We Asked a Bunch of Romanians if They Hate British People

A couple of weeks ago, news reports suggested that the British government were thinking about launching a self-deprecating advertising campaign in Bulgaria and Romania in an attempt to dissuade Bulgarians and Romanians from moving to the UK. When the two countries joined the EU in 2007, limits were put in place to stop their citizens leaving them to live in other EU nations. These limits are due to be lifted in December this year, and – presumably after waking up screaming in their beds every night at the thought of 29 million eastern Europeans rocking up at Calais – the Tories have apparently considered putting up posters in Bucharest and Sofia warning them that Britain's shit, they're not welcome and they'd really be better off staying where they are.

Eventually, everybody's national pride got so seriously hurt that one of Romania's largest newspapers, Gândul, decided to take matters into their own hands, putting together a massive retaliatory online campaign called "Why Don’t You Come Over?"

The campaign featured mocked-up posters that boasted of everything that's great about Romania. Examples of which you can see below:

The people at Gândul lost control of their campaign once they launched their Facebook app, which allowed Romanian xenophobes to spew racist bullshit directed towards the Brits in the form of ad messages. Around the same time, Gândul bought a whole page of advertising in The Guardian so they could send a message to David Cameron – and that was pretty much the end of it. If you hear of Romania or Bulgaria in the British media right now, it'll undoubtedly be in refernce to the horsemeat scandal.

These days the campaign website functions as a couch-surfing forum, in which Romanians invite British people to visit and offer them jobs. It's supposed to be a joke, but as a native Romanian I was still curious to find out if I was the only person who thought that promoting xenophobia at a national level was wrong. I took a walk around Bucharest and asked a few people how they felt about both campaigns, Romanians working abroad and whether or not they hate British people.

VICE: Hey guys, what do you think of the Romanians that work abroad?
Him: Some have a shot at doing something with their lives, some don’t. I guess it depends. Many think that if they go to England to study, that automatically means they are going to find a job but that's not the case, and they end up wasting their time. Do you think that's the reason the British would want to make media campaigns to keep us from going there?
Yeah, and that wasn’t OK at all. Even if they’re smarter than us, I don’t think it’s nice to discriminate like that. I mean we’re all equal. The problem is that the Romanians who end up there don’t have an education; they are people looking to do manual labour or to steal and that’s why they think badly of us.

From 2014, Romanians and Bulgarians will be able to find work easily in Britain.
Homeless Anglophobe: I’ve seen all there is to see in Europe, things that made me cry. You never stop being an immigrant there. They all think you’re out to steal their bread money. Some people in the UK were thinking of launching a campaign against…
I don’t know about the British, but I can tell you all about the Canadians. My daughter is a teacher there and they treat her like trash. She has to drive 40 kilometres to be a substitute teacher in Toronto, and the winters are horrible. So is that really discrimination?
Young man, they regard her as being worse than the blacks there. They tolerate them because they only do manual labour, but they hate us while smiling, because we steal their jobs at half the pay. What do you think about the media campaign the British thought of launching telling Romanians and Bulgarians not to come over?
Rammstein fan: It sucks, but I guess I understand it. They have a problem with the gypsies that come from Romania so they discriminate against us all, without making any exceptions. Does that make it OK that we answered back with the Gândul campaign?
No, it’s not. We ended up looking like stupid braggers, especially since most Romanians who go to work there are crappy. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, I know there are some smart ones, but it’s hard not to think of them as a mass of idiots.

Will the Romanians who move to Britain in 2014 live the good life?
Lady: Who are you kidding? They’re like sacrificial lambs, who will end up living in the British ghettos, because they can’t find work in Romania. Did you hear anything about a British campaign against us?
Of course I did. Keep calm, they won’t be protesting much longer. Everyone loves cheap labour, because no one wants to clean their own shit. Especially when a Romanian offers to do it for half the price. We also created a campaign in which we told them to come over.
That’s a good idea. I’d invite all the people who are on welfare in England to come over. They’d live like kings in Romania.

What do you think about the people who work abroad?
This guy: I know that they all voted for President Basescu. What else? Well, I know that the best of us are leaving and this country will soon become a ghost town. Did you follow the British campaign against us?
No, but I saw our campaign which was awesome. Even the part where we’re trying to lure them here with our hot women?
Of course man, it’s an objective fact that we have hotter women.

Why do so many Romanians want to move to Britain in 2014?
That man: Because the politicians left our country in ruins. Anyway, most of us are already there. So you think it’s OK to launch campaigns to keep Romanians out of Britain?
They’re just defending their interests. You would do the same if the Chinese came to steal your press job for lesser pay.

Then our campaign against them was justified?
Well, if we can’t do anything else, at least we can play with propaganda. That’s what Romanians are; nationalists. Are Romanians so lazy it makes all the other countries hate us?
This hat-wearing woman: They don’t have a problem with the people who go there to work, but with the ones that go there to become beggars.

So that’s why they would want to keep us out of their country?
Of course. The problem is always the same: The gypsies have Romanian IDs, so the British think we are all the same and end up rejecting us all.

More from Romania:

The Reluctant Cannibals of Romania

My Mum Won't Let Me Wear My Blood-Stained Shirt

I Was the Only Top Model in Communist Romania