openDemocracy: Poland is moving further towards autocracy

For many years after the collapse of communism Poland's political landscape was characterised by consensus. But consensual politics frayed in the mid-2000s and gave way to contention between two main political parties, PiS and Civic Platform. The rivalry of these two parties has fostered polarisation in Poland. Since 2015, when PiS won an outright majority in parliamentary elections and when Duda first became President, PiS has aggressively pursued its policy agenda (including troubling reforms to the judiciary, anti-abortion measures, and politically targeting LGBTQ individuals), pushing Poland's liberal democracy toward conservative autocracy. In turn, the government's actions have stoked the fires of polarisation. [...]

What about when polarisation gets ratcheted up? The PiS government has been marked by politicisation of gender equality and regression for LGBTQ Poles. Quite often, actions in these areas have been justified on political bases with few appeals to biblical canon or Catholic dogma. Nevertheless, Poland's Catholic establishment (chiefly, the Polish Episcopal Conference) and religious conservative voters endorse and take succour from PiS's reactionary measures. Resultantly, Poland is among the most polarised countries in the EU along religious and gender and sexual orientation dimensions. [...]

Events following President Duda's re-election, such as the arrest of an LGBT activist and resultant protests as well as the persistence of so-called 'LGBT free zones' in several Polish towns, have signaled the continuation of polarisation trends. As long as PiS retains its control of governing authority – which it will do at the national level for at least three more years, until the November 2023 parliamentary elections – polarisation is a useful strategy that allows the party to pursue its conservative autocratic agenda. The liberal opponents of PiS are left to pursue resistance through collective action and to build resilience in local communities.

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The Guardian: In Poland we've become spectators at the dismantling of democracy

 International attention may be focused on Belarus, but in Poland, ministers have just announced an autumn agenda which involves a simultaneous attack on the judiciary and the independent media. It coincides with intensifying pressure on the LGBT+ community in the form of verbal assaults from PiS figures. Demonstrations in cities across the country against the pre-trial jailing of an LGBT+ activist have led not to dialogue, but to the heavy-handed arrests of dozens more. [...]

So why was Duda apologising? Some observers assumed that he wanted to signal a genuine change, a wish to heal the polarisation in Polish society. In our view, Duda’s words carried less the spirit of Gandhi than Oscar Wilde, whose advice was to always forgive one’s enemies, because “nothing annoys them so much”. [...]

The phenomenon applies as much to Donald Trump, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or Thierry Baudet, the leader of the populist Forum for Democracy in the Netherlands. Essentially, it means that the media becomes a theatre for an ongoing performance aimed at capturing and keeping the audience’s attention. [...]

And the populists’ strategic use of entertainment to win poses a fundamental challenge to defenders of liberal democracy. Calling populists “fascists” and “authoritarians” stopped making an impression on voters long ago. However justified, it became repetitive, uninteresting and therefore, unfortunately, ineffective. If liberal democrats don’t learn about the power of spectacle in the era of dopamine politics, they will fade into irrelevance. And if populism is about creating a spectacle that depicts liberal democracy falling apart, liberalism must provide an alternative spectacle.

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Notes from Poland: “No apologies, no shame”: the rise of Poland’s guerrilla LGBT activists

Various legal efforts have been made by LGBT groups to stop the vans, but have largely been unsuccessful, due to the fact that Poland’s laws against hateful and offensive speech do not cover sexual orientation or gender identity.

Although a court in Gdańsk ordered Fundacja Pro to temporarily stop using some of the slogans it claims are based on “scientific” evidence, another judge in Wrocław rejected a case against the organisation, saying that its activities are “informative”. [...]

Speaking with Notes from Poland shortly before her latest detention, Margot explained what she calls the groups’ “no apologies” approach. They have sought to “throw off the discourse of docility and shame” that she associates with the respectability politics of more moderate members of the LGBT movement. But this radicalism does not exist in a vacuum; it has “adapted to the growth of homophobia”. [...]

