A political feuilleton
Some comparisons limp. And some land so precisely that one wonders why they weren’t drawn sooner. The American press, in any case, did not shy away from it. When in February an oversized banner bearing Donald Trump’s likeness was unveiled between the columns of the US Department of Justice, the Washington Post drew a parallel that sticks: the proportions of the building, the color of the stone, the restrained classicism of the architecture—all of it would have made a fitting backdrop for that infamous appearance by Nicolae Ceau?escu in 1989, when the Romanian autocrat lied shamelessly to his people one last time before being booed, overthrown, and a few days later summarily executed by an ad-hoc court.
One need not like this comparison. But one cannot simply brush it aside. For it rests not on the cheap effect of historical shock but on a structural observation: the way power stages itself.
The Aesthetics of Ubiquity
What happened in Washington was no isolated slip. Banners with Trump’s face had already been mounted on the buildings of the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture, and the US Institute of Peace. A board he installed voted to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This is no longer politics. This is the interior design of power.
Ceau?escu played the same game with the instruments of actually existing socialism. He had himself celebrated as the „Genius of the Carpathians,“ as the „beloved son of the nation,“ while his personality cult permeated every niche of public life. The Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman drew the line as early as last year: the forced sycophancy surrounding Trump—the labor secretary inviting him to admire his „beautiful face“ on a banner; the envoy hailing him as the „best candidate of all time“ for the Nobel Peace Prize—is not merely ridiculous but dangerous. It signals that a megalomaniac sits in power whom no one dares to oppose.
The Lie as a Form of Government
It is a hallmark of authoritarian rule that it does not merely embellish reality but systematically denies it. Ceau?escu lied to his people about the food supply while the shelves stayed empty and people froze. He had the Securitate stifle every contradiction and nonetheless claimed that Romania was experiencing a „golden epoch.“ When the protests in Timi?oara flared up in December 1989, he called them a foreign conspiracy, the work of „fascists and provocateurs“—two days before he himself had to flee.
The parallel to the present lies not in the violence. It lies in the method. When a president publicly declares that he has „the right to do whatever he wants,“ justifying it by saying the country is in danger, that is the grammar of the state of exception, spoken in the language of democracy. Ceau?escu spoke the same grammar, only without the democratic decor.
The Stage and the Fall
The decisive moment in Bucharest in December 1989 was not the execution. It was the rally of December 21, which began as a staging of consent and ended in a chorus of jeers. Ceau?escu had gathered the crowd in the square to demonstrate his authority. Instead, the facade collapsed live on television.
The Washington Post recalled precisely this scene when it described the banner at the Department of Justice. One may consider that alarmist. But history knows the mechanism: whoever perceives the public only as a backdrop eventually loses the sense of when the backdrop begins to speak.
This is no prophecy. It is a reminder. And reminders are sometimes what feuilletons can do better than editorials: they pause before the next curtain falls.
