control social media for the E.U., threatened the same thing in Germany. The fact that he so casually admitted the effort to overturn the election in Romania was a worrying sign. The E.U. bureaucracy is not interested in protecting the interests of ordinary voters.
Michael: Would you like to share any concluding remarks?
Mr. Ivanof: One point I want to leave you with is this: there are various studies conducted about the IQ of recently adopted orphans, and the results were fairly shocking. Depending on the degree of malnourishment, the average IQ of orphans could be as low as the seventies or eighties. This is an objective metric that shows the catastrophe of mismanagement. With a system relying on people taking initiative, that total dependency and lack of attention is profoundly destructive.
That is also related to daycare. The Western disregard for maternal childcare, in effect, destroys the welfare of people progressives claim to champion. They construct a system, provide themselves with excuses, and do not look at the actual result. The Left claims to favor social welfare, but the actual way they carry that out is profoundly destructive.
In the U.S., many studies examine the results of putting children in daycare at young ages, and they tend to be negative. That is, the effects on the child are negative. Orphanages are a much more extreme environment, but they are a reminder that parents are essential. I am an anomaly. I am not normal compared to the general population, nor to that of orphans. When children get older, the boys would fight a lot. I do not mean harsh words or the occasional fist, I mean real, vicious fighting. The girls, on the other hand, would use their bodies to obtain favors. That environment creates social dysfunction that resembles some very poor populations in the U.S. Dependency is a big part of that. When it comes to reliance on the government, people do not realize how destructive that is.
I would recommend Women, the State, and Revolution, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, by Wendy Z. Goldman. It is not directly applicable to my story, but it finds that the Soviets tried to destroy the family, and after that did not work, they tried to implement a conservative family policy, simply because of the resultant prior social inefficiencies. What we call traditional morality is not really random, but a result of practical experience acquired over time. When we try to deviate from it too much, bad consequences ensue.
Michael: Well, hopefully, we will rebound back to the good traditions of society.
Mr. Ivanof: When I read a lot of stuff now, I am astonished at the similarity to dissident writings from decades ago. We are in a very similar moment. Thankfully, not as lethal, but psychologically very similar.
Well, good talking with you! Two books that you should read from the Bible: Judges and II Samuel.
Michael: Good talking with you too! Thank you very much! This was most illuminating!
D.C. has always been a leftist area, with much of the white population being very left-wing. Much of the black population is either in it for the patronage, race politics, or the presumed benefits of central planning. However, the black population does not like crime, but the white population likes the noblesse oblige of idiots who feel sorry for criminals over victims.
I went to the French International School in D.C. Social workers were involved, and I moved to Wisconsin, and my adoptive father got custody of me again. When I went to the University of Minnesota for an undergraduate degree in 2006, I saw a city with one-party rule with more sane people trying to keep the money flowing, crime down, and vaguely signaling left-wing politics in favor of the welfare state without an appetite for chaos. The people in rural Minnesota were more congenial, with a justified distrust of centralized political power. However, the red flags were there. I recognized some people from Socialist Alternative (who hung out on campus and had an off-campus bookstore) organizing the Occupy Minneapolis protest outside my window.
When the 2020 riots happened, I recognized they were not organic. One faction was trying to use intimidation to quell opposition by pretending the violence was spontaneous and force the more moderate faction into being inactive, while the more radical one would gain a free hand. My favorite science-fiction bookstore was burned. A church near mine had a Molotov cocktail thrown in it.
Harnessing resentment for political power is an old game, but it has its own logic. I was horrified to see U.S. politicians relying on such destructive tactics and was depressed for months after the Minneapolis riots, even though I had left for law school in D.C. after that.
I went to law school because I believed that a productive stability needed an awareness of how the legal system worked and that the mechanism of civil claims could resolve conflict more effectively than top-down politician-driven policies. The Left has cultural dominance in the U.S., so the shifts in their problem-solving doctrines and mania shape American life more than their numbers.
