Click:软文
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Chairman of the Law and Justice political party, during The Patriotic Meeting of Independence Day, November 11, 2017, Kracow, Poland. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved. 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.
To complete the picture one should also mention that the
Poles never liked each other very much. According to a recently published book,
they were particularly disliked by their own political and intellectual leaders[1].
This abrupt change in Polish sentiment requires some
explanation.
This abrupt change in Polish sentiment requires some
explanation. Taking a longer perspective, one may say that in the past, when the
Poles were cordoned off by the Iron Curtain and unable to travel, they viewed all
western, nay, all other countries as lands of happiness and extended their
hospitality to all rarely-seen foreigners. Nowadays, thanks to the European Union
and its Schengen Treaty, the Poles move freely a lot in great numbers to all destinations.
And they emigrate: according to official statistics (real numbers are
likely to be higher) in 2016 there were more than 2.5 million Poles living
abroad, the majority of them (2.1 million) in European Union countries. Nearly
790 thousand of them took up residence in Great Britain, almost 700 thousand in
Germany, while in the Netherlands and Ireland, about 115 thousand.
No conclusive
explanation can be inferred from these facts and numbers, though. First-hand
acquaintance with foreigners might have helped to dispel any fears and thus
potential animosities towards them. But in that case Polish sympathies towards
them should be rising rather than dropping.
On the other hand,
a direct acquaintance with other peoples may have dispelled the last vestiges
of the past allure felt by Poles to everything foreign, with the exception of
foreign currencies, that is. This would explain the sudden souring of their attitudes.
Nevertheless, even if true, this still does not account for the fact that Polish
approval of other nationals has swayed so dramatically within just one year. The
explanation must be sought elsewhere.
The company of strangers
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. We – the Polish people – are not
alone in this.
Abrupt changes in
public mood are not confined to our post-national and multicultural condition. According to a well-researched
historical example, in 1933 nearly 30 per cent of the Jewish population in
Germany, 503 thousand strong, which accounted for only 0.76 percent of the
German population, were in marital ties with native Germans. Niall Ferguson writes
that the cities of Hamburg and Munich saw the highest rates of Jewish-German intermarriage,
and that the figures were well above average in Berlin, Cologne, Dresden,
Leipzig, and even Breslau, the present Wrocław[2],
my home town. Bearing in mind the principle that it takes two to tango, these
numbers cannot but reflect at least some level of mutual Jewish-German sympathy,
not just one-sided sentiment. And yet soon thereafter, with the rise of the
Nazi party to power, these sentiments were rapidly reversed.
Mood
swings
Here is another vivid example. Bertrand Russell remembered
the outbreak of the First World War in the following way: “At the end of July
[1914], I was at Cambridge, discussing the
situation with all and sundry. I found it impossible to believe that Europe
would be so mad as to plunge into war, but I was persuaded that, if there was
war, England would be involved. I collected signatures of a large number of
professors and Fellows to a statement in favour of neutrality which appeared in
the Manchester Guardian. The day war was declared, almost all of them changed
their minds. Looking back, it seems extraordinary that one did not realize more
clearly what was coming. I spent the evening of August 4 walking round the
streets, especially in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square, noticing cheering
crowds, and making myself sensitive to the emotions of passers-by. During this
and the following days I discovered to my amazement that average men and women were
delighted at the prospect of war. I had fondly
imagined, what most Pacifists contended, that wars were forced upon a reluctant
population by despotic and Machiavellian governments.”[3]
Four years later he made the following observation: “The
end of the war was so swift and dramatic that no one had time to adjust feelings
to changed circumstances. I learned on the morning of November 11 [1918], a few
hours in advance of the general public, that the armistice was coming. I went
out into the street, and told a Belgian soldier, who said: ‘Tiens, c’est chic!’ I went into a
tobacconist’s and told the lady who served me. ‘I am glad of that,’ she said, ‘because
now we shall be able to get rid of the interned Germans.’ At eleven o'clock,
when the armistice was announced, I was in Tottenham Court Road. Within two
minutes, everybody in all the shops and offices had come into the street. They
commandeered the buses, and made them go where they liked. I saw a man and
woman, complete strangers to each other, meet in the middle of the road and
kiss as they passed. The crowd rejoiced and I also rejoiced”[4].
