Social Europe: Poland’s abortion protests—democratic standards at stake

 The PiS has been in power for five years now. From the outset, these have been turbulent times, marked by diverse protests—by doctors, teachers, farmers, miners and parents of disabled children. The pandemic has only aggravated the public mood, adding to the frustration of the most affected groups, such as micro- and small entrepreneurs, as well as coronavirus-deniers, a movement also germinating in Poland.

Nevertheless, it’s the ideological war which seems to have agitated the society and petrified the political polarisation. The presidential election during the summer was won by Andrzej Duda, candidate of the United Right, by the skin of his teeth. The PiS retains a majority in the Sejm, the lower chamber, thanks only to its two junior coalition partners, while the Senat was lost to the opposition after the parliamentary elections in October 2019. Local governments and cities remain independent and very often in opposition to the central government. [...]

It was in this context that over the summer the LGBT community in Poland became the target of a defamation campaign, which sadly mobilised many and mainstreamed homophobic narratives. It seems the PiS wanted to deliver a pointed response, to prove its ideological ‘purity’—and completely overdid it, putting its own government at existential risk. In so doing, it again tested the boundaries of what remains a young Polish democracy.

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Notes from Poland: Polish prime minister committed “gross violation of law” in organising elections, rules court

 Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, committed a “gross violation of the law” and the constitution when ordering preparations for elections earlier this year, a court has ruled. [...]

“The manner of [conducting] elections cannot be restricted by any actions of the executive branch,” wrote Rudnicki. “[Poland] cannot be considered a state of law if [state] organs infringe the provisions of the law.”

The judges also declared that the decision to hold a postal-only vote meant that “voters were not guaranteed an equal, direct and secret ballot”, reports RMF24. [...]

However, Ewa Siedlecka, a commentator for the Polityka weekly, notes that the court’s decision is mainly “symbolic”. Some organisations or individuals – such as voters whose personal data was provided to the post office – could launch civil cases. But Morawiecki and other officials are unlikely to face legal consequences, as PiS has created a system that “guarantees freedom and impunity”, she writes.

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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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Dissent Magazine: The Law and Justice Party’s Moral Pseudo-Revolution

Today’s political divide between PO and PiS can be traced to the electoral collapse of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). In 2005, having eroded their base of support through social spending cuts and corruption scandals, SLD’s electoral share in the Sejm (parliament) dropped by 30 percent. The two right-wing parties, PO and PiS, scooped up the lost votes, marking the beginning of the political duopoly in Poland that persists to this day. [...]

While the negative characteristics of the governing camp have been widely reported in the Western press, we hear less about the sins and failings of the opposition. PO’s primary weakness is its lack of a clear political identity. It is against PiS, but it is difficult to say what it is for. Even among hardline PO voters, one hears few positive statements about the party or its program. In pro-PO circles there is a culture of condescension toward the poorer part of PiS’s electorate, reminiscent of Reaganite discourse about “welfare queens”: PiS voters are supposedly bums who have babies to collect benefits, which they spend on vodka and vacations to the Baltic coast. Among the pro-PO middle class, there are some who have an inability to differentiate, as the great writer of the Polish left Stefan Żeromski once did, between snobbery and progress. [...]

PiS is vocally anti-communist. But its relationship to the communist era is more complicated than its rhetoric would suggest. As the opposition loves to point out, many members of the party’s in-crowd were once members of the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR), the communist party that governed the country for over four decades. For example, Stanisław Piotrowicz, who had been a prosecutor during martial law in the early 1980s, was recently appointed to the Constitutional Tribunal. Unlike the vulgar anti-communism of the 1990s, which blamed unemployment on “red capitalists” and argued that all Poland needed was one great purge, PiS’s critique is not directed at nefarious ex-communist personnel. Instead PiS rails against what happened after 1989. According to the party, the privatization process following the transition was distorted by secret service involvement, corruption, or just plain criminal activity. According to Jarosław Kaczynski, what occurred was not marketization but “Latinization,” which turned Poland into a Latin American oligarchy. Only PiS, he claims, can bring about justice in economic relations, an argument that appeals to a large cross-section of society repulsed by the dirty dealings of the political and business elite, including former SLD voters. [...]