What I saw in D.C. was similar to Minneapolis. D.C. has a lot of power invested in the mayor, and those from 1999 to 2015 focused on economic growth by cracking down on crime. It worked, and money poured in and benefited even Ward 8. However, the rich progressives on the Council actually hold legislative power, and they passed many pro-crime policies in 2019. The result was rising crime, rising murders, and the gradual decay of the private sector. In effect, progressive policies result in a stark divide between the rich and the poor and the total dependency of the poor on the state.
There was ample evidence that decriminalizing fare evasion would be catastrophic for safety since New York City had discovered that fare enforcement caught a lot of criminals. Also, since fare evasion rendered bus routes unprofitable (despite federal subsidies), there was pressure to eliminate bus routes upon which poorer workers relied. That was such a morally and practically indefensible policy that I felt I had to act. The decision-making process that resulted in such a bad policy indicated not a one-off problem but a sign that the entire political process had failed.
Michael: You have been politically involved in Washington, D.C. Did you observe any elements of Communism or socialism in D.C. political life? Could you tell us a bit about what motivated you to run for office and what you have found out from your political experience?
Mr. Ivanof: My experience from Romania has taught me that politics is rather dangerous. The husband of one of my tutors was under house arrest, despite being a party member, because he disagreed with a party decision. He was lucky to be alive. The husband of another tutor was assaulted. I do not actually want to be involved in politics, but some decisions are so inexcusable that I thought I must. Politics is dangerous!
The ideology of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) seems more Trotskyite than Marxist-Leninist, but they support the wide variety of anti-Western and autocratic states. In effect, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, and Third-Worldism have all blended together. Because of their cultural influence, they are seen as progressive rather than as a threat to society and thus can freely operate as if they were loyal members of the Democratic Party by rebranding themselves as the DSA. Most people in D.C. do not understand enough about ideologies or economic effects to be concerned. The wealthy are almost all left-wing and like the social status of supporting whatever is labeled as progressive.
The Cuban Embassy has connections with the DSA in D.C. For example, my rival for Shadow Representative, Oye Owolewa, had spoken from a podium at the Cuban embassy. I caught the DSA advertising a meeting with the Cuban embassy to be held at “Busboys and Poets” [a progressive D.C. bookstore], which was in violation of an agreement with the Cuban government whereby the U.S. Embassy in Cuba would not reach out to the Cubans if the Cuban Embassy would not reach out to Americans. If they were chummy enough to organize a meeting with the Cuban embassy, they are probably chummy in other ways as well.
It is suspected that the Cuban government has been funneling money to various Antifa groups. There is less overt political violence by Antifa in D.C., compared to the West Coast. Nevertheless, I suspect that they engage in Code Pink, basically a Communist Chinese outlet at this point (their founder married a man who profited from the Chinese Communist Party). I saw them in various executive office buildings by the Capitol, trying to lobby Congressmen. Code Pink seems to be one of the more palatable Communist Front groups. The general population is not thinking in terms of Communism, Marxism, or the ultimate goal of these ideas, but in terms of immediate promises and claims. The DSA, however, is very aligned with actual Communism; for example, they have socialist reading groups with books such as Das Kapital.
Michael: I am somewhat familiar with the revolution against the Communist regime in Romania. Could you inform us a bit more about what happened? What is your opinion about the events that transpired?
Mr. Ivanof: The Revolution was a net positive but suboptimal.
Ceauşescu was bad, but people speculate that the rapid revolution was due to a clique of power-hungry coup plotters rather than a genuine desire to end Communism. The National Salvation Front was filled with Securitate and Army generals as crooked as the old regime, though they allowed more freedom. The presumption is that the protests in Timisoara were organic, but that a preexisting group (hoping to pose as defenders of Communism and re-align with the USSR) realized Communism was dying and could seize power under the guise of anti-Communism.
