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Delusions of Polish Right wing can be present everywhere. The XIX-century notion of Poles being the chosen ones, the Christ of the nation, who’s role is to bring the light to other countries is omnipresent. OK, sometimes it might be just funny, like when in another mishap of U.S. Army in Poland, two military vehicles somehow ended buried in mud on the road side and an U.S. Army recovery vehicle in an inapt attempt to rescue them ended up on its side next to the them. In the end all three heavy Oshkosch military lorries were rescued by a “civilian” heavy vehicle wrecker from a nearby truck towing company. I can see how one can be proud of skills and professionalism of the Polish recovery industry here.
But sometimes that pride just serves as a vehicle to demonstrate one’s historic ignorance like a comment under the article in a historic magazine. The article was about Polish delusions from 1920-1930, where Polish right believed that we will be able to become a colonial power. According to one commenter, those were not delusions, but real plans, and the whole World War II was started by England in order to weaken Poland and preventing it from becoming a world-wide empire and dominating the planet. This is just a random comment, but those are very common, and yet this is only a minor issue. Sometimes the case are more extreme like in example of that clearly delusional man, who claims to be a Polish regent, supposed to rule in the name of Jesus. His destiny is to take over power after the current political tensions in the world will end in a nuclear war. According to our self-appointed regent, Poland will then become a beacon of civilisation, and Poles will go to the world, to teach other nations and establish a new order.
Just a few years ago, I would dismiss this guy as just some poor attempt of internet trolling, but now, with the Order of Jesus Christ crowning Jesus to the king of Poland with participation of the highest representants of the Polish ruling class, I am not so sure. The Poe’s law proves itself right again: “without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views”.
So far, luckily, there is no sign of the oncoming worldwide nuclear apocalypse, so the Polish right has to settle with defending Europe from Muslim Invasion. They are delighted with the fact, that after last years terrorists attacks, Christmas Markets in many cities of Western Europe had to introduce extra safety measures. They mock those measures in social media, and many materials on the subject, just like this footage of a police van acting as moving road block allowing trams to pass, are instantly flooded with several comments expressing Polish schadenfreude. Often, memes are posted in order to strengthen the posters belief that Poland, thanks to it’s refusal to take any refugees is one of the last bastions of safety in Europe:
Germans no longer belong to the European civilization. It’s Asia now. Poland is Europe and we have no problems with Muslims! 万岁波兰!!! pic.twitter.com/WZqcQy4tbZ
— Arkadiusz Święcickiن (@arekcwp) 2 grudnia 2017
But is it really so good idea to invite Germans to come to Poland? We’ve already wrote in this series about a Polish academic, who was beaten badly in the tram for speaking in German – he was on the phone with his colleague. And not that this was an isolated case, recently a group of skinheads attacked a group of German tourists in Łódź for the same reason. And you don’t even have to speak in foreign language if your look is not up to the norm: in Bydgoszcz a pair of ticket controllers have brutally attacked a black woman. What was her crime? She has not validated her ticket.
And don’t even try to be a Muslim: in Wrocław, a group of Turkish students was attacked by some people, they managed to run away and get shelter in a nearby Kebab show. The crowd of 40 gathered outside the shop, throwing stones and trying to break in by force. Luckily for the kebab chiefs and their customers, after vandalizing the front of the shop, the group of attackers dispersed. Police has arrived shortly after, and so far, they see no reason to treat the case as hate crime and they consider it as regular pub brawl, despite the fact that the kebab shop owner has been harassed before.
Hypocrisy of Polish nationalists is astonishing. Only recently it has been reported that participants arrived to anti-immigration rally in Poland in British registered Vauxhall car, which suggests that they work in the UK. A few days back a racist thug was sentenced threatening an Ukrainian shop assistant for speaking Polish with Ukrainian accent. He got just a suspended jail term, so it would not prevent him from going back to his job as a builder in Germany, which he got, I am sure, for his language proficiency and perfect pronunciation of German.
But not only members of the Polish extreme right see nothing wrong with doing exactly the same for which they are attacking foreigners working in Poland, but they feel it’s right to export their services abroad: recently in Liverpool a group of Polish hooligans were put in jail. They were subcontracting for British neo-nazi groups, offering services of fighting anti-fascist activists on their behalf, although I am pretty sure that they believed that they are also on the right side of the things, as there is that belief on the Polish right that there is some kind of “nationalist international”. I am afraid though, that they are going for a hard head-on crash with reality. With Brexit, Marie Le Pen or Alternative Fur Deutchland and other right wing movements, that are so welcomed by the Polish right, it becomes more and more obvious that for their “right wing pals” from other European countries, Polish migrants are also unwelcome strangers.
Of course exporting our nationalists in order to do the dirty jobs for the right wing movements in another country is nothing new. Radical right extremist Janusz Waluś has been jailed for life in South African Republic after in 1993 he assassinated Chris Hani, a leader of the communist party and fierce opponent of the Apartheid movement. Polish right has not forgot about him and this year he has become a patron of the football tournament organized by ONR, a radical nationalist organization. They openly write on their website that they believe that the fact, that he has been jailed for murder is just “a sign of a communist aversion” to this Polish hero, and that their actions to bring Waluś to Poland under the pretext of placing him in Polish jail is just a prelude to freeing him altogether.