For some, the insult to religious feeling was a step too far; others questioned the wisdom of strategies that make LGBT people standout, preferring campaigns that present them as “normal people”. One interviewee said they should be looking for issues that they have in common with religion, such as the idea of love.

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Time: #PolishStonewall: LGBTQ Activists Are Rallying Together After Police Violence at Protests in Warsaw

 By Saturday, thousands had gathered in Warsaw to denounce Margo’s arrest and police aggression against LGBTQ people. And although Poland is experiencing a rise in new cases of COVID-19, at least 15 solidarity protests, both big and small, took place on Monday in towns and cities across the Poland, as well as in Budapest and London, New York, Paris and Berlin, with more planned.

While not all activists may agree with Margo’s methods, her prosecution and imprisonment has been widely condemned. “These radical actions are a part of history that has happened in many other countries before,” says Julia Maciocha, chairwoman at the Warsaw-based LGBTQ organization Volunteers of Equality Foundation. In a nod to the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 in New York City, several users on Twitter started posting #PolishStonewall in tweets about the weekend’s events and subsequent solidarity protests. [...]

The church in Poland also wields enormous influence over education, law and politics, and about 86% of the population identify as Roman Catholic. Marek Jedraszewski, an archbishop, warned last year that a “rainbow plague” seeks to “control” the population. Since 2019, authorities in one-third of cities across Poland have adopted resolutions declaring themselves “LGBTQ ideology free zones.” In late July, the European Union announced it would not provide funding to six Polish towns that made this declaration.[...]

What activists want now is stronger international solidarity, particularly from European governments. Remy Bonny, a Brussels-based LGBTQ rights activist and researcher who focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, says “we have seen this kind of violence in Russia and Belarus, for example, but not in an E.U. country.” The European Commission should condemn police violence in Poland in the same way it recently denounced the repression of protests in Belarus, he says. Makuchowska says she and other activists are calling on the international community to “help us to immediately release Margo.”

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Balkan Insight: Mass Arrest of LGBT People Marks Turning Point for Poland

 “I have been an activist for equality and human rights for over 30 years, but never in my life have I been as afraid as I am now,” Rawinska told BIRN following her release from prison. “What happened on Friday is a kind of greenlight to shout at us and attack us.” [...]

Rawinska’s determination to fight for her rights is echoed by other activists, who say that Friday’s events have revealed a “new rainbow solidarity” and anti-LGBT actions by the government and its allies are likely to receive a stronger pushback from now on. “I think it’s in the Polish genes that when something bad happens, we flex our muscles and fight it off. We saw it with the Solidarity movement or martial law – the more the government pressures us, the more we will fight back,” Bart Staszewski, a prominent LGBT activist who was part of the protests on Friday, told BIRN. [...]

The police said the mass arrests were necessary to carry out the court order to take Margot into detention. But testimonies from the detained and their lawyers, as well as independent observers, point to a disproportionate response by the police, who arrested peaceful protesters and even random passers-by while acting violently – an approach some argue can be explained by the general anti-LGBT climate building up in Poland over the last years. [...]

A report published on Saturday by the Polish Ombudsman’s office, based on talks with 33 of the detained while they were imprisoned, says that, “among the arrested, there are people who did not take active part in the gatherings on Krakowskie Przedmiescie or Wilcza street, but were watching the incident. Some of them had rainbow emblems – bags, pins, flags. Among the detained there were also random people who in a certain moment were, for example, coming out of a shop with bags.”

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Social Europe: Poles apart—the presidential election in Poland

Anxiety about this election proved a great mobiliser: turnout reached 68 per cent, unseen in Poland since the mid-1990s. The result revealed the extent of the polarisation of Polish society, most manifest in the distribution of support for the two candidates who met in the second round. Both received more than 10 million votes and the outcome was determined by a mere 420,000 ballots.

The most important factors distinguishing these two groups of voters were age, education and place of residence. In a nutshell, younger and better-educated voters, living in the metropoles and other cities, chose Trzaskowski. Older citizens from rural areas, pensioners and farmers, as also the unemployed, chose Duda. [...]

