Vasile Bănescu, harsh reaction after the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE and a question for Trump fans in Romanian politics. “Deafening silence in the face of crime is abject complicity”

Vasile Bănescu, former spokesman of the Romanian Orthodox Church and current member of the CNA, released an extremely harsh message after the murder of Alex Pretti, the second American fatally shot by ICE agents, denouncing a slippage of political power that justifies violence and admires dictatorship.

“You can admire dictators only from the position of the dictator himself, installed or not yet in power”, Bănescu wrote on Sunday, in a message on Facebook, emphasizing that a healthy “psychological and moral” mind cannot legitimize “barbarism”.

However, he explicitly criticized the eulogy of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “great dictator”, a gesture that he considers a positioning on the “same bloody murder plane” with the Kremlin leader.

Without naming him, Banescu suggests that Trump is Putin's admirer, despite the fact “that you repeatedly congratulate yourself in front of the world that you are the greatest “peacemaker” in its known history”.

Bănescu refers to a contradiction between the public discourse about peace and the reality of politically motivated violence across the Ocean.

His message comes after the death of Alex Pretti, the second American fatally shot by ICE officers in Minneapolis. Banescu describes the intervention of federal agents as “the murder with presidential blessing of free citizens of America”, people whom he says had faith in democracy and state institutions.

He states that they were “executed publicly”, in broad daylight, “and in front of other peaceful people, just for the guilt of having jumped to the defense of someone assaulted by vicious and armed brutes by a government that cynically justifies the horror”.

“It is beyond evil, hatred or cruelty. It is the programmatic suppression of the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill!' and the collapse of the Moral Law that is the basis of public morality in a democratic state”, Bănescu wrote, in a country where God is invoked from the highest circles.

The former BOR spokesman goes further and calls the tacit acceptance of crimes committed by a federal agency in a country “in the hands of a delusional sociopath” as “wickedness”. In his opinion, the silence after the shooting of the 37-year-old American citizen amounts to a form of complicity.

“Is it really that hard to imagine what Ticăloșia, an admirer of criminal totalitarianism, would do once installed in power anywhere in Europe, including in Romania?”, Bănescu asks rhetorically.

The message ends with a direct question to those in the camp of Romanian radicals, who call themselves “sovereignists”, active fans of American President Donald Trump:

“What is now the public message of 'sovereignist' populism regarding the killing of a totally innocent and exemplary man by his morality at the service of others? Deafening silence in the face of crime is abject complicity with it.”