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Apparently we have to start from clarifications again. In the last episode of this series I mentioned that one of the women that protested against fascism was arrested and during that arrest the police officer allegedly adressed her “sit down, bitch” (“Siadaj, kurwo”). Apparently it was just people trying to make the words recorded at low quality video, and misheard it, as in fact one policeman said to his collegue “get in, Kulson” (“Wsiadaj, Kulson”). Officer Kulson was presented to the media during a press conference. Hereby I am happy to clarify this misunderstanding and I hoped for more clarifications, but unfortunately, so far police failed to show officers SiegHailsons, Whitepowerson and aspirant Refugeesgofuckyourselvesson.
Since the police failed to inform what was really going on with all those slogans that strangely enough sounded and looked like fascist, racist and neo-nazi, I turned to internet forums and social media, notably wykop.pl, Polish clone of digg.com that is well known for it’s right wing bias (or so I hope, I dread to think that this is a balanced representation of the Political views in the society). Here I learned that banners calling to keep the blood pure were carried by the organization that opposes the use of drugs, and that the slogan “Europe will be white or will be uninhabited [by people]” does not, in any way, suggest that non-white people are not people, and it’s about cultural references, that I, as a lefty, I am unable to grasp. I guess then that the slogan “white power” was to praise energetic value of the cottage cheese?
As I was not present in Poland on the Independence day and I did not wanted to rely solely on media reports, I was also trawling my social media bubble for everything related to this event, but while this resulted in overwhelming amount of first-hand reporting, movies and pictures, the media was of poor quality typical for smartphones. I wanted to see some better pictures, and so I tried to see what professional photo-reporters came up with, and who would be better as a first port of call if not Chris Niedenthal, author of an iconic photo from the times of Martial State in Poland, where the armoured vehicle is parked outside the “Moscow” cinema that displays a huge poster for the movie “Apocalypse now”(you probably know it, if not, you can see it here). Unfortunately his gallery of pictures was removed from Facebook for violating its rules. Twice. Perhaps there was too much violence and neo-nazi symbolism on them? Well, you can judge for yourself, as the gallery was since restored:
The bottom line would be, in my opinion, that while Guy Verhofstadt and Western media might be actually indeed wrong when he claims, that all 60 000 of participants in that march were all fascist, racist, neo-nazi and extreme nationalist, the fact that such behaviour were not only tolerated, but also promoted and condoned by the state during this event (and many smaller, as the one in Wrocław I described in previous chapter) can be actually a sign of the much more serious problem. As while skinheads and neo-nazis are nothing new in Poland, the fact, that so called “normal families with children” see nothing wrong in joining them in order to march together in the light of pyrotechnical flares under Nazi flags in which the swastika has been replaced with celtic cross is truly worrying.
I hope that the above clarification will bring relief to our chief editor, Jan Čulik, for getting this portal off the hook, as the organizations like Polska Fundacja Narodowa (the one that used millions syphoned from state companies to run a smearing campaign against judges) is threatening to sue foreign media for defamation of Poland. Another organization, called “Polish league against defamation” prepares a legal action against Guy Verhofstadt himself while the rest of the right wing propaganda machine felt a sudden need to explore the history of the Belgian SS brigades during WW2.
But there is one more thing: I am not sure about law in Czech Republic, but in Poland one can be fined for using vulgar language in public. Recently Jerzy Owsiak was fined for using such language during music festival, now one of the journalist will face prosecution for the same offence after being reported by Stanisław Karczewski, speaker of the Senate. The thing is, that the journalist was simply quoting from the people, who are described by Karczewski as “people, who love their nation, who are nationalists, patriots, who love Poland” – that is from participants of the “great march of patriots”. Therefore to avoid upsetting my readers (and potentially being reported by them), I refrain from quoting, providing original footage instead, as apparently those words are offensive only when quoted by a journalist:
To end the matter of this patriotic event on the positive note, let me inform you that ONR (Naionalist-Radical Camp) one of the organizers of the event clearly stated, that they are NOT racist. They just promote “racial segregation”. It’s sister organization – Młodzież Wszechpolska – clearly stated that a non-white person cannot be Polish, but soon they understood their mistake and sacked person responsible for that statement. Alas, it was too late: they have already lost support of one prominent Polish patriot, dr Bawer Aondo-Akaa, who happen to be not exactly up to their standards of whiteness…
But the general message is that all nationalists organizations work together, and not only inside Poland. They are also aiming to create an “international of nationalists” which would help to beat globalisation at the global scale. As one Twitter user commented: “this is the best idea since Flat Earth Society decided to go international in order to have members all around the globe”.
In other news: finally it became known what the role of Territorial Army, pet project of minister of Defense Antoni Macierewicz will be. In the speech he addressed his part-time soldiers: “You have been called to the greatest honour, that man can achieve: to spill the blood for your motherland. You are going to defend Poland from being attacked by the outside enemy, if that happens. And you are going to defend Poland from enemy within, that is already here”. So far it is not known, who this enemy within is: leftist, opposition or perhaps some non-Polish people that are present in Poland already? None of them seems to be willing to start civil war so far, but perhaps minister Macierewicz knows better. Or perhaps it’s him, who plan to start it, with this man everything is possible.