Poles abroad also played a significant role in this election. Not only did their voter turnout vary around 80 per cent but Trzaskowski won a vast majority of their votes (74 per cent). There was however a big difference in voter preferences between the Polish communities in the EU and in north America and post-Soviet countries, where Duda was an unquestionable leader, most probably thanks to a new course in the foreign policy of the national-conservative government.

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Politico: What Poland tells us about the fight against populism

Trzaskowski's defeat is a reminder that running a slick, progressive campaign is not enough to prevail over a state apparatus controlled by populists.

Duda eked out a victory, paving the way for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party to pursue its authoritarian agenda until the next nationwide ballot in 2023. Given how narrow Duda’s victory was, the party is very likely to accelerate its attempts to take over the judiciary, destroy any remaining independent media and subjugate local governments that don’t toe the party line.

These election results are a death blow to Poland’s liberal democracy. To those fighting populism around the world, they should also be a cautionary tale. [...]

Fundamentally, Trzaskowski failed to realize just how deeply right-wing populism has altered the political landscape and that he cannot hope to come to power without making a meaningful compromise with the other side of the debate. [...]

Nothing was more damaging to Trzaskowski’s prospects than the grotesquely misguided independent campaign of a centrist Catholic TV presenter, Szymon Hołownia, who ran on a vague promise to end the “Polish-Polish war” between PiS and Trzaskowski’s Civic Platform.

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Five takeaways from the Polish presidential election

Experts said prior to the election it was a vote between two different visions of Poland. "This is, of course, a win, but in a psychological and social sense it is not a triumph," said Ewa Marciniak, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. The election also saw a generational divide, she added, with young voters supporting Trzaskowski and older voters supporting Duda. [...]

LGBT rights were a key divisive point between the two presidential candidates, with Duda promising to protect families from the "LGBT ideology", stating it was more dangerous than communism. [...]

"It's an irony that, in an election where many see a negative development for democracy moving forward, such a sign of democratic health like high participation took place. But high participation is not a neutral development, it also carries political implications," said Angelos Chryssogelos, a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University

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Center for Research on Extremism: The Polish Presidential Election 2020: which role does far-right politics (not) play?

In 2015, Duda won the election after a dynamic campaign which tactically downplayed cultural conflicts, promised a new attentive political style, and called for conciliation among Poles. After PiS gained full power, President Duda’s term was marked by contributing to the government’s illiberal dismantlement of democratic checks and balances.

Since at least 2019, Law and Justice refocused on nativist anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric which it had already copied from the far-right League of Polish Families during the first PiS government 2005-07. In 2019, PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński described progressive-liberal values and specifically ‘LGBT ideology’ as threatening to the Polish state, nation and collective identity, in effect demonising LGBTIQ persons. [...]

Konfederacja Wolność I Niepodległość (Confederation Liberty and Independence) founded in 2019 is an amalgam of diverse far-right actors. Their programmatic supply includes Poland’s transformation into an ethnocracy embodying a mythicized, culturally homogenous nation built around traditionalist-Catholic principles contrasted against universal rights and value pluralism; nativist and anti-Semitic tropes; radical pro-market positions such as abolishing obligatory social security contributions and income tax; as well as anti-systemic stances. In the presidential election, Bosak won 6.8% of vote, a result comparable to Konfederacja’s 2019 parliamentary election breakthrough. [...]

