Author Archives: Brian Porter-Szucs

One Year Later

As we approach the one year anniversary of the Polish parliamentary elections of 2015 (October 25), it’s a good opportunity to take a look back to assess how many of the fears and hopes of last Fall have come to pass. I conducted a survey just after the PiS victory, asking Polish Studies experts to make predictions about what the future would hold, and one year later it should be interesting to see how well our forecasts are holding up.

I’ll address the more substantive issues in subsequent posts, but today I just want to consider what has happened to PiS’s popular support, with an eye towards where it might be heading. When I asked people last year to guess what would happen when it came time for the next parliamentary elections (mostly likely not until 2019), only 3% of the respondents thought that PiS would gain popularity. Another 20% expected them to lose support, but only to parties further to the right who would then be able to form a coalition government for a second term. Obviously, a lot is going to happen over the next three years, but the data from this first year has been remarkably stable. That might be changing now, because over the last two months PiS support has been falling. Is this the beginning of a trend, or just a momentary dip in support? I think it is too soon to say.

Based on monthly averages of the surveys aggregated on the website http://ewybory.eu/sondaze (including polling from CBOS, IBRiS, Millward Brown, Pollster, and TNS Polska), PiS fell quickly from their election day high, but then held steady in the low- to mid-thirties until recently. I wish I had the statistical training needed to weigh these different polling firms, along the lines that Nate Silver’s team at fivethirtyeight.com does in the United States, but even this simpler compilation (akin to what Americans can find at Real Clear Politics) provides a good overview that averages out the idiosyncrasies of the different firms (from the very PiS-friendly CBOS to the lower numbers at Pollster).

The individual fate of PiS is probably less important than the shifting divisions in Polish society more broadly between those who support Kaczyński’s overall philosophy, and those who want to preserve a liberal constitutional democracy. After all, it is very possible that PiS has lost support in recent weeks from both ends: those who are disappointed that the government withdrew the plan for a near total ban on abortion, and those who were mobilized in opposition by the fact that this plan was proposed in the first place. So if we lump together all the parties that could potentially form a coalition with PiS (Kukiz and Korwin) and those that would stand opposed to such a coalition (Platforma, Nowoczesna, SLD, Razem, and PSL), we get this picture.

That gives us a good snapshot of the increasingly cavernous divisions in Polish society, but because of the quirks of the Polish electoral law, it isn’t necessarily relevant to the distribution of power in the Sejm. If we remove all the parties that cannot (as of now) pass the 5% minimum needed to get any seats, we would have a simpler lineup of PiS and Kukiz vs. Platforma and Nowoczesna.

This last chart has the headline news: over the past few weeks, for the first time, we have reached the point where PiS would loose power if elections were held now. It would be very close, but nonetheless, the lines have crossed. It is vital to remember that PiS did not come to power because a majority of Poles supported them. With only 38% of the vote one year ago, they could seize control only because so many ballots were cast for small parties that didn’t enter the sejm. For example, a couple hundred thousand additional votes for SLD would have allowed it to enter the sejm, and that along would have blocked Kaczynski’s path. Regardless, the law is the law, and under those rules, all a party needs is enough votes to get a majority of those who vote for large parties—not of the entire electorate, much less of the entire population. Even that low bar is slipping out of their reach for Jarosław Kaczyński, assuming the current trends continue.

 

 

 

 

 

Faulty Memory Codes

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland has called upon Poles around the world to monitor the media for any use of phrases that have been designated as “wadliwe kody pamięci.” The phrase is tricky to translate, because it sounds as weird in Polish as in English: something like “faulty memory codes.” I’ve listed the forbidden terms below. They include some expressions that are genuinely misleading or inaccurate, but also some that have been (or easily could be) used by anyone writing about the history of Eastern Europe. We could attribute the inclusion of some of these terms to a weak understand of how adjectives are used in English, but that might be both too snarky and too generous.

At first glance, this story looks like another punchline in the ongoing self-parody that is Foreign Minister Waszczykowski, but behind it is something that is all too serious for anyone who writes or speaks publicly about Poland. According to the law already moving through the Sejm, three years in jail await anyone convicted of “publicly and contrary to the facts ascribing to the Polish Republic or the Polish nation participation in, organization of, or co-responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich.” There’s a clause exempting “artistic or scholarly activity,” so perhaps I should start putting footnotes in my Facebook posts and blog entries, just to be on the safe side. The law would indeed apply to people like me, whether I’m in Poland or back home in the US. The proposed legislation states that the crime will be prosecuted “regardless of the laws obtaining in the place where the act is committed.” So anyone who plans to visit Poland (or any country likely to extradite someone to Poland for this offense–there goes your planned trip to Budapest) must be careful not to use any of the phrases below.

It is probably also advisable not to argue, as I have in multiple places, that the virulent antisemitism of the interwar years, spread not only by the Endecja but also by many within the Catholic Church, helped create an atmosphere that made it very hard for Poles to empathize with the Jewish plight during the war, which in turn made it much harder for Jews to survive in hiding or to find aid among their neighbors. It would only be necessary to summarize that argument as “antisemitism among Poles led to more Jewish deaths during the Holocaust,” and I’d be skirting right up against the law. Of course, I’ve also argued that the situation was no worse in Poland than anywhere else in Europe at the time—but that defense would rely on the PiS judicial system attending to contextualization and nuance.

