Fascists slandered specific individuals, including government ministers and leading writers, accusing them of treason and heresy because of their supposed ties to Freemasonry. Drawing on a large corpus of anti-Masonic texts, they claimed to be opposing a global conspiracy against the Christian world by Freemasons in co-operation with Jews and communists. Cuza’s National Christian Defence League and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s League of the Archangel Michael*as well as for journalists and writers associated with smaller groups or those attempting to create a united fascist front. Anti-Masonry was a core doctrine for both of the major fascist parties in interwar Romania*A. Romanian anti-Masonry was an attempt by politically marginal parties on the extreme right to undermine the authority of their mainstream opponents. Unlike attacks on already stigmatized groups such as Jews and communists, the objects of anti-Masonic attacks had institutional power and were socially respectable. "Clark analyses the anti-Masonic discourses used by fascist groups in interwar Romania. In this way, we re-examine the appropriation and instrumentalization of ethnicity and national identity and the representation of communal national self-consciousness.
Taking into account these discourses and policies in wartime Romania – and their effects on Romania’s minority communities – we can arrive at a more holistic understanding of localized events such as those involving the Catholic communities in Moldavia. What then, was to be done with them? For Romania’s ardent nation builders the answer was unequivocal: either dispatch the dysgenic minority groups or else incorporate them into the national ethos and ultimately the national body. In an increasingly nationalist environment, Romania’s ethnic minorities were seen as incompatible with the homogenous nation-state.
Research in Romanian archives and a number of journals published in wartime Romania suggests that biopolitical discourse was not limited to government and intellectual circles it also had direct and indirect impacts on Romanian’s minority communities, penetrating their political and even religious discourse.
In this way, we can better gauge the impact of prevailing nationalist discourses and policies on Romania’s ethnic and religious enclaves. I intend to build upon existing scholarship by examining the immediate impact of such discourse and policies on minority communities subject to Romanianization or expatriation-that is, by examining these phenomena from the bottom up. This article outlines a methodological framework for re-examining the Moldavian Csángós in the context of Romanian biopolitics and population policies during WWII.
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