Surely if it was director of Białowieża National Park, she has been defeated without a need of involving territorial army. She was suddenly sacked and no reason was given, although it is widely suspected, that it was because she opposed logging and bison-hunting. And she was not the only one – European Commission ruled, that if Poland won’t stop illegal logging, it will be fined 100 000 Euro per day. As I write those words, chairman of State Forrest claims that logging has ceased, while activists patrolling the woods report that they have stopped some of the harvesters from going into action and that they can’t find others where they used to be parked overnight.
Still, it seems that Białowieża will be yet another defeat in the war between minister Szyszko and European institutions – during previous time PiS was in power, he forced an expressway to be built through invaluable nature reserve of Rospuda valley despite opposition from eco-activists, political opposition, majority of Poles, scientists and European institutions. Some say that wise man learn from mistakes of others, stupid man learns from his own mistakes, and then further down there is Szyszko, but I think the problem is elsewhere: it won’t be Jan Szyszko who will be paying those hefty fines, it will be Polish taxpayer who, in majority, fiercely opposed his actions. The only thing Jan Szyszko has to loose is his pride if he decides to back down…
But at least hunters can feel safe. Recently in this series I wrote about a hunter who killed a man, but then claimed he had mistaken him for a wild boar and got out of the court with just slap on his hand. I’ve also mentioned the case when hunters put in danger horse-riding girls and injured a dog. Investigation in the matter had just been closed, concluding, that everything was in line with the rules (how they know despite not making any investigations? The hunters told them so!), and there is no problem, as while it’s true that pellets hit the head of one of the girls, she was wearing a horse-riding helmet, so she was not hurt, therefore there was no real danger.
So should everyone wear helmets in Poland now to avoid being shot by the hunters? Well, new arguments for that pop up nearly every day. I wrote about just a few in here already, but most recently hunters have shot semi-tamed deer, the only one that lived in the small forest at the outskirts of Katowice. Local families were going there for walks, hoping to see their beloved Leszek, as he was commonly known as. To their shock, the animal was killed by the hunters despite presence of several walkers, as is very common in that area during weekends.
But I guess it’s their fault. Not only they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but also they weren’t in the right place at the right time. And who was there? Minister Morawiecki. He went shopping, and this memorable moment was documented by one of the right wing papers. But something was not right – the products of the shelves were all priced at 50 gr, 1 zł or 2 zł, usually about 50% of usual price or below. So either this is some special shop with better prices for the first sort of Poles, or apparently the shop in PiS’ Potemkin’ village is already up and running… But prime minister Szydło did not joined him for a shopping spree… She was too busy opening the headquarters of Frontex. Wait, wait – you might say – Frontex has been located in Warsaw since 2005, wasn’t it? And you would be right.
So what is the deal? Poland tried to compete to host any of the institutions that would have to move out of Britain after Brexit. Current position of Poland combined with unique diplomatic skills of Witold Waszczykowski (I think the only fair competition to him would be Boris Johnson, and that only if they participated in “Upper Class Twit of the Year” contest from Monty Python) resulted in that Poland got none of that. Therefore in desperate need of success, the government has celebrated with a big pump the ratification of the deal signed in march this year, according to which Frontex will receive a plot of land to construct a new building there…
And what is going on in the field of education? Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who recently was reprimanding president Duda for not looking into financing for his university, is very effective in milking EU funds. Although the fact, that to be admitted to his school, candidate has to provide reference from his parson is a little bit against European rules, as it would be likely to close doors of the potential not Catholic students. I know that assumption that there would be anyone who is not right-wing extremist already that would like to be brainwashed there is a long stretch, but so does father Rydzyk, so the little asterisk with the note saying that “other arrangements are possible for people of other world views” should do the trick. But he don’t want to stretch it too far, so this option is available only on those courses that receive EU funding.
So, as regular readers of this column will see, Catholic church tries to dominate education in Poland from kindergartens to universities. No wonder, that people try to take matters in their own hands. A fashion model Anja Rubik teamed up with women’s magazine Wysokie Obcasy and NGO Ponton, that promotes sex education and recently is less and less welcome in classes. They started a new action where popular celebrities talk about sex in short humorous clips, such like this one:
This was welcomed by most, but criticized by the right. Amongst the critics was a daughter of late president Lech Kaczyński, who has a column in one of the right wing magazines. In her opinion the action is not stressing enough that the best way to enjoy safe sex is to have partner, or even better a spouse, and such light approach to the topic of sex may lead to the young people being unable to create stable relationships in the future. I know that some of the readers are not pleased if I go too much into the celebrity gossip field, but I think in this case it is important to show yet another face of PiS hypocrisy. Because how is that Marta Kaczyńska is such an expert in that field? She learned it the hard way: with two divorces (both postponed to do not impact the elections that happened about the same time) and one court case of paternity fraud, followed by never-ending line of tabloid speculations about her new romances, she is a living proof that sexual education teaching ability to create stable relationships could be better.
But is the model of sexual education promoted by Marta’s uncle’s party any better? According to PiS leading expert on the matter, dr hab. Urszula Dudziak, adultery and divorces are results of using contraception. Well, if that’s true, then Marta Kaczyńska got out pretty lucky, as according to dr Dudziak, contraception is also the major cause of death in women, and she is alive and well.
This piece was published in Britske Listy
Picture: Piotr Drabik (via Wikipedia)
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