In contrast, PiS’s welfare programs cannot be dismissed as trivial or symbolic. While the tendency of the liberal opposition to call PiS “socialist” sometimes outdoes the Tea Party’s abuse of that word, it cannot be denied that 500 złoty per month for each child has really helped the Polish poor. PO has learned the hard way that to stay relevant in Polish politics, one has to declare one’s commitment to this policy. The same goes for lowering the retirement age, which PO had increased when it was last in power.

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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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The Guardian: How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe

No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world. [...]

Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect. [...]

Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity. [...]

The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) that cannot speak its name.

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The Guardian: Anti-LGBT rhetoric stokes tensions in eastern Europe

In Poland, and elsewhere in central Europe, there has been a notable rise in tolerance and empathy towards the LGBT community in recent years, illustrated by the emergence of a confident new generation of activists in smaller towns and cities. But across the region, populist politicians and church leaders are using the issue to mobilise their conservative bases. [...]

That message will resonate with activists in Poland, where senior members of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) have engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign portraying so-called “LGBT ideology” as a menace akin to that of Soviet-imposed communism. In the run-up to parliamentary elections this month, which PiS narrowly won, the “LGBT issue” emerged as one of the main campaign grounds. [...]

In Hungary, where the church is less powerful than in Poland, there is less deep-rooted homophobia. Budapest was one of the first cities in the region to have pride marches. But in recent months the ruling Fidesz party of the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has begun what appears to be a coordinated homophobic campaign. [...]

n the Czech Republic, attitudes are even more progressive, with a recent survey showing 61% of people supported a bill currently under consideration that would legally enshrine gay marriage. But here too, conservative politicians are rallying part of their base with homophobic rhetoric disguised as a promotion of “traditional values”.

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The Calvert Journal: Afro-Poland: a revolutionary friendship, captured in rare photos from 1955-

Between 31 July and 14 August 1955, the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Warsaw. The festival — organised by the anti-imperialist and left-wing World Federation of Democratic Youth — gave Poles the opportunity to meet around 30,000 delegates from 114 countries, incorporating other Eastern Bloc allies, revolutionaries from South America and young socialists from the postwar capitalist West. 911 African delegates from colonial states still largely subordinate to European powers were also in attendance. For the communist leaders of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), this was a timely occasion to promote socialism and solidarity to the soon-to-be independent African states. For Polish citizens, this was one of the first opportunities to interact with non-white people after the destruction of the multicultural Second Polish Republic during the Second World War. [...]

Nowicki’s exhibition revealed the myriad ways in which PAD stood alongside white Poles during the communist era. The World Festival of Youth and Students was simply a starting point, after which students from Africa were encouraged to study at Polish universities — as well as elsewhere in the Soviet sphere of influence. This was most keenly emphasised in Poland following the events of 1960, when 17 African countries declared independence from colonial rule. The arrest and murder of the Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was widely covered in the Polish press, alongside solidarity protests in Warsaw. Photos from these demonstrations show Polish students hand-in-hand with PAD. According to Nowicki, this was — in part — a technique to depict a humane Poland in contrast to a brutal West. “They were really fighting against the Americans on the level of race,” he explains. “You could see how horrible American race rhetoric was, look what was happening to the people — lynching, and so on.” [...]

Omolo suggests that while Poles may have less contact with non-white people — compared to those in countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany — this does not entirely explain why PAD experience racism in Poland. Instead, he believes that Polish people have often been exposed to literature and screen media that demean those from the African continent, thereby perpetuating the idea that white people are superior. For Omolo, this makes Poles more likely to believe negative, unfounded stereotypes about PAD, such as those espoused by the PiS party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. “When Kaczyński said that Europe should not accept refugees from Africa because they’re carrying some diseases that are not in Europe — most of them bought it actually,” Omolo recounts. “What about Poles who visit Africa and come back? Are they not coming with some protozoa?”