These and numerous other examples, both historical and
contemporaneous, testify to the essential volatility of public sentiment among all
nations. Whatever their ethnicity and culture, people are not always
kind-hearted to each other. These examples also suggest that an explanation of
these phenomena will have something to do with the political mechanics.
Neo-nationalism and neo-authoritarianism
Since 1989, Poland has been presented as a role-model
of transition from communism to liberal democracy. However, following the decisive
electoral victory of the party Law and Justice in 2015, Poland has experienced
not only the above-described volatility of the attitudes towards foreigners,
but has also become a seedbed of more serious xenophobic phenomena.
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. 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.
This struggle has been going on, and continues to do
so, between the champions of the idea of the open society and the advocates of
a more tight, self-enclosed community. The former, among which I include centrist
and liberal parties, as well as those calling themselves social democratic, successfully
worked for the transformation of the Polish economy, the accession of Poland to
NATO and the European Union, and, with two interruptions, have managed the
country from 1989 until 2015. Donald Tusk, former Polish PM and present
President of the EU, has been a leader of these liberal forces for more than a
decade.
Amongst the latter are the right-wing, conservative
and nationalist parties. The central figure in this nationalist part of the
political spectrum is Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Law and Justice and the
surviving twin brother of the former president who died in the airplane crash
in Smolensk in 2010. For decades Kaczyński has led his party unchallenged,
despite a number of consecutive electoral defeats.
Liberal
arrogance
The tables were turned when in 2015 the candidate
supported by Kaczyński won the presidential elections, his party soon
thereafter securing for itself an overwhelming parliamentary majority. Several
factors contributed to this.
On the part of the liberals, three factors played a
crucial role. First of all, there was the liberal disregard for the significant
social costs of the transformation. According to Eurostat, in 2008 out of 23.5
million Europeans with an income smaller than 10 euro per day, 10.5 million were
Polish citizens. 44 per cent of Europeans with incomes below €5 a day, lived in
Poland. No less significant was the arrogance demonstrated by members of the liberal
parties. Thirdly, their past successes lulled the liberals into excessive
confidence. They had come to believe that their rule would be secured
indefinitely. Two examples will serve. Shortly before the presidential
elections in 2015 Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, said that the liberal incumbent,
Bronisław Komorowski, could only be defeated if he ran over a pregnant nun on
the zebra while drunk-driving. In the run-up to the general elections in 2015, Donald
Tusk quipped that there was no one he could lose the elections to. It turned
out that both were hopelessly wrong – a text-book example of Arnold Toynbee’s
“resting upon one’s oars”[5].
Politics
as extermination
On the nationalist side of the spectrum, scarred by
numerous past defeats, which only propelled his political ambitions, Kaczyński resorted
to the populist redistributive agenda on the one hand, and on the other, to nationalist
propaganda. The political efficacy of redistributionist promises in the electoral
process does not need much by way of explanation. What calls for an explanation
is the overwhelming success of his exclusionary agenda.
Three elements seem to have played a decisive role in
this. The first may be encapsulated in the concept of voluntary servitude; the second
refers to the Polish brand of inferiority complex, while the third has to do
with a deep-seated Polish anti-Semitism, and more generally, exclusivism.
As for the first factor, one should say that Kaczynski
has managed to secure for himself the position of an unquestioned authority by surrounding
himself with faithful acolytes, mostly amateurs-turned-politicians, whose behaviour
may be perfectly summed up by the ‘voluntary servitude’ diagnosed by Etienne de
la Boetie[6].
