Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at how the local folkloric tradition serves as a political tool in the discourse of the sovereigntist by creating a sense of evisaged stability employing strategies of in-group polarisations.

Paper long abstract:

In a world dominated by 'polycrisis' (J. C. Junker 2016) the need to find some stability manifests with an increasing force and one of the tools appears to be the 'return to the roots'. However, in some cases this return comes with the recontextualization, reinterpretation, reframing, and sometimes, invention of local heritage.

Although in many cases, the revitalisation of the vernacular cultures creates a sense of natural belonging to a community, there are sufficient examples in which the transformations of the local cultures tend to carve smaller groups based on a conjunctural interests which transcend common sense of security in a moving world. This is the case of sovereigntist and right-wing political undertakings which create a new form of tradition by selection and, simultaneously, by polarisation, build smaller group with a new sense of safety against imagined insecurities.

This paper proposes to analyse the recomposed local 'traditions' during the wedding of one of the leaders of the Romanian right-wing and sovereigntist party AUR (Alliance for the Union of the Romanians) aimed at joining together those who 'fell Romanian' in the 'imagined community' of globalisation opposers. The analysis will focus on the settings, the actors, the attires, the food, the ritual songs and stages of the wedding and, additionally, will draw a comparison with another similar event, the wedding of the pre-WWII leader of the Romanian fascist, orthodox, nationalistic party.