Political Critique: Is Poland’s new government opening the door to the far right?

Although occasionally described in the media as “far right”, PiS has so far remained within the boundaries of the mainstream political spectrum. It is committed to fundamental political freedoms, albeit within a more majoritarian framework; it wants to maintain Poland’s EU membership, albeit as part of a looser union with greater national sovereignty; and it accepts the basic tenets of civic pluralism, albeit with a greater role for the state in promoting socially conservative and ‘patriotic’ values, and a more prominent place for the church in public life. The party is a member of the same grouping in the European Parliament as Britain’s Conservatives. Its leading figures would fit comfortably within the US Republican Party (in terms of socio-cultural outlook at least; economically they are to the left of many Democrats). Poland’s actual far right has struggled to make any significant political breakthrough. Some have ascribed this to PiS itself, which has been able to harness the support of all but the most extreme nationalists while itself remaining in the mainstream. Yet there are reasons to worry that this balancing act could break down.

Taken together, these trends offer a worrying vision of Poland’s future direction. Weakened democratic institutions; increased government control over the media, judiciary, and police (including expanded surveillance powers); new “territorial defence” militias (with the defence ministry suggesting there would be no problem if ONR wanted to form one); centrist and left-wing political opposition portrayed as enemies of the nation; a conspiratorial sense of victimization at the hands of shadowy domestic forces and hostile foreign powers; a fear of the encroaching Muslim other, whose arrival threatens national destruction; a historical policy that promotes a one-sided version of Poland’s past designed to fortify patriotic sentiment (and threatens prison sentences for those who write things that are “contrary to the facts”); an angry, neglected youth and growing anti-establishment sentiment – such conditions are rife for exploitation by the far right. 

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