They have returned his favours by a staunch and blind obedience towards him,
and a ferocious, contemptuous and indeed exterminating attitude towards the
political opposition. Personal subservience towards Kaczyński pushed his
acolytes into scenes of mutual rivalry that have erupted into all sorts of exclusionary
ideas, policies and bills which they hoped would please their party chief,
prompting him in return, to reward them with more favours and stronger positionings
within his neo-authoritarian party. Another way to describe the internal dynamics of the party might be
found in Friedrich von Hayek’s reply to the question “why the worst get on top”
in totalitarian regimes. As he wrote, an aspiring dictator will be able to
obtain the support:
“of all the
docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are
prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into
their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently. It will be those whose vague and
imperfectly formed ideas are easily swayed and whose passions and emotions are
readily aroused who will thus swell the ranks of the totalitarian party”[7].
Playthings
of history
As for the Polish inferiority complex; for more than
two centuries, Poland has been a plaything of history, not its agent. Ever
since the first partition of Poland in 1772, and especially the third
one in 1795, when it ceased to exist as an independent state, the fate of the Polish
territory and population was decided by its powerful neighbours, Germany,
Austria and Russia.
During that period, Polish
culture and language was preserved by the thin layer of intelligentsia and by
the Roman Catholic Church. Re-established as a state in 1918, after barely 21
years Poland fell victim to the invasion of the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
In the period of 1945-1989 it existed as a crippled and inefficient state
within the orbit of the Soviet Union. The Poles as a nation fully realised the
efficacy of their regained collective agency only in 1980, when the
“Solidarity” movement was born in the Gdańsk Shipyard, and again in 1989 when a
revived “Solidarity” led the successful opposition to communist rule. Polish
culture and language was preserved by the thin layer of intelligentsia and by
the Roman Catholic Church.
Due to these all too rare opportunities
for collectively exercised agency, there is among Poles a powerful longing for
dignity, recognition and respect, both internally and internationally, coupled
with an acute collective inferiority complex.
Kaczyński has found a way to satisfy
this deep-felt need for recognition. He did so by breathing new life into the
concept of sovereignty, and by reviving and fostering those exclusionary sentiments.
Games of altar
and throne
As far as Polish anti-Semitism is concerned, over the
centuries the Roman Catholic Church in Poland has worked on and consistently
upheld an exclusionary stereotype of a “Pole-the-catholic”. This stereotype was
also useful to the Church during Communist rule. The stereotype was especially
directed, and recurrently used, against Jews living in the Polish territories,
infrequently leading to violent bouts of rabid anti-Semitism.
Nowadays, the stereotype continues to function in the
public consciousness. During the long pontificate of John Paul II, the bishops
of the Church displayed self-assuredness and arrogance as they capitalized,
personally and institutionally, on the “Polish Pope”, while neglecting and
violating his teachings, most especially those regarding the Jews, “older
brothers in faith”.
Nowadays a majority of the bishops are influenced by the
radical nationalist ideology propagated by an enterprising Redemptorist friar, Tadeusz
Rydzyk, who has built a powerful
media-and-business empire, becoming a mentor to and sponsor of various of his
chosen right-wing parties. Ever since the inception of his business career, he has
been the main supporter of Law and Justice. It was not the bishops, but this
friar, who engineered the present alliance between the Altar and the Throne in
Poland.
Contagious
examples
All the above, though important, still does not explain
the exclusionary drive in Poland under the present regime. Searching for clues,
I would like to invoke one of the maxims of Francois de la Rochefoucauld, who
wrote: “Nothing is so contagious as example, and we never do very good deeds or
very evil ones without producing imitations. We copy the good deeds in a spirit
of emulation, and the bad ones because of the malignity of our nature – which
shame used to hold under lock and key, but an example sets free”[8].
To put it concisely: shame inhibits human wickedness,
while a wicked example encourages it. The example is especially powerful, both
in its beneficial as well as its evil impact, when given by a figure of
authority. There cannot be any doubt that the bishops of the Roman Catholic
Church, by virtue of their very status, are perceived in Polish society as persons
of great authority. Kaczyński likewise, has been fashioned into a person of supreme
political authority by his devotees and their insistent propaganda. It cannot
be denied that the new wave of exclusionary attitudes in Poland, working on the
old anti-Semitism and a new anti-Islamism, has been
activated by the example given personally by Kaczyński as a public authority, assisted,
as he was, by the authorities of the Catholic Church.