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Politico: Europe’s populists can’t be defeated — but they can be contained

Containment is about separating our assessment of the political reality from the outcome we morally desire. Today, the facts speak for themselves: Populists have seized more than a quarter of seats in the European Parliament and run governments representing more than a quarter of the (post-Brexit) EU population.

Support for populists is also far from fleeting. Hungary has had an illiberal government for almost a decade now. In France, Marine Le Pen’s nationalists, who came out ahead of the beleaguered French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberals, have posed a serious threat since the 2002 presidential election. Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which took power in 2015, trounced the opposition this weekend, with over 40 percent of the vote. And, one year into its government, Italy’s League is successfully eating up the support of the relatively more moderate 5Star movement and shows no signs of slowing down. [...]

In practice, we should waste no opportunity to up the cost of illiberal politics, but we need to do so selectively and proportionally. The EU’s decision to open Article 7 proceedings against Poland and Hungary for breaches in the rule of law set a positive example. To be sure, the Commission may not have the votes in the European Council to enforce sanctions against either government. But that does not render these measures meaningless. The proceedings have sent a clear signal to Hungarian and Polish societies and weakened the legitimacy of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the leader of Poland’s ruling party, Jarosław Kaczyński. [...]

There are signs that the paradoxes inherent in right-wing populism are even more startling than those of Soviet communism. You cannot “keep migrants out” and pay for the growing number of pensioners. As a mid-sized nation-state, you cannot both “take back control” and strengthen your position in the global economy. You cannot make government more accountable to “the people” at the same time as you destroy independent institutions. And you cannot build an innovative economy while stifling critical thinking.

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Deutsche Welle: Poland: Where Keynes meets Jesus

Brian Porter-Szucs, author of the book "When Nationalism Began to Hate," believes that Kaczynski hasn't suddenly turned "a communist," and adds: "But many wanted a state that would preserve the communist party's commitment to social cohesion, cultural homogeneity and nationalism, just imbue it with a Catholic rather than a leftist conceptual vocabulary."

Kaczynski himself rarely speaks with anything but a Catholic conceptual vocabulary. That is why some in PiS see the current administration as part of a long-term plan to remold Polish state and society, with a socially conservative, church-infused rhetoric combined with a Keynesian-lite attempt to rebalance a capitalism that some believe has gone far enough in the post-communist country.[...]

The spending plans could also bring Poland close to the EU's budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP in 2020, from under 0.5% in 2018. Some economists even fear Poland could breach the limit. They also think that there will be hardly any money left in the budget for urgently needed increases to public sector pay. [...]

"The schemes were criticized as being too expensive, but Poland's public deficit has fallen, not risen. Rather, these policies have stimulated economic growth while dramatically reducing child poverty and increasing school enrolment." he argues, and adds: "A new European political order seems to be emerging — one that is likely to leave traditional parties of both the left and the right behind."

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The Economist: Why Europe's nationalist parties all sound alike

Nationalist parties in the European Union are gaining momentum. At a time when the EU is increasingly fractured, they are united on many issues. What are they? [...]

And that’s weird because one belief that unites these nationalist populist European leaders is that the European Union should be less united. Since the euro crisis of 2009 and the migrant crisis of 2015 these right-wing populist movements have grown in strength and in number. [...]

Every European country has its own version. Tomio Okamura is a Czech-nationalist politician born in Japan who wants a zero-tolerance policy on immigration. It’s not clear what this means but it plays into European fears of what they call an invasion. In other words… immigration.

They all accuse Brussels of behaving like a dictatorship. Which is ironic given that they’re all running in democratic elections for the EU parliament. They often speak of a supposed plot by mainstream leaders like Angela Merkel to replace Europeans with lower-paid migrants.

