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

Episode Date: May 11, 2019

Glenn sits down with Andy Ionescu, who survived 26 years of socialism in Ceausescu's Romania before legally immigrating to America in 1999. They discuss the differences between socialism and communism, as well as Venezuela's demise under socialism and President Nicolas Maduro, who Andy describes as "more violent than Ceausescu." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let me quote a not often watched movie from 1983 Twilight Zone. It was a very young Dan Aykroyd, and he said, do you want to see something really scary? That is what he said just before he transformed into a supernatural monster. Well, my guest today, not Dan Aykroyd or a monster, is probably a man you've never heard of. But the story of his life played out like a real-life Twilight Zone. We watched his country transform not to anything supernatural,

but an equally terrifying totalitarian socialist monster. We watched it on this side, but he lived it. 51% of millennials today say they would rather live in a socialist country than a capitalist country, but they confuse Sweden with a socialist country. That is a capitalist country, that from their own prime minister. Now, that number rapidly declines with the older generation. Only 30% of anybody 50 to 64-year-olds have a positive view of socialism. That numbers falls to 28% if you,

you're 65 and older. Why is that? Because the younger generation has never had the experience of seeing what socialism really is firsthand. They miss the twilight zone of Eastern Europe from the 1940s, 50s, 60s into

the late 1980s. That is not the case of the man you're about to hear from. It is a story of terror, fear, hunger, survival. It's bizarre. In short, it is the story of socialism. So, Here we go.

You want to hear something really scary? Next, surviving socialism. Andy, I have, we have so much to cover. And you, reading your blog is just so eye-opening. But I want to do this in chunks. I want to try to take it chronologically a little bit. Tell me about Romania before the communists. come because it wasn't a violent takeover yes and no so Romania was probably one of the most

promising countries before the war before World War II and and unfortunately it got caught into the Axis alliance with the Nazis, simply because of the Molotov-Ribbentrov pact, which was between Hitler and Stalin. And that's when following that, they invaded Poland. But everybody knows that they invented Poland, but almost nobody in the United States knows that actually Romania following this pact was broken,

was broken. Hungary got Transylvania and the Soviet Union got half of Moldova, which both are historical Romanian provinces. So basically the Romanian government didn't have much to say. They followed the axis because Hitler promised them restitution, promised them they would, he would get them rid of the Soviets. and the Moldova territory would be brought back to Romania, kind of like what happened in Finland, where they joined the Nazis because the Russians were always invading them. Yeah. So when the war was over and the Nazis fell,

there was a pact, though, with Russians that they couldn't, they couldn't overthrow any government through military means. They had to... Did you ever see communists keeping the promises? No, no. So what happened, they... In August 23rd, the young king, Michael, of Romania, he was the youngest monarch.

He was only like 17 or 18 years old. He ordered the Romanian army to turn arms against the Nazis and join the Allies. So he arrested. the prime minister, the General Antonescu, and he declared that Romania from that day on is on the ally side. So they fought, actually,

Romanian soldiers fought all the way to Berlin from August 23rd, 1944 until the end of the war. But that didn't stop the Russians from occupying the country. And they brought their own consultants. They organized so-called free elections in which everybody voted for historical parties like the liberals,

not liberals in the American sense, but the true sense liberals and the national peasant country. But somehow, the Communist Party, which was only about 1,000 members strong. They won the elections by 95%. Why? Because they counted the votes. Right. And they were the ones that you, the reason why Romania joined Hitler

was because you didn't want to be communists with the Russians. Exactly. Romanians have... Interesting. Romanians are very, very strongly. They feel very, very strongly about communists. So in 1947, when the communists came to power, as I was telling you, the Communist Party of Romania was only about 1,000 people strong. That in a country was about 20 million at the time.

So they were somehow they won. So you were born in 66? 63. 163. Okay. Boy, we've had wildly different lives. I was born in 64. and born in America and your life and my life are completely different.

Yes. I grew up in America that we were afraid of the Soviets, but not like you. We were afraid of being vaporized. But we, you know, thought we could vaporize you guys right back. And I remember thinking that growing up that the entire block was just this monolithic, communist, we want to take over the world. And it wasn't until the revolutions happened until the wall came down that the people in the West started to see, I mean, you guys are just like us.

We're so much alike, not our governments. No. But the people wanted the same thing. We never understood that when the wall was up. We thought everybody was in lockstep. Well, yes, you're right. But in the same time, what is funny is that we didn't. understood you either.

I mean, we knew about the West freedom and the land of plenty and, you know, you can speak up your mind. But the funny thing is, I'm in the generation. I was pretty young when it was the hippie power flower generations here. And we were so taking. We tried to. to imitate. Really?

Long hair. And let me tell you something, that was a big no-no, because if they were catching, you could actually be arrested. For long hair? For long hair. Yes.