Rewriting
history
Learning from past mistakes and capitalizing on
liberal blunders, Kaczyński has barefacedly resorted to xenophobic rhetoric,
encouraging exclusionary attitudes on a number of occasions. For example, he has
legitimized the activities of football hooligan groupings by calling them
genuine patriots[9]. Upon
receiving such a political umbrella, they have instantly adopted the
nationalist ideology of Kaczyński’s party, especially the myth of the “cursed
soldiers”, and proceeded to propagate this ideology in public places, churches
and even public schools, with impunity. They have been key organizers of the
infamous Marches of Independence during which neo-Nazi symbols are openly
displayed.
Since 2015 he has sought to strengthen his rule by
exciting fears of an alien invasion and otherwise dividing Polish society by
selecting various groups as objects of public hatred. Deploying the slogan
“ulica i zagranica” (“the street and abroad”, ironically first uttered by a 1960’s anti-Semitic
communist leader), his party faithful relentlessly try to shame and silence
those who venture any public criticism of his policies.
His comprehensive rewriting of history assumes the
form of renaming streets named after various figures of the communist past and
pulling down monuments symbolizing people and events related to that period. He
has also proposed a number of policies to deprive some citizens, especially “the
communists”, of some of their public rights, and drastically reduced their
pensions.
Finally, he objected to the EU programme offering shelter
to refugees coming to the EU by infamously claiming: “There are already
symptoms of very dangerous diseases, long unseen in Europe. Cholera on the
Greek Islands, dysentery in Vienna. Different types of parasites, protozoa that
are not dangerous in the bodies of these people but may be dangerous here. This
does not mean we should discriminate against anyone, but we need to check it”.
Politics
as personal
Ever since his liberal arch-enemy Donald Tusk became
the President of the European Union, Kaczynski, never an enthusiast of the
European Union, has spread and encouraged mendacious propaganda about the evils
of “Brussels”, viewed with particular suspicion. He has demanded reparations
from Germany, and instigated fear of an imminent Russian aggression. His anti-Russian
propaganda was chiefly based upon unfounded allegations of conspiracy between
Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk in bringing down the plane with his twin brother,
the Polish president, and 95 other officials, headed for Katyń for a
celebration of the memory of the Polish citizens murdered by Soviets in 1940[10].
Kaczynski, never an enthusiast of the
European Union, has spread and encouraged mendacious propaganda about the evils
of “Brussels”, viewed with particular suspicion.
His latest initiatives include the “anti-defamation”
amendment of the Institute of National Remembrance law, apparently aimed at
protecting the Polish nation from being accused of perpetrating crimes against the
Jews[11],
though allegedly aimed at silencing Jan Tomasz Gross, the Polish historian of
the Holocaust who was the first to publish an account of the massacre of the
Jews by the Poles in Jedwabne on July 10, 1941[12].
Another initiative was the “demotion bill” allowing the current administration
to deprive generals responsible for declaring martial law in 1981, especially
Wojciech Jaruzelski, of their ranks. Allegedly the bill, vetoed by the president, was motivated by the fact
that the generals to be demoted did not arrest Kaczyński during martial law in
1981, in the stark contrast to the treatment of Adam Michnik, Karol
Modzelewski, Jacek Kuroń and other figures of the anti-communist opposition who
were immediately arrested and spent long years in prison.
Swaying
the crowd
Kaczyński has won his position of authority by brazenly
resorting to radical exclusionary ideas which very few dared to invoke in the
past three decades. By doing so, he has awakened spectres which seemed to have
been buried forever. This has brought immediate fruits in the shape of a steep
rise in xenophobic incidents across Poland. According to the independent
Monitoring Center on Racist and Xenophobic Behavior, since 2010 the number of racist
attacks has risen in Poland six times over. The example he has
set was
the call to his party faithful to follow suit.