Shaping the run-off as a contest over (roughly 2.9 per cent total) abstaining/undeclared far-right voters might turn out to be a tactical double-edged sword. First, Duda has reached an electoral ceiling and might be forced to walk the tightrope between catch-all moderate and radical politics. Second, similar to the anti-systemic electorate of Paweł Kukiz in 2015, many far-right voters might in the end abstain. Third, focusing on economic narratives owned by the far right is likely to backfire on KO, as there is more to be lost on the already acquired center-left vote. Fourth, the more relevant question seems to be whether Trzaskowski will mobilize first round abstainers and the electorate of publicist and TV host Szymon Hołownia. Hołownia who secured 13.9% of vote has run on an ‘anti-political centrist’ platform. With his comparably moderate conservative stance, Hołownia’s active support for Trzaskowski is more likely to be pivotal. The fact that Hołownia was strongly supported by former abstainers adds further potential to mobilize additional new voters in the run-off, usually characterized by higher turnout. This strategy is much more straightforward for the pluralist opposition, but could require more than just reluctant declaration of endorsement by Hołownia, as well as a stronger focus on a ‘Macron-like’ counter-political style by Trzaskowski – with all the potential and risks behind promises of profound change.

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Social Europe: Politics in Poland: eternal duopoly or refreshing breeze?

Most analyst are of the opinion that the parliamentary elections will be a battle for the centre. This is particularly evident in the strategy of the PiS government, which after two turbulent years exchanged the revolutionary cabinet of Beata Szydło with a more moderate team around Mateusz Morawiecki, a technocrat acquainted with the western and domestic establishment. It’s already become routine in approaching elections for the PiS to hide away its most radical and controversial figures to attract more centrist voters, who do not necessarily believe the 2010 Smolensk air crash to have been a plot by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, or don’t feel the need to enthrone Jesus as the king of Poland. [...]

What’s more, the nationalist faction of the coalition quickly emancipated itself, also sometimes teaming up with the governing PiS, as in the case of the centennial Independence March in November 2018 in Warsaw, when the president’s celebrations practically merged with the biggest far-right demonstration in Europe. Also, the recent nomination of a nationalist activist and MP, Adam Andruszkiewicz, as secretary of state at the Ministry of Digitalisation is a clear sign of the PiS flirting with the nationalist right. Perhaps it is learning from the Hungarian experience: it wants to disable the nationalist movement before it becomes a serious political opponent, as Jobbik became to Fidesz. For sure, the nationalist circles will call in the big guns in May as well as in October 2019. [...]

In 2019 the stakes are high in Poland. For the PiS it is a matter of maintaining its monopoly and keeping the more radical right under control. For the liberals, it is about revenge and regaining power, lost after eight years in 2015. The new, emerging actors have nothing to lose—they can only win by mobilising voters tired of the PO-PiS duopoly. The biggest challenge, however, is that facing the left: the European and especially the parliamentary elections will be a fight for its survival on the Polish political scene.

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Political Critique: Paweł Adamowicz: A Very Political Death in a Country Torn by Culture Wars

Contrary to some reports, Adamowicz wasn’t a figure of the left. He had, until 2015, been a member of the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), currently the biggest opposition party. With that said, he was known for taking positions that were highly controversial in Poland – including among the anti-PiS opposition. He welcomed refugees while the PiS-controlled national broadcaster ran almost daily stories about the ‘Muslim threat’ descending upon Europe. He supported the growing feminist movement as the powerful Polish Catholic Church declared war on the so-called ideology of gender. He carried a rainbow flag during local Pride parades when even fellow PO-backed mayors were distancing themselves or outright trying to ban them. No wonder he was a hate figure of the radical right.[...]

Equally significant is the event during which the assassination took place. The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity is an annual gala which raises millions for hospital equipment. In recent years, the event has been the target of a smear campaign by the right-wing press. The popularity of the charity and of its charismatic founder, Jerzy Owsiak, is seen as a threat to PiS’ agenda. Vocally pro-choice, supportive of LGBT rights and religious minorities and critical of the influence of the church, he represents the very cosmopolitan values that PiS defines itself against. Owsiak’s catch phrase “róbta co chceta” (do what you want) has been interpreted as an endorsement of promiscuity and moral relativism and the charity itself as a secular alternative seeking to undermine catholic charities. Why hospitals need to rely on charity at all is rarely discussed in a country without a major left force.[...]

