Meaning of Ceaușescu moment | Babel Free

Definitions

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.

Examples

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”).”

“Was the European Super League fiasco the Ceausescu moment for neoliberalism?”

CEFR level