A Coup to Save Democracy? Obama, Trump, Piłsudski, Dmowski, and the Value of Ahistorical Analogies
Last week brought an interesting conjunctions of dates: first the catastrophic US elections on November 8, and then, just three days later, the celebration of Polish Independence Day. The way each of these days played out got me thinking about historical memory and analogy, about Obama, Trump, Piłsudski, and Dmowski.
While preparing for the commemorations of November 11, Mateusz Kijowski, the leader of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Komitet Obrony Demokracji, or KOD) said that there should be space in the movement for all Polish patriots, both those who hearkened back to the tradition of Józef Piłsudski and those who honored Roman Dmowski. The blow-back was immediate and severe. Since Dmowski’s National Democratic party represented antisemitic authoritarianism and a struggle-for-survival approach to relations among nations and ethnicities, he hardly seemed to be an appropriate patron for a group like KOD. Though Kijowski tried to walk back his gaff, many on the left were so outraged that they refused to participate in KOD’s Independence Day march. The result was an embarrassing contrast between the anemic march organized by KOD and a massive demonstration by the actual heirs of Dmowski, the National-Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, or ONR).
The whole fiasco got me thinking about the competing historical legacies of Dmowski and Piłsudski. Insofar as the right tries to white-wash the legacy of the former, the left frequently downplays some of the darker aspects of the former. Like Americans who struggle with the politics of commemorating our slave-owning “founding fathers,” Poles have to deal with the fact that the people who created an independent, democratic Polish state in 1918 had (at best) a skeptical attitude towards democracy. Just how skeptical was brought home to me when I considered not only the parallel between Dmowski and Trump, but between Piłsudski and Obama. These analogies are grossly ahistorical, but the way in which they are ahistorical offers insights into both 1918 and 2016.
The Polish Second Republic was created in 1918 amidst the turmoil surrounding the Revolution that began in Russia before spreading to most of Central Europe. Virtually every old institution, every traditional source of authority, every hierarchy was called into question. To put it mildly, it was not a time amenable to ideological compromise or moderation. Against that backdrop, the first Polish presidential election in 1922 was won by Gabriel Narutowicz, who was backed by a diverse ethno-linguistic coalition committed to a state in which legal and political equality depended on Polish citizenship, not a nationalist bond of religion, language, culture, or heritage. The right-wing opposition, led by Dmowski’s National Democrats, claimed that Poland should be for the Poles, which they defined in narrow (though never precise) ethnic terms. The supporters of the Endecja (from En-De: Narodowa Demokracja) rioted after the election, claiming that their candidate deserved to win because he had received a majority of the “Polish” votes.
So far we have an interesting electoral parallel to present-day America. The Republicans represent a majority of whites in the countryside and small towns, and they consider themselves the “real America.” The Democrats represent a coalition of all those who believe that being American should not depend on being white and rural. While there are class elements to this, they aren’t definitive: the Republic coalition includes both wealthy businessmen and poor farmers, and the Democratic coalition includes both prosperous urban professionals and impoverished African Americans and Latinos. These latter coalition is larger than the former, but not by all that much. So far, the parallels with early 20th century Poland are strikingly close.
After the 1922 elections, as Paul Brykczyński has so eloquently chronicled, a rhetorical campaign delegitimized President Narutowicz among supporters of the right, spreading misinformation about his “real loyalties” and describing his presidency as a threat to the nation. An Endecja supporter took all this to heart, and assassinated the President. The mainstream right-wing press, like the “gentlemanly” Dmowski himself, expressed sympathy for the “patriotic” but mentally unstable killer, lamenting the murder but approving of the murderer’s justifications. Piłsudski and the mainstream left-wing press, in turn, blamed the Endecja for the assassination.
A few years later, in 1926, the National Democrats were poised to take power in a coalition government with the largest agrarian party. Piłsudski, decrying the political system that could allow those responsible for murder and xenophobic hatred to form a government, organized a military coup. Thanks to that move, the radical right would never take power in interwar Poland, blocking the sort of state-sponsored racism and nationalism that characterized Germany, Italy, Hungary, and so many other interwar European countries. On the other hand, Piłsudski maintained this situation through fraud, censorship, and a politicized judicial system. Poland never went to the fascists, but it certainly wasn’t a democracy.
So the underlying similarities between Poland in the 1920s and America in the 2010s would seem to break down. The American right delegitimized Obama just as the Polish right delegitimized Narutowicz, with disturbingly similar rhetoric. Then both the Republicans and the Endecja managed to use the legitimate mechanisms of parliamentary politics to come to power, even though neither had the support of a majority of the population. No one assassinated Obama, though frankly I wouldn’t make much of this. Narutowicz had none of the security protection that the US President enjoys, and I have no doubt whatsoever that there would have been Americans willing to murder our president had the Secret Service not been so effective.
The real breakdown in the analogy comes when we compare the Spring of 1926 with the Fall of 2016 (which also gives us a nice round anniversary to consider). Actually, the analogy doesn’t really collapse, because the differing outcomes allow us to understand more fully both our current moment and the one nine decades ago. Imagine how you would feel if Obama declared martial law tomorrow, justifying his move by pointing to the political chaos and corruption in the Trump transition team (no exaggerations there), and the fact that Trumpism is based on a vile ideology of white supremacy (no exaggerations there, either). Obama and Piłsudski could justifiably commiserate with the combination of incompetence and evil that each of them faced. Neither could prevent the oncoming nightmare with legal, constitutional means. Piłsudski, never one to doubt his own righteousness and never one to respect the polite rules of elite politics, did what he felt he needed to do. Obama has almost certainly never even considered a similar path.
In 1926, the Polish left was momentarily delighted by Piłsudski’s coup. The socialists even used the rail-workers union to prevent military units loyal to the National Democrats from reaching Warsaw. They later came to regret their support, but their allegiance to the niceties of democratic procedures came with 20/20 hindsight. And with our 20/20 hindsight, knowing what we do about what the fascist right ended up doing in Europe, can we really say that the socialist support for Piłsudski was entirely wrong? That’s a real question, not a rhetorical one: I have no idea what the answer is. I challenge you to think deeply about how you would respond if Obama (in a wildly impossible and counterfactual history) did today what Piłsudski did 90 years ago.
This thought experiment shows what historical analogy can accomplish. It doesn’t give us any predictive powers, but it does push us to grapple with the nuances of historical decisions and processes. Even if you conclude that the Obama coup scenario is silly, then explaining why it seems absurd brings us insights into both our current moment and 1926. What we might call “informed ahistoricism” is one of the best reasons to study history in the first place, as well as an effective way to make it interesting for students and the broader public
It also makes me very glad that I’m not in Obama’s shoes right now.