The success of PiS – which still regularly exceeds 40% support in opinion polls – lies in bringing together a broad coalition of support: from radical right ideologues to a large number of working class families, rooted in a patriotic-catholic tradition but more concerned about putting food on the table. A few headline redistributive policies, such as the famous “500+” child benefit programme, have undeniably lifted people out of poverty – but they come in a package, with a narrative about protecting the traditional family and the great Polish nation from what threatens it – Muslims, atheists, queer people.

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openDemocracy: Marching with Dabrowski – what the centenary of Polish Independence can tell us about the radical right?

Peculiarly, armbands commemorating The Home Army of 1944 (the Polish resistance movement), were worn by both skinheads and small children brought to the march by their parents. What remains remarkable are the organizational capacities; the official rules of the march forbade the use of alcohol, as well as antisemitic or xenophobic messages. Seldom violated, the Polish radical right showed noteworthy command of the situation if they were, excluding those intoxicated from the main marching groups. [...]

There are at least two important implications arising from the picture I saw. The first is quantitative: the event gathered more than 200,000 attendees, which is the absolute record. The second points to a more substantial concern: seeing Polish families and small children side by side with extremists signalled the mainstreaming of the radical right. Right-wing President Duda’s move to ‘unite the Nation’ by merging the marches only underscored the fact that the two sides, if not of the same coin, certainly belong to the same currency. The leading populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, as the mainstream manifestation of the radical right, is proving successful in absorbing most of these voters.[...]

Nonetheless, this does not mean that such actors are not worth talking to, especially in a country which is considered a stronghold of Catholic nationalism (more than 85% of Poles are Roman Catholics). While the line is always to be drawn, the radical right plays, even if on the fringe, on those empty spaces that our liberal democracies have left behind. Through grassroots activism and contact with the ‘ordinary’ people, they create space to embellish the national memory with references to the pride of the imagined community. After all, when MW or ONR organize a charity event in a village far away from the eyes of decision-makers, the content of their propaganda remains secondary to those who received their help.

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Foreign Policy: Extreme Nationalism Is as Polish as Pierogi

The question is why, in Europe’s most economically successful post-communist country, has a ruling party ended up struggling to separate itself from openly extremist nationalists? In answering that question, and deciding what to do about it, it’s not enough to examine Law and Justice’s rise to power—one must also understand the peculiar culture of Polish nationalism that the party appeals to. In Poland, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, there is no necessary contradiction between a commitment to democracy and to the most extreme forms of nationalism. [...]

Wladyslaw Gomulka, the communist party leader from 1956 to 1970, thus promised communism would be implemented the “Polish way.” In practice, this entailed blending nationalism with communism, the former aimed at reassuring Poles the national identity forged in the 19th century would be preserved in the new order. From the late 1950s, the red-and-white Polish flag thus “became much more prominent than the red communist flag,” while “state propaganda intensified the use of the adjective ‘Polish’ before standard communist slogans,” Porter-Szucs wrote. [...]

This conspiratorial view is exemplified in the writings of Rafal Ziemkiewicz, a prominent nationalist author and participant in previous far-right Independence Day marches, who described post-1989 Poland as a “post-colonial state” built not to serve Poles, but to exploit its resources for foreign overlords (Western capital) and their “local collaborators.” In a society with abundant experience of living under state structures serving foreign interests, much psychological fertile ground exists for such conspiratorial beliefs to germinate, and germinate they have in the past three decades, egged on by no less than Poland’s current ruling party. [...]

This camp believes that the only pathway to preventing these hated lefty ideologies from permeating Poland is via a robust defense of the country’s “independence.” Whatever the result of the current face-off over Sunday’s independence march, it represents the opening salvo in an inevitable civil war on Poland’s right between Law and Justice, which wants a controlled nationalism, and those who crave it unleashed in its rawest and crudest form. The battle for who best represents the ideals of God, honor, and Fatherland has just begun.

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The New Yorker: Is Poland Retreating from Democracy?

