Călin Georgescu, the proposed prime minister of the extremist presidential candidate George Simion, quoted Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the founder of the criminal Legionary Movement movement of the 1930s, on Friday’s show on Realitatea Plus, moderated by Anca Alexandrescu.
- See also the Info Sud-Est documentary: George Simion and the neo-Legionaries of Dobrogea.
Moreover, George Simion, also present on the show, smiled approvingly and completed Georgescu while he recited the quote. The Legionary Movement was a criminal phenomenon of the interwar period, which used assassination as a political weapon and was responsible for the killing of four prime ministers and the bloody pogrom of the Jews of Bucharest.
- G4Media exclusively published the letter of a Holocaust survivor and one of Israel’s most representative figures in diplomacy, Colette Avital, who asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to withdraw his support for extremist candidate George Simion. Read the letter here.
Călin Georgescu’s quote from the show is the following (from minute 02:59 in the video below):
„(…) and I add that he who fights, even alone with a handful of brave men, for his nation and country, and for God (George Simion interjects approvingly: „cannot be…”) will never be defeated.”
The quote from the book „Pentru legionari” (For the Legionaries), written by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in 1935 in Eforie (formerly Carmen Sylva) and which the legionnaire called „the story of my youth, from 19 to 34 years old” (page 22):
- „Since then, the belief that will never leave me has taken root: that he who fights, even alone, for God and his nation, will never be defeated.””
The apologist of Codreanu and his legionaries, proposed as prime minister
Călin Georgescu is an ardent admirer of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. AUR abandoned Georgescu as a proposed prime minister in February 2022, after prosecutors opened a criminal case against him.
Georgescu then said that the leader of the Legionary Movement and the military dictator Ion Antonescu, the main perpetrator of the Holocaust in Romania, were „heroes” and „martyrs,” and that the assassination of historian and former Prime Minister Nicolae Iorga by the Legionaries is „a mystification of history.”
The prosecutors of the General Prosecutor’s Office subsequently closed the case without any explanation. The General Prosecutor’s Office still refuses to clarify the reasons why the case was closed.
Subsequently, in February 2025, prosecutors opened another criminal case against Georgescu, because he allegedly joined a neo-Legionary organization that aimed to commit violence against Jews, politicians, parties, and foreigners. Georgescu is again accused of promoting the Legionary Movement and the criminals Ion Antonescu, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and Ion Moța.
Georgescu said that the Legionary Movement „was the strongest essence and expression of health and self-will coming from the Romanian people (…) it was unique” and that „true history will be rewritten.”
When he was a candidate in the presidential elections of November 24th, the day before the elections, Georgescu had a public mystical-religious delirium, similar to the speeches of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu to the legionaries or in his writings.
Moreover, Călin Georgescu calls those who support GEO 31/2002, the law against extremism and legionaries, „country sellers” who „must be treated as such” („traitors” were killed by legionaries, editor’s note), in an online interview given in 2020 to the Legionary Association „Gogu Puiu and the Haiduks of Dobrogea.”
- Gogu Puiu is a former legionary from Constanța County (1918-1948), and the association promotes legionary discourse, as well as legionary figures, and organizes „haiduk” camps coordinated by Eugen Sechila.
Simion, potential president, was launched into politics by the neo-legionaries of Dobrogea, chanting legionary songs
Info Sud-Est showed in a recently published documentary how George Simion appears chanting a legionary song and how he was springboarded into politics by the daughter of the most well-known legionary from Dobrogea, Gogu Puiu, and how the neo-legionary movement grew in Dobrogea under the lack of reaction from the authorities and under the patronage of Teodosie, the Archbishop of Tomis.
In Dobrogea, the extremist parties and extremist candidates Călin Georgescu and George Simion obtained the most significant results in the 2024 and 2025 elections. See the documentary here.
And Context.ro has identified some of the neo-legionaries who are part of George Simion’s circle, who won the first round of the presidential elections on May 4th and left then with the best chance of becoming the President of Romania.
The law against extremism, ignored by authorities for over 20 years.
The neo-legionary movement, hate speech, anti-Semitism, and the apology of the extremist phenomenon have escalated in Romania in recent years, although there is a law prohibiting this since 2002, which was even strengthened by a law in 2015.
However, the installation of monuments glorifying war criminals, commemorative festivities, extremist public speeches, and other forms of manifestation contrary to the law have been ignored by the authorities.
They began to look closely at the phenomenon after the pro-Russian candidate with a legionary discourse, Călin Georgescu, now a proposed prime minister, reached the second round of the annulled presidential elections of November 24th, 2024. The Constitutional Court annulled the then-election on December 6th, accusing the vitiation of the electoral process in its entirety.
G4Media has consistently written about this phenomenon, advocated for the change of street names after war criminals, and repeatedly drew attention to the anti-Semitic phenomenon in Romania.
Recently, G4Media published an extensive documentary about the extremist phenomenon in Romania and its post-December origins, titled „Who are the Extremists,” structured in three parts. These can be viewed here (I), here (II), and here (III).
About the crimes of the Legionnaire Movement under Corneliu Zelea Codreanu.
Historian Daniel Citirigă, dean of the Faculty of History and Political Sciences in Constanța („Ovidius” University), showed in an analysis for Veridica how in 1923, a group was formed around Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu with the aim of killing newspaper owners and politicians:
„Although avoided for the moment, the assassinations were still to begin, the most resounding case in those years being the killing of the prefect of Iași, Constantin Manciu, by the same Codreanu, in October 1924. However, all these radicals were to be acquitted, in an atmosphere with courtrooms full of supporters, with jurors who admired them and judges who, whether they were sympathizers or out of fear, did not oppose them. The path of radical youth towards political crime was not only open but was often paved with the complicity of the authorities,” notes Citirigă. Read the full analysis here: „Death Lists,” political crime, and the obsessive fascination of fascism.
The Legionary Movement represented the most toxic political and ideological product of Romania in the 1920s-1930s. The main ideas targeted the criticism of the democratic regime, its institutions (mainly political parties and Parliament), and the ties Romania had with democratic European states, especially France and Great Britain. The legionaries killed two sitting prime ministers, I.G. Duca and Armand Călinescu, and Nicolae Iorga, the most important intellectual of Romania in the 20th century.
The criticisms of the Legionary Movement against the political and social realities in Romania were primarily directed at ethnic minority communities, and especially at Jews. Because it failed to obtain an majority in the electoral processes in which it participated, the Legion advocated for assassination as its main political action. Read details here.
Historian Florin Anghel showed for G4Media how, after 1990, the Legionary Movement benefited from the tolerance of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s 1980s propaganda (which was still functioning in the years after the Revolution), regarding the rewriting of events related to the activities of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Ion Antonescu, including the groups of politicians and intellectuals around them. Most had ended up in communist prisons and were presented as anti-communist fighters and heroes. Nicolae Ceaușescu’s propagandists did not write any work regarding the Romanian occupation beyond the Dniester after 1941, the Holocaust, or the Roma genocide.
Education in Romania functioned, after 1990, with formidable moral tolerance towards leaders or regimes that promoted crime as a political or ideological weapon, the historian shows.
- „The relativization of Ion Antonescu’s guilt was transferred, after December 1989, to an increasingly bright image of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, who was presented as just a victim of the abuses of King Carol II’s institutions. The justice system and political courts after 1990 viewed the figures of the Legionary Movement with detachment and sometimes with sympathy, considering them as ‘martyrs,’ ‘heroes,’ ‘anti-system fighters’.”
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