Absolutely. And for wearing those pants with, how do you call them? The bell bottoms? Bell bottom. Exactly. You would go to jail for bell bottom? Well, not go to jail.

I mean, I might actually agree with that. Not go to jail, but picked up from the street, thrown in a van, put in a basement in a cell at the police. And they were sending one guy and beating you good. Why? What was the crime? Because he was. Subversive? He was subversed.

It was too Western. Okay. You were trying to be like the enemy. And you, I mean, it's so strange because now that things have opened up and you have Netflix, et cetera, I've watched some of the old Soviet TV and it's crazy how upside down things were. And yet there was this underground. I don't know if you've ever seen Chuck Norse, Chuck Norse versus communism. As a matter of fact, yes, I did. And I recommended it to Nick.

And we're working on our project together. Really? I'm good friends with Chuck Norris. And he had never heard of it. I'm actually going to his house this weekend and I might bring it to make sure that he watches it. But he had never heard of it. And I said, no, no, no, Chuck, you don't understand. It's not about you. It's about the underground.

It's about the underground movement of dubbing movies, Western movies, Hollywood movies. and because everything was censored by the government, by the party. And yeah, it's a great movie. When the wall fell and you finally saw the West, maybe, let's go 10 years past that, 20 years past that. There had to be some trepidation, but also excitement about what the West might offer, an end to what you knew, an excitement for something that maybe lay ahead. head. I've been, I think we all have in the West been beaten into this feeling that we've been a great disappointment to the world and those who lived behind the Soviet curtain, that we're

no different than that, that freedom is, is, there's no real freedom here. And it's just all this ugly cronious capitalism and is there any feeling like that no why do the people they they they try to get here so hard glenn i know if it's like on the other side yeah you tell me that because it's different because america is still america is land of the free because no matter how uh and let me tell you the tractors okay are here in the united states Okay? People on the other side, people in Romania, people in the eastern countries, they love America. There's no question about that. It's a symbol. It's a symbol and they love it and they appreciate it. You know, the Reagan has statues all over the place in Estonia, in Poland, I believe, in Hungary. I think I was reading in a newspaper, they want to erect a statue of Reagan in Bucharest in Romania. So if America is no different, then the rest of the world, why is that? So let's take a look at what life is like under socialism.

First of all, what is the difference between socialism and communism? Okay. Socialism is a stepping stone. I don't say that, but, you know, Marx himself, the creator of socialists said it. Socialism is just a stepping stone on the way towards communism. So basically, in socialism, everything is owned by the state, the means of production, everything, the economy is planned, but people, they are still having salaries. They work as employees for a salary and so on. there is still allowed a certain amount different from country to country, a certain amount of private property.

For example, you are allowed to own a home or you are allowed to own a little piece of land to supplement your food. In communism, all this disappears. There is no private property whatsoever. There is no salary. there's nothing like that. Everybody works to the best of his ability and he's rewarded according to what his needs

are. Okay. So what's the difference? The reason why let's be clear, communism was not achieved by no country in the world. Not the Soviet Union, not even the North Korean regime. So they're all socialism. The reason why

they called, they are, say they are communist countries is because the government is communist, the party, the leaders are communists. Why? Because they represent themselves as the trailblazers of the people in their march towards communism. So it is normal. They being the ones that trailblaze, they call themselves communism but the society is socialist up to the point where all private property is eliminated so what is Venezuela how close is Venezuela to what you grew up in Venezuela is a socialist country obviously they still have private property to a certain degree but it has a planned economy how close it is to

socialist Romania that would be kind of hard to tell because I wasn't there, but from what I heard, what I read from the internet, they're about there, there about how it was during the Chaucasco years in the mid-80s, when it was the blackest times in Romania. Although I believe in Venezuela, Maduro, I would say it's more violent than Chowashosku was. Holy cow. Yeah. We'll get back to him in a little while because that's quite a statement.

Yeah. Let me ask you one more question on the differences between these systems. Everybody says, we're not going to have communism. We don't want communism. We don't want all of that. Blah, blah, blah, blah. All we want is Sweden. All we want is Denmark.

Are those socialist countries? No. There are capitalist countries which have social programs, social safety nets. So what is the difference between a socialist, country, one run by democratic socialists, and one that is like Sweden. What's the difference? Sweden is a capitalist

economy, period. They don't have a planned economy. That's number one. The state doesn't own the means of productions. It doesn't own most of the land in Sweden. They have high taxes, indeed, to provide

for a white social net, okay, but they are as capitalists and even, I would say, probably more capital than the United States. Because they are more free than the regulations are, yes, yes, the business regulations there are, you know, more relaxed than in the United States. So Sweden, the Nordic countries in Europe are not socialist. by not democratic socialist, not socialist, period. They are capitalist countries which have a wide social safety net. Okay.