Pietrzak founded his patriotic association during the term of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was a member of the liberal party Civic Platform. Tusk, who was elected in 2007, presided over what was perhaps the most dramatic period of growth in Polish history. Since the nineties, both the economy and salaries have doubled. Peasants, historically Poland’s largest social class, all but disappeared. Among the hulking Stalinist blocks of Warsaw’s city center, skyscrapers—Axa, Deloitte, MetLife—shot up. Sushi shops and espresso bars proliferated. “In how many towns in this country did you have latte before 2005?” Dariusz Stola, who runs the polin Jewish-history museum, quipped. But growth has been uneven. While Warsaw saw the introduction of Uber Eats and Mercedes taxis, rural areas in the east lagged behind. “Every rich person in the country is rich in the first generation,” Stola said. “And that makes a lot of relative deprivation. ‘Why did he become rich? I remember his father being as poor as mine.’ ” After Poland joined the European Union, in 2004, around two million Poles, in a country of thirty-eight million, migrated to other European countries. [...]

In the summer of 2017, the sociologist Maciej Gdula interviewed Law and Justice supporters from a provincial town not far from Warsaw, many of whom had benefitted greatly from the economic boom. Still, they felt despised by Polish élites. Kaczyński, they thought, offered a vision in which “you no longer have to go to university, get a mortgage and buy a flat, and declare that you have ‘European values,’ in order to be a fully-fledged member of the Polish nation,” as one reviewer of Gdula’s book, “The New Authoritarianism,” put it. [...]

Yet, according to surveys, the percentage of people who think that Poles suffered as much as Jews during the war rose from thirty-nine in 1992 to sixty-two in 2012. When high-school students were asked recently in a nationwide poll what happened at Jedwabne, forty-six per cent said that the Germans murdered Poles who were hiding Jews. “After the fall of Communism, there was a tendency to conform to the Western interpretation,” Omer Bartov, a professor of modern European and Jewish history at Brown, told me. Now that Poland is coming into its own, there is a sense that “we don’t need these norms forced on us by the West.”

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Political Critique: Why the right wing fight against cultural nihilism is meaningless: post-modern conservatism as a capitalist product

I believe these conservative critics are deeply misguided in their diagnosis of the situation. While cultural nihilism may be on the rise, the accounts of these critics are strangely idealized. For the conservative critic, cultural nihilism has its roots in the sophistical cafes and salons of Enlightenment Paris and is now propagated by insidious liberal elites who wish to destabilize Western civilization.  These accounts never acknowledge the transformative impact of far more powerful social forces: most notably the emergence of capitalism and its tendency towards the creative-destruction of traditional values. This was noted by Marx more than a century and a half ago:  [...]

Post-modern conservativism is the product of cultural nihilism masquerading as a solution. Post-modern conservatives claim that the locus of truth and morality are homeland identities which have been marginalized by social fragmentation and the demand for more tolerance of difference.  They demand that the traditional morals treasured by homeland identities be restored, and a culture of tolerance replaced by one of “responsibility” for toeing the traditional line.  Oftentimes these post-modern conservatives also claim to be fighting against the nihilism of trends such as cultural relativism and social fragmentation, as with President Trump’s Warsaw speech calling for a defense of “Western Civilization.” But this is to be accomplished by deconstructing the ideals of truth, democracy, and respect for difference that constitute the best features of that civilization.  This has resulted in the erosion of institutions and norms designed to protect the most vulnerable in society.

It is possible that the ascendency of post-modern conservatism will swallow the still too globalized and outdated neo-liberals who increasingly cling to power.  Neo-liberal icons such as David Cameron and Hilary Clinton have seen their authority melt into the air under pressure by post-modern conservatives who denigrate them as progressive liberal elites of another stripe, eager to integrate more tightly into the global economy with its rootless cosmopolitans and relativistic multiculturalists. In their place post-modern conservatives have elected illiberal strongmen who disdain the very idea of truth and wish to establish a more homogenous nation-state that will remain oriented by internal capitalist dynamics. This is an extremely worrying development that should be of concern to all.

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Social Europe: What Prospects For The Polish Left?