CNN: Polish priest blames 'devil' as he's confronted by alleged victim whose life was ruined

Since its release on YouTube on May 11 the film, which details decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Poland and shows victims confronting their alleged abusers, has been viewed more than 20 million times. [...]

"The current government will find it difficult to distance itself from the Catholic Church," Zaborowski added. Only a week before the film was released, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the conservative ruling Law and Justice Party, said: "Anyone who raises his hand against the church, wants to destroy it, raises his hand against Poland." After seeing the documentary, he clarified his remarks at a rally, saying: "That does not mean that we support or tolerate pathology in the Church."[...]

Sekielski says the response to it has far exceeded their expectations: "This film has been like a shock to Polish society and has managed to create real social awareness of a subject that has been very taboo in Poland. [...]

In February, representatives from "Have No Fear" delivered a report to Pope Francis in Rome, accusing 26 bishops in the Polish Catholic Church of concealing the perpetrators of sexual abuse of minors.

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Foreign Policy: The Future of Politics Is Coming to Poland

Since the implosion of the post-communist left in the mid-2000s, Poland has been governed alternatively by the national-conservative Law and Justice and the centrist Civic Platform, which have finished first and second in every election during that period. Together, they currently hold some 80 percent of seats in parliament and continue to dominate in the polls, with a combined 65 percent or so support. They set the agenda, with their mutual antagonism fueling Poland’s toxic political environment, often dubbed the “Polish-Polish war.” This was especially evident in the wake of the recent murder of Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, with initial hopes for a display of national unity quickly dashed as the two political camps began using the tragedy to attack one another.

However, there are reasons to suspect that this duopoly may be more fragile than it appears. Polls consistently show Kaczynski and Grzegorz Schetyna, the leader of Civic Platform, to be the country’s two most distrusted politicians. A poll published this week found that 71 percent thought Kaczynski should retire from politics. Just as Civic Platform lost power in 2015 having run out of ideas and energy after eight years in office (and has recovered neither since), Law and Justice, although it has governed effectively and introduced some popular policies honed during its long period in opposition, appears now to be struggling for inspiration. [...]

The most noteworthy development has been the launch, last Sunday, of a long-awaited new progressive party called Spring, led by Robert Biedron, a liberal former mayor and member of parliament. He describes Civic Platform and Law and Justice as part of the same problem, repeatedly emphasizing that he does not wish to engage in their war and saying in a recent interview that the two of them are a “corpse we will bury.” Yet it has been striking that, since announcing plans to re-enter national politics, Biedron has focused his attacks primarily on Civic Platform, despite in theory having much more in common with it than with Law and Justice. It is clear that, while he wants to remove Law and Justice from power, he sees his initial challenge as establishing a separate identity from the existing opposition and competing with it for votes. A poll in September 2018 showed that among potential voters for Biedron’s party, 61 percent would be defectors from Civic Platform, with the remainder from other centrist and left-wing parties.[...]

Alternatively, however, Biedron has the potential to energize nonvoters, those who are opposed to Law and Justice but, until now, have been unimpressed by the alternatives. Given Poland’s consistently low turnout (around 50 percent in the last three parliamentary elections), this creates great potential for disruption.

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Politico: Matteo Salvini pledges ‘Italo-Polish axis’ after Warsaw talks

Both sides have an interest in cooperating in the European Parliament. PiS is a founding member of the European Conservatives and Reformists — the European Parliament's third-largest grouping. However, the looming departure of the U.K. Conservatives thanks to Brexit will dramatically shrink the party, so it needs fresh blood. [...]

A new Salvini-led grouping incorporating nationalists and populists from across Europe could give PiS much more heft in the European Parliament, and buttress its defenses in its ongoing dust-up with Brussels over charges that it is violating the EU's legal and democratic principles. [...]

Salvini insists that Northern European countries should accept migrants arriving in Italy, while Kaczyński has built his electoral support on refusing any reallocation of asylum seekers. Salvini is also against extensive EU cohesion funds being granted to Central Europe in the next multiannual EU budget, while PiS is advocating for continued generous financial flows.