People were furious at the government then. Food quality had been falling; basic amenities were declining; malnutrition was rough. For comparison, I am a head taller than my brother, because, spending time in America, I ate more food than he. Ceauşescu organized a rally in front of the Palace of the People, consisting of those in the front clapping and giving illusions of support and people behind who were angry. Then there was gunfire… When the bulk of the Army and the population joined in, it revealed to the coup plotters that they could not retain power with complete top-down control. They needed to actually persuade people and, if they wanted U.S. support, not be overtly brutal. When the mass protests neared the Parliament building, they let them continue for weeks before (unofficially) calling on the miners to beat up their opponents.
After the Revolution, people were optimistic but unsure of what to do. They decided to hold elections, but the problem was that they did not know whether they were going to be real or fake elections. There was a strong, reasonable suspicion that the Iliescu government was planning on rigging the vote in favor of the Partidul Social Democrat (PSD). Many people gathered in Piața Victoriei to protest, and there were many famous clips of Iliescu calling them hoodlums. The Army and much of the police refused to clear them out. So, the miners were brought in to disperse them. Those were the same old thuggish tactics but not quite as brutal as before.
The change was absolutely a net positive! People could actually complain. Just a year earlier, it was unthinkable to hold up signs in protest in front of the Parliament, and now people were actually debating in Parliament. So, that was a massive improvement. Still, it was not as good as people hoped. One of the biggest problems during Communism was the rise in selfishness. Now, self-interest is generally good, but it was so dysfunctional that lying was a survival skill. Without a moral center, people would steal, distort production, and be corrupt. The result was a complete lack of faith in social institutions. So, when people have no moral center, what can they rely on? The answer is: not much. For all the talk about nationalism and selflessness, it just became a seething pot of resentment.
Michael: What is Romania like presently; how has the country fared since the fall of Communism? In recent years, nostalgia for the Communist system grew in Eastern Europe. Did that happen in Romania and where do things stand now?
Mr. Ivanof: Back in the 1990s, there was definitely overt nostalgia but mostly from older people who had stable jobs and lives such as generals’ wives or manual laborers. I heard the wife of a privileged academic remark on how the old regime prevented crime though she did not want a return of the system. My birth father liked the old system mainly because he was employed. Other people called the Communist era “the bad old days” to avoid the dangerous nostalgia some people feel by remembering their youth, confidence, and ignorance.
Of the more recent generation, I see some naive adulation for central planning and the supposed efficiency of large-scale projects, ignoring its routine injustices, inefficiencies, and lack of alternatives. From more anti-totalitarian people, I do see some nostalgia for a time when the crooks and thugs were less stupid. The Communist regimes of the past were brutal, inefficient, and dishonest but not nearly as stupid as the Western radicals now. Wokeism is a mental illness in the guise of ideology with elements more self-contradictory than Communism.
This is not explicitly mentioned, but one issue was whether Romania could become totalitarian again. There was definitely some fear that Romania might go totalitarian in the 1990s and 2000s. Some analysts thought that this could be Romania’s Weimar period. No. There simply was not the stomach for that kind of stupidity, not at that time. There is a risk of any country becoming totalitarian again. However, a generation that grew up under pervasive control, lack of standards, and unpredictability would not be fond of repeating that. What is a bigger risk is that many in the PSD and many young people assume the West to be less corrupt than Romania. They are inclined to believe the West more than internal, rational criticism. When Western institutions become corrupted and governed by utopian fanatics, those ideas pass on to Romanian elites, who are then inclined to follow them. What the E.U. is doing right now looks not quite as rigid as Communism but is definitely autocratic, technocratic, and ideological rather than functional.
Michael: Observing the recent elections in the E.U. and Romania, I have noticed a more conservative turnout in voting. Would you be able to elaborate a bit upon that?
Mr. Ivanof: The PSD is not what it used to be. They were pragmatic crooks with some skill in government. Their policies now tend to be less pragmatic and more focused on copying the E.U. That looks more like Western wokeism than any Romanian political mindset. Effectively, it was a fight between Romanian and E.U. cultural and political norms. Georgescu, the prominent opposing candidate, was painted as pro-Russian and, in Romania, there is a lot of antipathy towards Russia. Remember that my ethnicity is Lipovan (Russian Old Believers), so that was not always a fun time for me.