The success of ‘Together’ and other anti-establishment groupings in the 2015 election reflected widespread disillusionment with the country’s ruling elites and a strong prevailing mood that it was time for a change. The party also gained kudos among many younger, left-leaning Poles for its dynamism, ‘newness’ and programmatic clarity. However, ‘Together’ has failed to build on this promise and achieve political lift-off. It was wary about joining anti-government street protests on constitutional and ‘rule of law’ issues organised by the liberal-centrist opposition parties and Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) civic movement. But it has proved very difficult for the party to cut through with its distinctive left-wing socio-economic message at a time when the Polish political scene is so sharply polarised around attitudes towards the Law and Justice administration. In April, the ‘Pooling the Poles’ blog that aggregates voting intention surveys showed support for ‘Together’ averaging at 1%.

The party’s biggest problem is that it represents a rather niche political offering attractive mainly to well-educated urban ‘hipsters’. Unfortunately for ‘Together’ the kind of younger, better-off socially liberal voters who in Western Europe would incline naturally towards left-wing parties, are in Poland often quite economically liberal as well and wary of some of the party’s more radical economic policies, such as very high tax rates for top earners. The less well-off, economically leftist electorate, on the other hand, tends to be older, more socially conservative and often inclines towards parties such as Law and Justice that are right-wing on moral-cultural issues but also support high levels of social welfare and greater state intervention in the economy. [...]

However, his critics argue that Mr Biedroń is a ‘political celebrity’ who has built his reputation primarily as a popular local government leader and campaigner focusing on moral-cultural issues – he was the founder of the Polish Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) in the early 2000s – but has not yet been seriously tested on the national political stage. It remains to be seen whether his Mr Biedroń’s personal popularity can translate into a more high-profile role and if he is really prepared to undertake the difficult and painstaking task of building a new political movement from the bottom-up.

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Political Critique: Poland’s child-like state

Whereas Western European countries are mature enough to handle and even learn from past sins – including those committed by the Nazis – Eastern Europe apparently is not. As the Russian intellectual historian Nikolay Koposov recently observed, the “memory laws” being enacted there “differ fundamentally from memory laws in Western Europe, because they actively protect the memory of the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of state-sponsored crimes.”

The PiS’s politicization of history is similar to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose regime has taken to glorifying medieval autocrats such as Ivan the Terrible. But Poland was supposed to be different. Russia’s authoritarianism and political culture are rooted in its imperial past. By contrast, when Poland was liberated from the Soviet version of the Russian imperial yoke, it was seemingly eager to put as much cultural distance between itself and Russia as possible. That meant embracing liberal democracy and the rule of law, and joining the West and its institutions – namely, NATO and the European Union – as quickly as possible. [...]

Joanna Tokarska-Bakir of the Polish Academy of Sciences goes even further: “In a psychoanalytical sense, [PiS] policies – running away from shame and responsibility – are dragging us back into childhood, even into the womb, in which the child is indistinguishably entwined with its host – the nation.” She notes that children are “uncritical and innocent,” and that “shame only comes with socialization.” A national “pedagogy of pride,” on the other hand, “amounts to reversing socialization back to a fetal state.” The result is the “sinless nation” envisioned by the PiS.

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The Atlantic: The Dark Consequences of Poland's New Holocaust Law

But it’s hard to see how they can walk it back. Proposed by a hardliner in Law and Justice, it’s significant that the law was rushed through just days after undercover reporters for a private Polish television channel filmed a neo-Nazi group in Poland waving Nazi flags, wearing Nazi uniforms, and burning a swastika. The report prompted Polish authorities to open an investigation into “public propagation of fascism.” But that, of course, put Law and Justice in a tough spot with its die-hards, who were already upset after a recent cabinet reshuffle had brought in some moderates. The reshuffle, in turn, came after Poland was trying to make nice after the European Commission threatened it with sanctions if it moved ahead with changes to its judiciary that European officials say threaten the rule of law—the biggest test yet for the bloc.

