Dictionary

Ceaușescu moment en · NOUN

Etymology

Coined by The Economist when comparing a speech by Tony Blair on 7 June 2000 with Nicolae Ceaușescu's last speech on 21 December 1989: :But when the prime minister gulped and started to skip over chunks of his text in the face of the unexpected heckles and slow hand-claps from the unthreatening, decent folk of the Women's Institute, it was uncannily reminiscent of the moment in 1989 when the obedient masses of Bucharest startled Nicolae Ceausescu by their sudden decision to boo. The dictator on his balcony raised his hands, looked puzzled, stepped backwards—and the rest is history.

Meanings

1. A moment when a public figure is booed in public; (by extension) a moment when a person or regime previously considered unassailable suddenly looks vulnerable; the outbreak of a revolution.
   • The late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted to Hyundai founder Chung Ju Yung to having dreams where he was stoned to death in the public square by his people. What the Dear Leader feared was his "Ceauşescu moment" (which can now also be understood as a “Qaddafi moment”). 2012, Victor Cha, Nicholas Anderson, “North Korea after Kim Jong Il”, in North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy, and Society, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 104:
   • Was the European Super League fiasco the Ceausescu moment for neoliberalism? 2021 April 24, David McWilliams, “A 30-year economic supercycle ended this week”, in The Irish Times:
   • I myself became certain that Saddam had reached his fin de régime, or his Ceauşescu moment, when he celebrated his 100-percent win in the “referendum” of 2003 by releasing all the nonpolitical prisoners (the rapists and thieves and murderers who were his natural constituency) from Abu Ghraib. 2005 May 9, Christopher Hitchens, “Abu Ghraib Isn’t Guernica”, in Slate:
   • 2003 July 15, Boris Johnson Zimbabwe Hansard Vol. 409 Part 429 col. 6WH One way or another, Mugabe will go and it will be sooner rather than later. It is a question for him: does he want to go like Ian Smith and continue to live in Harare or does he want a Ceausescu moment?
   • The kind of civil upheaval that many abroad had expected and planned for with Fidel out of the picture simply did not transpire. There was no Ceausescu moment. 2009, Julia Sweig, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 209:
   • John McCririck, the racing pundit and former Big Brother contestant, later described it as a Ceausescu moment. Galloway had primed himself for adulation, only to stand above the crowd and find that his waving did not mute their howling. 2006 January 28, Shane Hegarty, “Profile George Galloway: Cat who didn't get the cream”, in The Irish Times:

Forms