The example he has
set was
the call to his party faithful to follow suit. According to the bulletin published by the Never Again
Association, whose aim is to fight xenophobia
in Poland,[13]after the harsh criticism of the anti-defamation bill
by the state of Israel and the Jewish communities across the world, "the deputy
Speaker of the Parliament and spokesperson of the ruling party tweeted: ‘From
now on it will be difficult to look at Jews with sympathy and friendship’”. Also,
a deputy chairman of the Law
and Justice faction in the Parliament has claimed that “if Poles are held
responsible for the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom ‘then one might as well conclude that
if Jewish police were responsible for leading Jews to the gas chambers, Jews
themselves created their own Holocaust.’” A Law and Justice MP has proposed a
revisionary interpretation of the Holocaust: “‘Do you know who chased the Jews
away to the Warsaw Ghetto?The Germans, you think? No. The Jews themselves went
because they were told that there would be an enclave, that they would not have
to deal with those nasty Poles.’”[14] Rafał
Pankowski, a professor of sociology in Warsaw and activist of the “Never Again”, was smeared by government officials after his
speech at the Global Forum Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism held on 19-21
March 2018 in Jerusalem.
Enthusiasm, fear and loathing
All this generates a variety of reactions in society:
enthusiasm and satisfaction on the one hand, and public agoraphobia and fear,
on the other. Beneficiaries of the new social policies support the new regime
enthusiastically; the xenophobes rejoice in the exclusionary rhetoric. This is
duly reflected in the polls: despite understandable aesthetic reservations and
a number of blunders, Law and Justice still enjoys the greatest popularity
among the electorate.
Those, however, who do not take active part in public
life anyway, are withdrawing into their seclusion even more, giving vent to
their disgust and anger in private and in social media. Fear is the common
condition of those occupying middle-rank public positions, and, as always in
the case of fear, it has a paralyzing effect: they act in such a way as to
avoid attracting excessive attention, and steer away from any decisions which
they think may be seen as controversial by the eager supporters of the new
regime. Once again social mimicry assumes the form of mediocrity and cowardice.
Having engineered xenophobic practices and attitudes in
order to secure his victory, Kaczyński and his party have become prisoners of their
own exclusionary rhetoric.
In order to uphold their now weakening position, he and his successors will
have to continue to resort to the same rhetoric in the future. What is most
worrying is that the awoken spectres of exclusivism turn out to be very much
alive in Polish society and, in any foreseeable future, will not be readily
dispelled.
Notes and references
[1] Adam
Leszczyński, No dno po prostu jest
Polska. Dlaczego Polacy tak bardzo nie lubią swojego kraju i innych Polaków,
Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa 2017; the title of the book may be roughly translated
as: “But it is just a hopeless pit,
Poland. Why the Poles dislike so much their own country and
themselves”.)
[2] Niall Ferguson, The War of the
World. Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, Penguin,
London 2006, p. 249-250.
[3]
Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory
and other Essays, Simon and Schuster, New York 1951, p. 27.
[4]
Ibid., p. 31. More recently the attitudes of the British public have been
engineered into volatility again. This time it has led to a decision to part
company with the European Union, and in view of its uncertain consequences, has
generated even more instability across the globe.
[5]
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History,
Vol. IV, Fifth Impression, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1951, p. 265.
[6]
Etienne de la Boetie, The Discourse of
Voluntary Servitude, trans. Harry Kurz, The Mises Institute, Auburn,
Alabama, 1975.
[7]
Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to
Serfdom, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1944 (2006), p.143.
[8] François de la Rochefoucauld, Collected Maxims and
Other Reflections, transl. by E. H and A.
M. Blackmore and Francine Giguère, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, 230.
[9] I
have dealt with this issue in the paper Academies
of Hatred.
[10] Adam Chmielewski and Denis
Dutton, Poland’s tragedy: sorrow, and anger:
[11] Adam Chmielewski, The
guilt, dignity and pedagogy of shamelessness.
[12] Jan T.
Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in
Jedwabne, Poland, Princeton University
Press, Princeton 2001.
[13] http://www.nigdywiecej.org/en/.
[14] “Never
Again” Targeted for Speaking against Antisemitism here.