Tell me about your parents. What did your parents do? What was your life like, your earliest memory? Let's start in the 1970s. What was it like being a kid? So my parents, unfortunately, divorced. My mother was an attorney. and my father was the son of a capitalist pig or a Khabur.

It's the name you probably heard about the name Kulak in Ukraine. Okay, in Romania is the same thing, but it's called Kiyabur. So my grandfather from my father's side, he owned about 10 acres of land. He was a farmer. He owned 10 acres of land and a covenia store, like a 7-Eleven. And because of that, he was declared an enemy of the people. He was arrested. He was put in prison and released only when he was too sick.

He got TB. And they let him out when he was too sick to work in the Gulag. they wouldn't want to care for him, you know, pay for his medication. So I remember him dying in, I think I was like maybe five years old when he died at home of TB. And your dad took on that shame? My dad, he was very young when they arrested my grandfather. And fortunately, he was out of town. He was out of the village.

He was with the produce at the market in the capital in Bucharest. And he was, he caught wind that his father got arrested. And he lived on the run under an assumed name for the next 15, 16 years. Because they would have arrested him? Yes. Just because of whose father was. Exactly. And they finally caught up with him.

He went to college. And he's to become an engineer. he changed his name to Yonescu, which is my name, which is not actually my name, but it was his assumed name. And when he was in the senior year, they caught up with him. They didn't put him in jail because by that time, they kind of like trying to let people, you know, to relax a little bit. They were the years in which Chauaschus could try to appear more, you know, westernized, being the rebel kid of the communist bloc. But nevertheless, they kick him out from college.

So he took a job as a machinist in a factory. Any doubt with the technology that we have now that your dad would have lived? Excuse me? With the technology that we have now, being able to find anybody anywhere. Oh, no, absolutely. Absolutely not. with a face recognition and stuff like that? No, absolutely not.

So what's school like for you when you're a kid? What's school like? Is it full of indoctrination anti-West? Is it good? Is it the perfect school? What is school like? Okay, school was not bad. Leaving aside the indoctrination part because...

Let's come back to that in a minute. Every classroom had the portrait of the dear leader, okay, over the blackboard. And we had, but later in high school, we had classes teaching Marxist, Leninism, dialectic materialism and all that stuff. But leaving that aside, I can compare with the school that my son went through here. And I would say like in general education, it was really good. It was really good over there. Of course, a lot of discipline.

You couldn't engage in any kind of political discussion other than saying, you know, what a beautiful life you have. Were there spies? Like the Nazis. By the way, there is a, I read an article recently that the Nazis were, the national socialists were not socialist. Is there a difference between the Nazis and the socialists? No, there's, okay.

The Nazis are national socialists. Right. The communists are international socialists. So they're their cousins. Yeah, okay. Okay. And there is no wonder why Hitler and Stalin was best. were best bodies before, you know, before Hitler attacking, you know.

That's why the Nazi flag is red, according to Hitler. Exactly. To show you, we're on the same team here. The, you know, we know in the West about Hitler. We know less about Stalin, but he just seemed to do more of what Hitler was doing. We know Hitler was he bred fear. neighbor against neighbor you never knew who anybody was there were informants he was using kids to inform on their parents in school was that was that a part yes it was the same thing the same methods

informants everywhere you could have um your best friend or your neighbor or even a member of the family informing on you i remember when i was uh 20 something i was working on an offshore drilling rig as a radio man. And I was dating my colleague that I was sharing the same cabin on the rig. I was dating his daughter. And after the revolution, I found out that actually he was an informant. Really? Wow. So you could never trust anybody. And you could never trust anybody. and if you were listening to Voice of America or Radio Free Europe, which were illegal to listen to on the radio, you did it with a volume turned

like way down. Way down so because they put us in this apartment flats with thin walls and you could hear from one apartment to another and you were staying in line for bread or for meat and you had to keep your mouth shut. you couldn't express your... Disgust with how long the line is? No, because you never knew.

The guy behind you could be one of them, and, you know, all of a sudden a black van pulls over, and you're gone. So how much, like, we're experiencing a little bit of this the first time. Americans have always been really open. We trust each other. We trust neighbors.

We trust everybody. Not us, Glenn. Yeah, I know. Because of that history. But we've never had that here until recently, and people here are not reacting to it, I think, the same way that they would where you're from, when they see things where you can just accuse somebody and their life is over. We've always had an innocent until proven guilty. Exactly. And we're seeing this now in this democratic socialist movement, this social justice movement.

America that is there is no real justice if the accusation is out there you'll be destroyed exactly and that's how much of how much of the security apparatus and the informants how much of that stuff were you worried that if I get on the wrong side of somebody even if I don't know that they're an informant if I just get on the wrong side of somebody they could turn me in because they want something of mine or I've wronged them somehow. Was that prevalent at all? Very. Very, Glenn.