Because societies are information networks, excluding information is often a path to victory for people who cannot kill each other. Georgescu was a bit softer on Putin than the PSD-aligned candidate, but there is another problem. At one point, he said that Ion Antonescu did some good. Antonescu was the somewhat pro-German dictator in the 1930s and World War II, implicated in 600,000 dead in the Holocaust. Praising that figure is the dark side of Romanian politics. Now, that is in the past, and Georgescu was much more likely to be more focused on the concerns of modern Romanians as opposed to bowing down to the E.U. Georgescu was not an ideal candidate, but he did represent much of the frustration of voters who felt dismissed and suppressed by the dominance of the PSD. As in the U.S., people simply would not talk if they felt their views to be a basis for condemnation.
Michael: Did Georgescu win the elections?
Mr. Ivanof: He won the first round. Then, it was annulled. There was a fight to have another round of elections. It happened, and he lost. Whether he lost legitimately is a different question.
Michael: So, is the PSD back in power now?
Mr. Ivanof: Yes, they are back in power. What is striking to me is the parallel in tactics. There are allegations of Russian interference, using social media, particularly TikTok. I have not heard that allegation before!
Michael: So, they just annulled the election?
Mr. Ivanof: Yes.
Michael: How is that possible?
Mr. Ivanof: That is a good question. Allegedly, it was illegitimate because of Russian interference. America has stronger democratic norms, so allegations of interference were not enough to stop Trump from being elected in 2016. However, Romania has much weaker norms, so using that excuse to annul the results is a much larger risk there. What I find striking is that the man who is trying to control social media for the E.U., threatened the same thing in Germany. The fact that he so casually admitted the effort to overturn the election in Romania was a worrying sign. The E.U. bureaucracy is not interested in protecting the interests of ordinary voters.
Michael: Would you like to share any concluding remarks?
Mr. Ivanof: One point I want to leave you with is this: there are various studies conducted about the IQ of recently adopted orphans, and the results were fairly shocking. Depending on the degree of malnourishment, the average IQ of orphans could be as low as the seventies or eighties. This is an objective metric that shows the catastrophe of mismanagement. With a system relying on people taking initiative, that total dependency and lack of attention is profoundly destructive.
That is also related to daycare. The Western disregard for maternal childcare, in effect, destroys the welfare of people progressives claim to champion. They construct a system, provide themselves with excuses, and do not look at the actual result. The Left claims to favor social welfare, but the actual way they carry that out is profoundly destructive.
In the U.S., many studies examine the results of putting children in daycare at young ages, and they tend to be negative. That is, the effects on the child are negative. Orphanages are a much more extreme environment, but they are a reminder that parents are essential. I am an anomaly. I am not normal compared to the general population, nor to that of orphans. When children get older, the boys would fight a lot. I do not mean harsh words or the occasional fist, I mean real, vicious fighting. The girls, on the other hand, would use their bodies to obtain favors. That environment creates social dysfunction that resembles some very poor populations in the U.S. Dependency is a big part of that. When it comes to reliance on the government, people do not realize how destructive that is.
I would recommend Women, the State, and Revolution, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, by Wendy Z. Goldman. It is not directly applicable to my story, but it finds that the Soviets tried to destroy the family, and after that did not work, they tried to implement a conservative family policy, simply because of the resultant prior social inefficiencies. What we call traditional morality is not really random, but a result of practical experience acquired over time. When we try to deviate from it too much, bad consequences ensue.
Michael: Well, hopefully, we will rebound back to the good traditions of society.
Mr. Ivanof: When I read a lot of stuff now, I am astonished at the similarity to dissident writings from decades ago. We are in a very similar moment. Thankfully, not as lethal, but psychologically very similar.
Well, good talking with you! Two books that you should read from the Bible: Judges and II Samuel.
Michael: Good talking with you too! Thank you very much! This was most illuminating!