We need to talk about totalitarianism

and dispel some myths about those protests in Bulgaria

Massive protests in Bulgaria just brought down the sixth government we’ve had in the past five years. People on social media were ecstatic — because people on social media a) had no idea what actually happened, b) have retained some childlike naivete and the genuine belief this means real change, or c) are so utterly stupid they think they’ve won.

Here’s what actually happened, but first a word of clarification about the government that resigned. It was a coalition between the biggest party in parliament, GERB (whose leader is so thick with Ursula von der Leyen, she came personally to a party rally before the last elections. Meddling? What meddling?), the socialists, and a silly populist party called, tellingly, There Is Such a People. All pro-EU. All pro-NATO. All pro-war, with the possible exception of the socialists who are still formally in favour of good relations with Russia but not at the expense of getting kicked out of government, so they’re taking all the rest in with no complaints.

Since this government was formed and headed by a man who looks like a body part (an appendix. I mean an appendix.), it has done everything it was formed to do: it signed the eurozone papers even though it had promised to not rush with the eurozone seeing as so many people were against it; more money for Zelensky; and more commitments for the Green New Deal. In short, whatever the lords and ladies in Brussels demanded, the Zhelyazkov government supplied, with blatant disregard for what people actually wanted. And then they made a “mistake”.

In the draft budget for 2026, the first eurozone year for the country, the government proposed higher social security taxes and higher income taxes. The noble opposition could not take that. The noble opposition called its voters to arms. The noble opposition jumped up and down in downtown Sofia, literally, whole their spontaneously gathered voters displayed posters with “This Is Not Moscow!” on them for some no doubt sound reason that escapes me right now.

I call them the noble opposition because we also have ignoble opposition and that’s one openly pro-Russian nationalist party and another nationalist party whose name I can’t remember for the life of me. It was either Glory or Sword, or something. Anyway, they don’t count. The noble opposition counts.

The noble opposition comprises a party called Democratic Bulgaria and, because we’re really good at party names, We Continue The Change. The noble opposition has formed or participated part in several caretaker and regular governments since 2021 — including a coalition with GERB and the man they said they were now protesting against, U.S.-sanctioned oligarch Delyan Peevski. The noble opposition is pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-war, and pro- everything else the EU might ask of them. And then the noble opposition turned on its former government partners. What gives? Totalitarianism.

When tens of thousands of people protested our entry into the eurozone the government held and the noble opposition had no problem with any corruption in it. When people demanded a referendum, they were denied on the grounds that we should leave fiscal matters to fiscal experts — but we’d really like you to vote for us at the next elections because we believe you’re so very smart. Did EU HQ have anything to say about, I don’t know, ignoring the will of the people? No, of course it didn’t.

A lot of the protests were organised by the pro-Russian nationalist party, which automatically made them illegitimate even though the great majority of the protesters had much bigger priorities than Eurasian geopolitics: they just wanted us to keep our own currency. Poll after poll showed that most Bulgarians do not want to become part of the eurozone. Official inflation data surged from almost nothing in the spring, before the EU approved our request to join the eurozone, to over 5% in the autumn. Nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen despite poll after poll showing we do not want war on our doorstep and we especially do not want to be referred to as a “frontline country”, per von der Leyen herself. Both government and noble opposition were totally fine with all this. Both government and noble opposition worked for the common cause: “Whatever the EU says.”

Then came the draft budget. Like every other, or almost every other country in the EU, Bulgaria is having trouble covering its social and welfare costs, mostly due to demographic trends but also, more recently, due to some new financial commitments related to that common cause above. Weapons may be a present for the Ukrainian army but they still cost money to produce; new loans to cover loan guarantees for the Ukraine carry interest that needs paying; more new loans to cover higher minimum wage (and pension) thresholds approved by the noble opposition while it was in power with its current enemies also carry certain costs, to put it mildly. Green energy commitments, incidentally, also cost money. That money had to come from somewhere and that somewhere was all of us.

The 2026 budget was a particularly hot potato from day one. It had to be dropped. Cue anti-corruption protests that prompted one of the speediest government resignations in living memory, if not the speediest. I suspect Zhelyazkov sighed with relief when parliament overwhelmingly voted in favour of the resignation.

Now, his government wills stay on as caretaker until the president asks GERB to form a new cabinet; if it fails, which it will, the president will ask the second-biggest party in parliament to form a cabinet. Guess which party this is? That’s right, the noble opposition. With a sudden clairvoyance I see them also failing to form a cabinet that parliament will approve. The potato is still hot and will only get hotter in the coming months as true inflation continues to hit hard, but in euro, so that’s all right.

A brand new caretaker government will be appointed, and it will bear the responsibility for everything that happens, including the new budget, which will inevitably feature at least some of those higher taxes that presumably sparked the protests before the noble opposition remembered its title refrain of anti-corruption. And then there will be presidential elections, possibly simultaneous with the next parliamentary ones so as many people as possible get confused who to vote for. Apparently, people get confused when they have to vote for more than one thing, according to sociologists.

In case the nationalists get to poll uncomfortably high, the EU will do what it did in Romania, maybe slip a Russian passport on the party leader’s nightstand or something and we’ll get a proper pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-everything good president, like Romania. Can’t have a frontline country going rogue and independent at the worst possible moment, now, can we? Within a year, the same people who posed as enemies just last week, will likely be together again, governing over the flock — and raising the taxes they agreed not to raise in 2026.

They will say they had decided to overlook their differences for the pro-European, pro-euroatlantic (yes, they use this as a real word), greener future of Bulgaria and the upholding of democratic values, whatever the cost. They did it once and it passed. It will pass again and get a pat on the head from EU HQ. This is how democracy works, after all. We’ve got a continent to federalise.