I mean, you couldn't, you always had to be on guard. You always had to, and you always had to think about the double meaning of everything, of everything it was said. I was struck when I came to the United States of the innocence of the American people. which pretty much when I came here 20 years ago, they take everything at face value, which was shocking for me. That didn't happen anywhere in the communist block. Everything can have double meaning.

Everybody can be the guy who is going to rat on you. So you always had to be on guard. You always tried not to tell what you're really thinking. There was life day to day over there. Even with your children, like in Germany or not? And with the children, you were not, you were trying to, yes, even with the children, you, when you had small, the moment they were starting to understand what is, they have to keep their mouth shut and they don't have to tell their friends what they hear inside the home. But before that, when they were very young and innocent, parents were trying not to talk about politics or anything, anything against the regime in the present of their children. because you never know.

You never know. They could have gone outside the home, tell their friends, their parents might be informers. They hear and there you go. You're gone. You know, this, I just saw somebody say,

oh, communism has gotten a bad name because, I love this, because of a few famines. It's not that there was a, drought. It's not that the farming, the centralized planning doesn't work. And it's not just a few famines. Tell me what the good times were like in a grocery store. The good times. I mean, under communism, what was it like just, you know, this is an everyday kind of, I'm going to the grocery store to get stuff? Up until probably 1975, he was,

It was from our point of view, it was kind of okay because you could go in a store and find a piece of cheese or you could, it was good because you could go in and find a piece of cheese. Or you could find bread. I'm not talking about imports like oranges, olives and stuff like that. But basic necessity, you know, basic foods, you could find up until 1974, 1975. five. But after that, everything, every single thing was a struggle. And everything was on a ration cart. You had a ration for bread, for butter, for everything that you put on the table, but don't count like everything that you can buy here from the store. Okay. Like very basic necessities, food and food stuff like bread, potatoes, meat, rice, cheese.

rice and stuff like that, okay? But the fact that you had them, you had the right on your ration card didn't guarantee that you're going to get them every month. So you could go to the store and tell the... I have my ration card. Yeah, I have my ration card. Give me my kilo of rice. I'm sorry, we don't have it.

Come back and might be here like three days from now. you come here like three in the morning, make sure you bring your little chair, stay in line, and if you're lucky, you're going to get it. So this was after the 70s. It's not like you could call the store and say, hey, is that shipment of rice come in? Well, you couldn't call the store

because you didn't have a phone. That was the main reason. They would tell you, are you crazy? first of all, but you didn't have a phone because in order to have a phone installed in your home, you would have waited anywhere between eight and 12 years. To get a phone. To get a phone line installed, yes. And that phone line installed most times was a shared phone line with somebody that you didn't even know.

So you pick up the phone and you hear somebody else that you didn't knew who it was. It was the same line. if this was the case ever in America, like two families to share it. Yeah, very early on in my life, I remember some people would have what was called a party line. Party line. Okay, there was another thing that, you know, made you to be very guarded. Because you never know when you pick up the phone, who was the other guy that could have listened on your conversation? So you couldn't call the store.

And if you would have called the store, okay, They were so, are you crazy? Okay, so no phones. No phones. So you get, so all you have to do is just get into your car. What car? What car? You know, your family car.

Okay. I think in Romania only about probably one in 25 families have a car, had a car at the time. One car for maybe 20, 25 families. One car. Why? Because they had the car they had these ugly cars of the people the okay because the industry of the socialist industry wasn't geared towards consumer goods so automobiles were considered consumer goods and they were not considered

a necessity for the people in order to buy a car in Romania first of all you had to save your entire salary. Let's say you're a blue-collar worker in a factory. You save your whole salary every penny and you live out to your wife income for about seven years. Wait, wait, wait. Seven years. You would have to pay your entire salary for seven years.

Seven years. Put it in a savings account, special design for. or buying a car with a national bank. Okay? You couldn't touch those money. You didn't have interest earned on those. 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. After seven years when you finish paying, okay, then you finally get in line to get the car which takes another five to seven years. Shut up. 14 years. 15 years to get a car. Okay.

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, Dacha factory in Pitech. You can pick anything there. Anything, any car, as long it's produced that month. 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, right?

Well, you can't because they didn't produce the red cars that month. So you get your green car or you don't get anything. They give you the key. Wow. 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 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 what's like in gallons like three gallons that's crazy so it's not going anywhere most of the times it's not enough for you to get home with your new brand new car 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. This is how it was to be a car owner. My family never had a car. I got my first car when I was 27, 28 a year after the revolution. That's when I bought my first car. But other than that,

you were considered lucky to have an automobile and, you know, go in. into a vacation. And by the way, you couldn't go into a vacation at any time. You had to calculate. First of all, you had to save the gasoline. Money or? Yes. Yeah.