Another jailed right wing extremist – Piotr Rybak, a prominent anti-Semite from Wrocław and organizer of the nationalist rally that invited Britain First female leader Jayda Fransen as honourable guest – in the recent interview he gave over the phone from jail, where he has been placed after breaking the terms of his electronic supervision sentence, he said that “this is no longer a battle, we are at war!”. According to him even current people in power are traitors, as they are acting in Jewish and Ukrainian interest. I wonder if Fransen and Rybak got to know each other through their common friend, Marek Zakrocki, a London-based supporter of Britain First, who after giving a Nazi salute and shouting “white power” drove his car into a Muslim take-away owner…
No wonder that despite national pride and declared complete disdain to Europe’s opinion, Polish right has noticed, that perception of Poland as a right wing, racist and chauvinist country does us lot of harm. Therefore they had to come up with the new narration. And so along with that message about “Poland being completely free from Islamic extremist”, there is a drive to beat the drum about Poles, who were protecting Jews from Nazis during the war. I guess the thinking behind is “if we remind Jews how good we were for them, then they will support us in our anti-Muslim actions”. Of course the fact, that Poland has most trees in Yad Vashem is something worth remembering, but the picture, as always, was not so simply black and white. This is why Polish right react furiously to any mention of cases like pogrom in Jedwabne, or why the Oscar awarded to the movie “Ida” was not welcomed on the Polish right, that often sees it as a Jewish-dominated Hollywood awarding movie that shows Poles as anti-Semites (which, according to them, is not true).
Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a media tycoon and an influential figure has been awarded a hefty sum to promote Polish Righteous Amongst the Nations. The whole Rydzyk’s media empire has experienced a significant shift recently – after decades of being known from it’s anti-Semitic rants, it has suddenly become very pro-Israel, with most prominent anti-Semitic “experts” being banned from the radio and conspiracy theories about Jews ruling the world no longer promoted there. Poland of PiS works very hard to get rid of the perception of Poland as anti-Semitic country, although opinions on if they succeeded already seems to be divided. After a recent meeting of Jarosław Kaczyński with representants of the Jewish community, the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland has issued a statement to the press in which they informed that the meeting has been organized to discuss the problem of growing anti-Semitism in Poland: “In honest and open conversation, that lasted over an hour, representants of the Union expressed their concerns about safety of Jewish communities and buildings and about growing problem of intolerance towards various minorities, including Jews”. They were pointing out racist slogans used during recent Independence March. But Jarosław Kaczyński remembers this conversation differently. According to him, “there was absolutely no talk about any problems of growing Polish intolerance, but about raising activity – and it was stressed by the representatives of Jewish community – of the Muslims who incidentally are present in Poland. Jews were clearly addressing their concerns towards Arab community, not towards Poles”.
If that’s true, why Jews were talking with Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Polish patriots, and not with some leader of the Arab community? Or perhaps it is just Kaczyński who got it all wrong, and Krystyna Pawłowicz, a PiS MP, is right when she argues that man older than 65 should not be able to hold public offices, as his brain deteriorate (Kaczyński is 68). Apparently at 65 her brain is not working at full capacity already as well, as she went on record with a statement very strange for someone with PhD in law: during recent works on the new bills regulating judiciary and election systems in Poland, she said that “she will vote in line with her party, but she considers the new law directly and obviously contrary to the constitution”. She said, that she would like to send new bill to the Constitutional Tribunal in order for it to be revoked. I think, that there is no better indicator of how outrageous PiS manipulation with the law is if even Krystyna Pawłowicz has noticed, that the new law is unconstitutional. I doubt though, that she would act towards putting this bill in front of the Constitutional Tribunal – today it’s just a façade, a PiS puppet, and she, of all people, knows it better than anyone. She was amongst those, who argued the most that courts need to be “changed”, pointing out the flaws in particular judges. So, as one opposition MP pointed out, if we judge by her own actions, then perhaps we should liquidate all the universities, because Krystyna Pawłowicz PhD is lecturer in law in one of them?
Surely next on the list to be changed should be an Ombudsman for Public Finances Discipline. This institution was investigating our good old friend Bartłomiej Misiewicz, a 28yo pharmacy assistant, who made a bright, but short, career as right hand of minister Antoni Macierewicz. During the control it has emerged, that he has spent 651675.99 zł on “promotional activities”, which was only post factum approved by the ministry. Ordered to explain himself, Misiewicz asked to be given more time to provide his explanation, but then he never did so. Despite that, the case was dropped, as the Ombudsman decided, that “there was no significant harm to public finances”.
But while the focus of everyone’s in Poland is on the PiS attempts to take over the courts and manipulate oncoming elections, it is not that nothing is going on in the other fields. For example there is a new important opinion regarding proposed changes to the abortion law. Asked about women, who would have to give birth to deformed or critically ill babies, the PiS senator Jan Maria Jackowski said:
“For that you have to blame nature, not politicians. This is how we were created, women are mothers and there can be various situations. Statistically speaking, males live shorter and females live longer. This is discrimination on the grounds of sex. Should we introduce some form of equalization of the length of live as well?”.
Yeah, Mr Jackowski, you proved yourself to be a true Christian.
This piece was published in Britske Listy
Meme: Poland Ball via me.me
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