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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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The Calvert Journal: Afro-Poland A revolutionary friendship, captured in rare photos from 1955-1989

None of this was lost on the Polish Press Agency, whose journalists were tasked with documenting their African guests. The aim was to look beyond stereotypes of exoticism and present sisters, brothers and friends who could just as easily live in Polish society. The festival was the catalyst for a decades-long series of Polish press photographs showing people of African descent (PAD) visiting and living in Poland. Bartosz Nowicki, a Polish photographer and curator who currently lives in Wales, has spent the past few years researching these archive photos from the period 1955-1989. He recently curated an exhibition, Afro PRL, which highlighted the long-standing connections between white Poles and PAD, a memory that is often forgotten in contemporary Poland.

Nowicki’s exhibition revealed the myriad ways in which PAD stood alongside white Poles during the communist era. The World Festival of Youth and Students was simply a starting point, after which students from Africa were encouraged to study at Polish universities — as well as elsewhere in the Soviet sphere of influence. This was most keenly emphasised in Poland following the events of 1960, when 17 African countries declared independence from colonial rule. The arrest and murder of the Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was widely covered in the Polish press, alongside solidarity protests in Warsaw. Photos from these demonstrations show Polish students hand-in-hand with PAD. According to Nowicki, this was — in part — a technique to depict a humane Poland in contrast to a brutal West. “They were really fighting against the Americans on the level of race,” he explains. “You could see how horrible American race rhetoric was, look what was happening to the people — lynching, and so on.” [...]

The photos also highlighted to the Polish public that young people from Africa were now studying and living in Poland. “You realise that most of the images from the period, even if they are not about university or about studying, are actually of African students,” Nowicki tells me. After carrying out a year-long induction at the Polish Language Centre for Foreigners in Łódź, overseas students were free to attend Polish universities. PAD formed a large part of this contingent, starting off with around four students in 1958 and growing to a peak of around 2,000 in the 70s. Their photos were regularly displayed in Polish newspapers, albeit in an exoticising manner. [...]

Omolo suggests that while Poles may have less contact with non-white people — compared to those in countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany — this does not entirely explain why PAD experience racism in Poland. Instead, he believes that Polish people have often been exposed to literature and screen media that demean those from the African continent, thereby perpetuating the idea that white people are superior. For Omolo, this makes Poles more likely to believe negative, unfounded stereotypes about PAD, such as those espoused by the PiS party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. “When Kaczyński said that Europe should not accept refugees from Africa because they’re carrying some diseases that are not in Europe — most of them bought it actually,” Omolo recounts. “What about Poles who visit Africa and come back? Are they not coming with some protozoa?”

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Politico: EU faces Poland test

Forget worries about exacerbating an East-West rift or splitting the bloc just when it needs unity to deal with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Theresa May. If Polish strongman Jarosław Kaczyński is allowed to get away with replacing an independent judiciary with judges hand-picked for political loyalty, the EU’s claims to be a democratic watchdog and not just a glorified free-trade area will look hollow. [...]

“The Polish case is a test whether it is possible to create a Soviet-style justice system, where the control of courts, prosecutors and judges lies with the executive and a single party, in an EU member state,” Piotr Buras of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a Polish civil society organization, and Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative think tank wrIte in a joint paper. “It remains to be seen whether this can be corrected before it fatally undermines the idea of the EU as a community based on law and common values,” they add. [...]

Barring a last-minute intervention by EU ministers or the European Court of Justice, the government will go ahead with the enforced early retirement of up to 40 percent of the Supreme Court on July 3 under a law that entered into force in April. Among those whose necks are on the block is Małgorzata Gersdorf, the first president of the Supreme Court, whose eviction in the middle of a six-year term would violate the Polish constitution. Some 70 out of 120 Supreme Court justices would then be new appointees.  [...]