Okay. To save the gasoline ratio. And then you had to plan it because you couldn't drive your car every weekend. If you had an even the license plate with the ending an even number, you could go, you could drive your car in the week, in the, in the, in the first and third weekend of the month. If it was uneven in the fourth, in the second and the fourth. Why? To save, I don't know, to save the planet, I have no idea. You were not allowed to drive like that. Maybe this is how Libera is.

in America, they were trying to imitate this model. We did it in the 70s when we had a gas shortage. Yeah. You know, and that's when, you know, we had the wonders of Jimmy Carter who loved a lot of the socialists. So you're telling me that he copied the model? Yeah. Even an odd.

Yeah. You could only buy, no, I think it was you could only buy gas on certain days. But you could drive every weekend. You could drive as much as you want, but you're not going to get any gas. Oh, well. So as you're going, as you're going through this, well, first of all, you're 18 years old. Let me take you to 18 years old. You're going to college.

You go into work. I was in, I was finishing high school. And then I got drafted in the armed forces. I was in the Navy. Okay. So it was mandatory to, to serve your country. once you turn 18, you got your... Must have been an exciting time.

I mean... Yes, absolutely. I have a feeling that sarcasm. So they called you, they sent me a letter. I went to the recruitment center. It was in a high school gym. They look at me and say, well, you have big ears. You might be a good radio man in the Navy.

Oh, my gosh. So they examined us and a month later, I was in the Navy, in the Romanian Navy. Went right to the ship. You go to boot camp. We went to the boot camp for two months in which besides the training and, you know, marching and all the stuff that was leaving us tired as dogs, like pretty much here in the United States and gas masks on the face. all the, all the things.

But after you finish all that stuff and you are, you're tired like a dog and you want to hit the sack, okay, you couldn't because they were starting the political indoctrination lessons for about two or three hours every day, in which everybody in that classroom was like, listening some instructors, droning about the 15 Congress of the Communist Party and what Chowoschuskou said and how beautiful it's going to be in the future and stuff like that. So it was a dark period of my life. 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. Corkroaches everywhere, including in the bread. We were in the morning for breakfast, we were taking the loaves of bread from the galley, and we were going outside on the top deck, slicing the bread, so the cockroaches could have enough time to... Oh, my gosh. This is at the time when we were having Reagan. Yeah, probably, yes.

Probably the first. You're 18. Yeah, it would have been 81, 80, somewhere in that area. That's right Ronald Reagan. You were chasing the, you were cutting the bread to let the cockroaches out. Get out, yes. And we had buttertop bread.

And we were joking with, you know, friends that we were trusting. Mm-hmm. That as a military force, we would surrender immediately. If only the American would come and drop loads of Marlboro cigarettes, blue jeans.

And bottles of whiskey over a... He didn't need to drop bombs on us. You just need a Berlin lift and we were surrendered. The food situation was so bad that when you enlisted part of boot camp was working on a farm, wasn't it? We had pig farms. But where the pig meat, where the pig meat go, I never found out because we only got like pieces. of fat and pig skin in our in our plates probably went to you know not to the enlisted people to but to you know to the people in no but you don't understand that's what socialism is all about giving it to

the 99 instead of the 1% the 1% yeah the 1% in socialism Glenn because I hear every almost every day that 99% and 1% and the rich people are the 1% and in socialists, there's not going to be 1% any longer. It's, it exasperates me because in socialism, there is a 1% but the 1% are not the people who deserve to be wealthy and to be in position of leadership. And they are practically in socialism. The 1% who have all the wealth and all the privilege are not the people that work hard for it. Are the party privilege, the elite of the party.

The game players, the ones who know how to schmooze, how to work people. Exactly. Then another category of one percenters are the people who enforce the regime, the Securitate, the Secret Police. Those guys are going and shopping in special stores where you don't have access. They never have, they never lack anything. They don't like food. They don't like, they don't lack booze. They basically, they have their children going to elite schools that your kids, they don't have access to.

and then there is another group of one percenter, one percenters, and you're going to laugh at this. But the last group is people that are selling potatoes in the stores and meat. And the people that the food stuff and the consumer goods are the people who are working in the stores where you go and are trying to buy. are trying to buy the stuff. Because they can get the first and the best. Exactly. They can get the first and the best and they can trade what they have with other people who have

other stuff. They might have that rice that you couldn't get. So, for example, I had a colleague in high school. His father was a butcher. Okay, now what's a butcher in the United States? Okay. But he was somebody. He was somebody. He had Nike's shoes.

He had Levi's blue jeans. His father had a vacation home and a nice apartment downtown. They had two cars. How could he get away with blue jeans for Levi's in particular when others would be picked up for bell bottoms because they were too western? Because the cops, the police, they have to eat too, right? Like the lower, you know, the cops on the beat. the ones that they arrest you for wearing blue jeans or having a long hair.