Messages crafted for domestic consumption reverberate far beyond national borders. “I wouldn’t say this is a completely planned and calculated action, it’s more a reflection of a complete self-isolation and lack of understanding of other countries,” Pawel Machcewicz, a historian and former director of a new WWII museum in Gdansk, told me. “They are surprised but they cannot back down because for their constituents that will mean the weakness, the betrayal of Polish dignity,” he said. [...]

Gross told me he didn’t think the law would have many practical consequences for established historians, although he worried that it might prevent younger ones from studying the Holocaust. Above all, he was concerned about the teaching of history in Polish schools. “No one will dare to teach the Holocaust,” he said. “The ignorance in Polish society about the Holocaust is extraordinary. There were surveys made and the majority of the people who were asked the question ‘Who suffered more during World War II under German occupation, Poles or Jews?’—the majority of the people responded ‘Poles.’ How ignorant do you have to be?” [...]

I’ve often thought back to this line as capturing the inchoate resentment that seems to drive the current Polish government. The French political scientist Dominique Moïsi has written that three emotions tend to drive politics: humiliation, hope, and fear. Poland falls into the humiliation camp. A feeling of grievance, a sense that the wider world doesn’t truly understand the suffering of the Polish people, but also a sense that the Holocaust—in which three million Polish Jews were slaughtered on Polish soil—was giving Poland a bad name.

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Politico: Poland isolated as Macron steps up regional offensive

France has long tried to stem the number of foreign workers able to work in Western Europe for lower salaries while paying taxes in their home countries, calling it “social dumping.” Depicting the current system as a “betrayal” of EU values, Macron wants posted workers’ contracts limited to one year instead of two, and for similar jobs to get similar pay, something that would undermine the competitive advantage for employers who currently avoid paying high social charges in France. [...]

Out of 1.9 million such workers, about 420,000 are Poles, the highest number from any EU country, according to the European Commission. They largely work in building trades and seek employment in wealthy countries such as France, Austria and Germany. Even though such workers account for less than 1 percent of the EU’s workforce, they have become a target in many countries worried about low-wage competition from Central Europe. [...]

In Austria, Macron met with the prime ministers of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, seeking to undermine the common position on posted workers of the Visegrad Group, a bloc that also includes Poland and Hungary. He made progress, winning cautious backing for his reform plans from the Slovaks and the Czechs.

In return, Macron acknowledged both countries’ distaste for the EU program of allocating asylum seekers among member countries. [...]

Although France has turned a cold shoulder to Warsaw over concerns about rule of law, and Macron showed no interest in including Poland in this week’s regional tour, MP Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, vice president of the French parliament’s European affairs commission, said that behind the scenes, Macron has close relations with President Andrzej Duda, with whom he has spoken three times since taking office.

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Jacobin Magazine: Making Politics Possible Again

Probably the most successful protest, both in terms of numbers and inclusive spirit, was the series of “no-logo” demonstrations known as the “Chain of Light,” where organizers explicitly banned political emblems. [...]

To the great surprise of most of those involved, the mobilizations ended in success: the president conceded and vetoed two out of three of the bills drafted by his former party, a decision which must have been — both politically and psychologically — extremely difficult. It seems unlikely, as some have speculated, that Law and Justice orchestrated this turn of events, which has left them weakened. Even if they had, they could not have anticipated the scale of social mobilization. [...]

That is precisely why the recent mobilization to save an independent judiciary constitutes an important breakthrough in our political landscape. It was a multi-dimensional, politically varied wave of protests, which catered to a wide layer of social actors who were together in expressing their anger and readiness to act. And it succeeded — in ways few would have expected. [...]

Maria Janion, an eminent literary and cultural critic, for many years argued that the Polish economic transformation has not been matched by an evolution of symbols, rituals, and cultural practices.

She stressed that the emotional movement of the masses needs to mature into an intellectual movement, or else it inevitably devolves into frustration and chaos. The Polish left has to analyze this situation carefully and draw lessons from both the new, unexpected co-operations and stark rifts that emerged in the process.

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