Because of its own history, it’s hard for Germany to read the riot act to the Poles over the rule of law. It would gift Kaczyński a chance to turn a principled dispute over judicial independence into a political battle and accuse Berlin of “bullying.” Chancellor Angela Merkel has wisely let the Commission take the lead so far, lending discreet support to Vice President Frans Timmermans, the Dutch social democrat who holds the toxic Polish file in Brussels. He needs her public support now.

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openDemocracy: Unsympathetic people: the overwhelming success of Poland's exclusionary agenda

According to a recent poll, the attitude of the Polish people towards other nationals changed dramatically over the period of just one year. Compared with 2017, Polish approval rates of many nations took a deep plunge. Sympathy towards Jews and Arabs, already low, dropped in 2018 by 13 and 6 percent, respectively. Given the persistent anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic propaganda in the Polish media, this is rather unsurprising. Approval of the Germans dropped by 16 percent, as if the difficult and protracted process of the reconciliation between Poland and its “eternal enemy” had never happened.

What is really puzzling is that Polish approval of their southern neighbours, the Czechs, took a nosedive by 15 percent; Italians, Russians, Vietnamese and Japanese by 13 percent, and the British by 8 percent. Even the Hungarians and Americans are liked less among Poles by 14 and 11 percent, respectively. [...]

Before attempting to provide one, we should note that while the rapid change in the attitude of Poles towards other nationalities is puzzling, we – the Polish people – are not alone in this. The public attitude towards other nationals nowadays is noticeably swinging in Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, as well as in the USA and Great Britain. [...]

As far as the reversal in the Polish attitudes towards their neighbours is concerned, I would like to suggest that its explanation is to be sought in the fact that, ever since the peaceful “Solidarity” revolution in 1989, Polish politics has been fuelled by the struggle over who truly takes credit for the successful overthrow of Communism. Driven by this, Polish politics became the arena for a struggle of personalities between its main actors, with ideology and political agendas playing an important, but ultimately secondary and instrumental role.

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Political Critique: Poland The ‘good shift’ – new authoritarianism and beyond

Using biographical and qualitative interviews, the authors studied voters in a provincial but well-off town in the Mazovia region, where PiS got nearly 50% of the votes in the last election. The researchers talked to the representatives of working class (people doing manual work and providing simple services) and middle class (white-collar workers in private and public sector). Both groups are important because the ruling party does not appeal solely to poor and poorly educated voters. The study team stated: “Indeed, Kaczyński’s party got the biggest support among farmers and workers, with 53.3% and 46.8% of the vote respectively. We should remember, though, that these groups vote less frequently than other groups (…). PiS would never have received so many votes were it not for the support it got from the middle class, i.e. administrative and service industry employees. Their victory here was not overwhelming, but they managed to collect the most votes – 35.4%. Civic Platform (PO) won within just one of the professional groups listed in the questionnaire, i.e. among the CEOs and managerial staff (…). PiS was also the winner among businessmen, reaching 29.1% and people with a higher education 30.4%”.

The idea that PiS voters form a non-homogenous group is clear if we look at the polling day results. However, the study by Maciej Gdula points to the actual attractors for PiS voters. Different social groups seem to support PiS for different reasons, and their political identification is backed by different reasons, which are not always linked to personal experience or tangible material gains. The study shows that “supporting PiS comes from gratification related to the possibility to participate in the political drama directed by its leader.” [...]

These three roles correspond to the three pillars of what PiS has to offer, making it possible for different groups of voters to identify with Kaczyński’s project. First of all, it is “setting accounts with the elites” identified with the establishment of politicians, public servants and cultural milieu of the Third Polish Republic. Secondly, it is about the inclusion into the national community that allows other aspirations and aesthetics than those of the middle class. Thirdly, it is about morally justified domination over those that are more vulnerable. [...]

 It is worth noting some subtle differences. The working class is dominated by an image of the Third Republic’s elites, especially the government, as being out of touch with common people and defaulting on their electoral promises. The middle class’ hard feelings, on the other hand, focus on their corruption and immoral approach to public life.

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