And they know that that kid is this guys who is the butcher where I'm going to buy meat. So they're not going to touch that. So where is the Marx social justice? Where is the justice for the average? I don't know. Maybe Ocasio Cortez can tell me or maybe Bernie because I didn't live it. There is nowhere. Socialism is

If we're talking about human exploitation Okay, that's socialism And what they are trying to sell the American kids that democratic socialism is different than real socialism It's not true It's just

lipstick on a pig How do you Were you allowed to go hunt for your own food? Could you have guns and rifles and... No. Guns were prohibited. My uncle had a shotgun. Was he on the capitalist?

He was a doctor. He was a doctor. So hunting in Romania was reserved for the elite. I had an uncle who was a doctor, kind of like a celebrity, a doctor for celebrities, for actors and stuff. And he was kind of like an upper crust. He had a double barrel shotgun.

And he was going from time to time to hunt bears and deers. And, you know, but every time when the dictator was in town, he had to surrender his gun to the police headquarters under lock and key. He was not allowed to keep it at home. But other than that, I never touch a gun until I got drafted in the Navy. And it was probably, I don't know if it was a capital offense to have an illegal gun, but probably you were going to jail for life. Did the communists take the guns, or is that part of the culture of Romania? The communists took the guns.

My grandfather, from what my dad told me, he had a shotgun. And when the Germans, they were retreating from Romania, his house was. right next to the railroad and the German troops were throwing their all the stuff that they couldn't carry from him so he picked up a luger pistol from you know from the railroad tracks when the communists came to power the first law one of not the first but one of the first laws they passed was confiscations registration and confiscations of all firearms so you know did he keep it, did he hide it?

No, he surrendered it. He surrendered it and that didn't help him much because they took him and put him in prison anyway because he was a capitalist pig. And I remember what my father told me after the revolution, he told me if I would have known what was going to happen after they did that, I would never allow my father. I would have taken those guns and hit them. that's everywhere communist socialists communists they came to power they tried to exceed to the power they have this policy of restricting gun rights and it's absolutely every time it happens it

happened right now in Venezuela when Maduro came to power he did the same thing When you start to lose power, you have to. You have to stop the democratic part of socialism goes away quickly. Exactly. And then you have to use force. Correct. Tell me how homosexuals and gays and women and all this. If you were identified as a gay, lesbian, transvestites or whatever,

you were going to prison period. It was a decree in which homosexuality was criminalized. And that was the law in Romania, believe it or not, they only got rid of that law way in 2006. So it was another for another seven years after Communists fell. They still had the law. From what I heard, they were meeting underground, but it was very, very risky to be outed as one. You, you, they were going. And the thing is, if they were arrested, the survival expectancy in prison as a gay person, it was probably weeks. They were usually killed by other inmates under the orders of the prison guards. What would have happened to a guy like Martin Luther King?

In Romania. Guy who stood up and said this is wrong and this is an injustice. Beaten within an inch of his life, if that would have happened after 1960s. Because if he would have been arrested, let's say he would have been arrested before 1960s, he would have been just disappeared. Okay? But when Chowosgescu came to power, he didn't actually,

he killed people, but he wasn't like Maduro style, like shooting people on the streets. He was arresting them, beating them, keeping them in home arrest. If he was something like Doina Kornah, like a dissident, Doina Kona, who had her son who lived in France and he was a personality, house arrest,

24-hour surveillance, and periodical beatings. This is how it was. Chavosgescu wasn't, I mean, he was absolutely a dictator. I mean, he was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide. Yeah, he was because he practically. starved a lot of people to death. And he killed people, especially when he was young. Before becoming president, he was the head of the Communist Party security services. I know because I had an uncle who actually he was, he was one, he was in the military and he was one of his bodyguards. And my uncle witnessed Chauushescu ordering killing of the people. There were a couple of

peasants revolts in Romania, people that didn't want to give up their lands, and Chauoschusk led the repression. And he gave the order for the security forces to machine gun those peasants. When I listen to the people in Washington on the left, I think they have no idea what's going on. They're clueless, they're so separated from the people. that they don't even realize how out of step they are. And it brings me to 1989 and the revolution. The way I remember this and correct me if I'm wrong, the way I remember this is the dictator walks out onto a balcony,

I think it was his wife, and he's giving a speech, and he's used to everybody praising him. And I think it was one like old woman in the Christ, or something that said liar or freedom or something. And then the whole crowd turned on him for the first time. And he was shocked. He had no idea, right?

Yeah. He was trying. I mean, the revolution started about a week before in the city of Timisoara. And he sent there the security troop to try to repress the people, shot them in the street. He shot the wounded in hospitals. He sent people and shot people wounded in the hospital. In the hospital beds, yes. Why is this the only violent revolution?

Everything else, you know, was rocky, but this was awful. Why? He tried to hold on to power. He didn't want to listen to what Gorbachev told him. It's time to go, probably. He didn't want to believe that the people had enough of him. He gathered the people when he started. He gathered those people in the,

in the government plaza in Bucharest, where the government building was, and you remember that from the TV. What he actually tried to do that, he was trying to bribe the population. He said that he's going to raise the salaries, the minimum salary on the economy, with, I don't know, a couple of dollars a month and stuff like that. And actually nobody is very clear or what happened,

but somebody yelled something. something and then some kind of loud noise happened and then that's when the people they just lost their mind. And then what happened to him? He, they broke through the police line and I think the police didn't offer much of a resistance because the police was pretty sick and tired. The cops were pretty sick and tire of him also. And people rushed into the government building. 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 flight control or something that they're going to be downed if they don't land. So they landed in the

middle of a highway, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, And they were picked up by a military vehicle, took into a military unit. And you probably already see the two-hour trial. And where were you? I was in Constanza. But the circus in my hometown started actually the moment he left. In the air. Yes.

That was the power. Did you see that moment on television? Yes, I've seen it on television. Did you see it then, though? Yes. And what was that? Well, immediately after he started saying, quiet, quiet, quiet, please.

Right. The moment when that happened, they cut the transmission. And what did you think? Where you were. I know something was going on because that never happened. And then probably, if I remember correctly, about half an hour to an hour later, less than an hour, people took over the television stations and new faces came.

the dictator ran away and everybody was happening. Everybody was trying to get in the front of the camera to express their feelings and stuff. So this when we got out, I tried to go to pick up my wife from work and we went to the party building in downtown of my hometown. Chaos, things flying through the broken

windows, telex machines and the tables and chairs and stuff like that, people were like pretty wild, you know, expressing them. Then we went marching to the secret police headquarters. We freed a couple of guys that were in one of their jail cells underground from under the first floor, broke the bars and let them out. And then I remember millions of sheets of paper flying from the windows. Those were the dossiers that they had on each one of us. And that was the first day. And the second day, that's when the shooting started in my hometown. Because they had, probably, they had, from what I heard, they had his loyalists, which were, we believe at the time, they were actually Palestinian hired by Chowushescu because he was put in such a situation that he

was entrusted even if his own people in the Secret Service he was distrusting them too and from what I heard he actually was he had a plan with Yasser Arafat in case something happens, people from the PLO living in Romania as foreign students undercover would fight for him, would try to help him, you know, escape. So it was chaos. We had people shooting from top of the buildings. We call them terrorists. I don't know how many they were apprehended. We heard that a bunch of them they were, but we never saw them. I got a call from my company, and I had military experience. They called me if I want to go on patrol. I went to the company. They opened up each company, they had a room with arms and ammo for what they

call the patriotic guards, the militia. So they open up that room. They open up the cans of ammo. They gave me an AKM 47 to Magsovamo and we went on patrol in the harbor because they were saying he's going to try to escape aboard a ship. He's going to go to Iraq to his Saddam Hussein friend or Yasser Arafat, whatever. That didn't happen. They already apprehended him the days before, but that didn't stop the shooting. And we had a, in, since the revolution started, up until he started quieting down early January, around 2,500 people were shot. Wow.

Killed. Terrifying? No, actually. Why? Because we were so happy. I mean, did you all know what? Did you all know what a monster he was and you just ignored it?

Yes, we, everybody knew what a monster. a monster we had, but you asked me, we were terrified. We were terrified of only one thing, Glenn. The only thing we were terrified that he's going to come back. We're not terrified of the bullets. We're not terrifying that people shooting us. We were not terrified of anything. But we were terrified that tomorrow morning we're going to wake up

and we're going to see the guy back on television and the cops are going to come and get us. And one of the reason there are not too many pictures of the revolution and not too many videos shot films shot of that

because people were afraid to when you were seeing a guy with a camera shooting you automatically thought is one of the Securitate guy and is taking your picture and you know and after

After the Chowalsu come back, he's going to get you because he knows it was you on the street. So as somebody who came here with that understanding and that lifestyle, that life, what does freedom of speech mean to you here? Oh, it's everything. It's, I mean, it's without freedom of speech, there is nothing. I live 26 years without having it. The fact that I can criticize the president, which I don't because I like him. I didn't like the previous one.

The freedom of speech is extremely important. Without freedom of speech, and I'm looking at these millennials, which are trying by all the means to say, oh, this is offensive. You cannot say this. You cannot say that. Freedom of speech is made to protect speech that you don't agree with.

Speech that you might consider offensive. Why is that important? If it's not freedom of speech doesn't protect speech that everyone agrees with. It wouldn't be necessary. You agree with me? Okay. It's freedom of speech. speech protects the speech that people might not agree with. They might consider it offensive.

And Second Amendment is also very important because Second Amendment protects the first. And I know because I live through that. When the Communists came to power, they got rid of the Second. We didn't have the Second Amendment per se, but they got rid of guns. Why? So they can shut up us later after they got the guns. They were not afraid of us any longer. So they took the freedom of speech too. So if Romania won, why'd you leave to America 10 years later?

Because of disappointment, Glenn? In what happened after? And what happened after was second-line party activists Chowcesters' bodies that they were like behind him they all of a sudden dropped the name of communists and they called themselves

socialists and Democrats. 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. So practically Romania became a corruptocrat country, a republic of a former Communist Party activists turned socialists who controlled the economy and controlled everything. control the system. The governing party in Romania right now is called the Social Democrat Party.

And I would say probably Bernie would be proud to lead that party. Wow. Yeah, Bernie Sanders. It's when we realized that actually we had free speech. You could, after 1989, you could criticize the government. We had a free press. But in fact, if you went on the streets and tried to say, I disagree with the government, and they were gathering too many people like it was in 1990 during the Mineriyadh,

I don't know if you remember that, what happened. They sent the miners and they sent the police and they bid the crap out of everybody, just for wearing glasses or having a beard, you look like an intellectual, therefore you're against the regime. Students put in the hospital, intellectuals, libraries destroyed. It was the same thing with second party activist in charge. How much do you think this stuff is happening here in America now? I mean, you look at the political landscape. People who are the most awake, generally speaking, I think are the people from the former

Soviet block. I talk them all the time. It'll stop me in the street. Because we recognize the rhetoric and the science. Rhetoric because we recognize the rhetoric. We live with it in our youth. So we know when Ocasio Cortez or Bernie Sanders or Hillary speaks about it takes a village. We heard that before. Okay. But this time it'll be done right. When did that happen, ever happen? Socialism was tried in 40 countries around the world. It failed every time. What does it make you believe that is going to succeed the 41st time?

Because the right people were in charge this time. So are you telling me that the American socialists are somehow smarter than any other socialists on the planet that? Bernie Sanders is smarter than every other leader of the party in other 40 countries that tried and failed. That's kind of an elitist, don't you believe? I'm struck by your T-shirt. I've been looking at it the whole time. You got one.

I have one. You brought me one? I'll proudly wear that. Romania, that's the home of Ladd the Impaler. Correct. Who is the inspiration for Dracula. It is. I mean, the Impaler Army, that's pretty dark.

No, it's fun. Vlad the Impaler. Yes, he's a national hero in Romania. He's an historical... Wait, wait. A real prince. He fought against the Ottomans, the Muslim Turks. and he beat them several times until he died being betrayed by his people in his inner circle.

But he's a national hero. He's very, very respected. Unfortunately, well, I wouldn't say unfortunate. He was transforming a fictional character by an English writer in a vampire. He wasn't a vampire by any means. He was a prince and he was pretty badass. He kept the country free. He beat what was probably at the time the greatest army in the world, which were the Ottomans.

They were ruling at the time. They were, I would say the America, the American power of the day. And he managed to beat them several times. He was a just ruler. He was tough. hey those were the times he learned actually the art of impelling from the Turks when he was imprisoned by them as a child so this is my respect for him and combined with my anti-communist stance raising commies to new heights and

there is another one if I may say I don't know if that's gonna pass on Nick Searcy has one which says, we show of communism up your ass. You can cut that. Well, tell me what you really think. Tell me what you really think. You don't want to know.

So, might you leave us? Talk directly to somebody. Look into that camera. Okay. And speak directly to somebody who, it's 20. and says, look, I appreciate that happening in your country, but it's not going to happen here.

That's not what the Democratic Socialists want to do here. It's different. It's not that. Well, it's exactly that because always, without fail, socialism, either socialism or democratic socialist or call it as you may want. It always ends up like that. You just cannot share the wealth. You cannot end that way in Sweden, in Denmark, in Norway. Because there's not socialism.

You try to make Sweden government to abandon free property and try them to plan their economy in five years, like in five years plans. Try to do that. And you're going to see Sweden becoming a third world country. in less than a decade. So you can tell goodbye to your IKEA furniture and your Volvo car. I can guarantee you that.

Socialists fails every time without fail. That's period. People stealing other people wealth. And redistributing it. That's just not working. how it's going to work. You cannot get rid of the 1%, you just can replace it in socialism. 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. You replace them as the 1% of capitalism, you replace them with people who don't deserve to be 1%. 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. 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.

Where are you going to go if we become that? There is nowhere else to go. This is the last country in the world that is, you know, keeping socialism at bay. There is nowhere else to go. My wife told me we stopped running from socialism too soon. There is nowhere else to run. nowhere else. Andy, that's great to meet you.

Thank you very much, Glenn. 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.