__________

The forbidden phrases of the “faulty memory code”

• Polish concentration camps
• Polish death camps
• Polish extermination camps
• Polish gas chambers
• Polish factories of death
• The Polish Holocaust
• Polish ghettos
• Polish Nazis
• Polish genocide
• Polish mass murder
• Polish war crimes
• Polish crimes against humanity
• Polish war criminals
• Polish participation in the Holocaust
• The Polish SS
• Polish Auschwitz
• Nazi Poland
• Polish transit camps
• Polish internment camps
• Polish work camps
• Polish extermination of the Jews
• The Polish Gestapo
• Concentration camps, death camps, or extermination camps in Poland

Don’t Blame Kaczyński for Everything

Jarosław Kaczyński and PiS have become a metaphors for the resurgence of authoritarian nationalism in Poland, but I was reminded today that this is unfair. Without a doubt, Kaczyński and his supporters are attacking the foundations of liberal democracy and promoting a toxic form of nationalism, but occasionally we should step back and ask about the soil out of which PiS grew.

Poles are not significantly more prone to nationalism than anyone else in Europe. This is a point I’ve been making on this blog for a long time. It is highly dangerous to imagine that any particular “culture” is more or less xenophobic, more or less prone to violence, more or less authoritarian. That said, we can identify ritualistic behaviors, mindlessly repeated slogans, and taken-for-granted habits that can either facilitate or inhibit certain ideological movements.

This morning I attended an event at my youngest daughter’s elementary school here in Warsaw. It is highly-regarded public school that does a lot of good work conveying values of tolerance and multiculturalism; it has an well formulated anti-bullying policy that emphases respect for others; and it provides kids with many opportunities for individual creative development. In other words, it looks a lot like the schools I’m familiar with from back in Ann Arbor, Michigan—a town famous for being a bastion of leftist politics and culture. According to the precinct-level results from the last elections, my neighborhood in Warsaw has fewer PiS supporters than is typical for this city, which in turn has far fewer than the national average. Finally, the purges of the educational system that many are predicting have not yet touched this school, and the curricular reforms promised by the government will only take effect next year. In other words, one can’t blame PiS for what is happening at this school (at least, not yet).

In fact, what I observed this morning was a long-standing tradition, and I doubt that anyone would perceive it as political in any way. This was the day when new students take an oath to the school in a formal ceremony—something which struck me as a bit odd, because it wasn’t a custom that I was familiar with. I was expecting the students to pledge to study hard, follow the school rules, never cheat, be kind to their classmates, be respectful to their teachers, etc. Actually, my first reaction was to think that this would be something worth copying back home, because there’s good pedagogical research on the effectiveness of pledges and contracts as a means of reducing academic misconduct (at all levels of education). While there were references to all these irrefutable values at this morning’s pledge, the primary emphasis of the ritual caught me off guard: it was all framed around the promise to be a good Pole, not just a good student.

Much of the event was innocuous, and even delightfully cute. The first graders all marched in to the school gymnasium wearing cardboard mortarboards color-coded for their home rooms. There was excellent singing (I was there because I’m the proud father of a member of the school chorus), and a few wonderfully short speeches. At one point the first-graders recited this poem:

 

We aren’t afraid of school,

Even though hard work awaits.

We bravely enter the school today

Because the time has come to learn.

We will learn the alphabet,

and then how to read, and write too,

and we will be able to read

every verse by ourselves.

We will also learn to count,

And we will learn about the whole world.

And there will be time for play,

So everyone is happy today!

 

My daughter informed me that not all the students agreed that this last line was accurate.

But along with all that, there was a separate segment of the event that unsettled me. The school director called out “attention!” much as an army drill sergeant would back in the US, and everyone (including parents) obeyed. The school flag was then marched into the room, after which the director said “at ease.” The children then proceeded to the formal pledge:

 

I pledge to be a good Pole,

To protect the good name of my class and my school.

I will learn in school how to love the fatherland,

In order to work for it when I grow up.

I will try to be a good friend,

And in my behavior and my studying

Bring joy to my parents and teachers.

 

I do not know how old this text is, or exactly how commonly it is used today. I did find an alternative version (albeit one from 2005) that has an entirely different tone:

 

I will always protect the good name of my school.

I will fully take advantage of the time designated for learning.

I will respect the teachers, the school staff, and my classmates.

I will maintain order and cleanliness in class, in the school, and on the playground.

I will take good care of school property.

I will try to get good grades.

 

There are other alternatives as well, with a greater or lesser nationalist emphasis, but the version I heard at my daughters school appears to be extremely common.

In addition to the oath itself, the students recited a famous poem, the “Catechism of the Polish Child,” written by Władysław Bełza in 1900:

 

Who are you?

            A little Pole.

What is your sign?

            A white eagle.

Where do you live?

            Among my own.

In what country?

            On Polish land.

What is that land?

            My Fatherland.

How was it won?

            With blood and wounds.

Do you love her?

            I love her sincerely.

And in what do you believe?

            In the Polish faith

 

The children shouted out the last line with extra vehemence. Fortunately, they did omit the last two lines from the original:

 

What are you for [the nation]?

            A grateful child

What is your duty to her?

            To sacrifice my life.

 

Finally, the whole room sang a song from 1910 entitled “Rota” (with lyrics by Maria Konopnicka and music by Feliks Nowowiejski):

 

We won’t forsake the land that our people [ród] came from

We won’t let our language be buried.

We are the Polish nation, the Polish people,

From the royal Piast dynasty.

We won’t let the enemy oppress us.

So help us God!

So help us God!

To the last blood drop in our veins,

We will defend our Spirit.

Until the maelstrom of the Teutonic Knights

Collapses into dust and ashes,

Every doorway shall be a fortress.

So help us God!

So help us God!

The German won’t spit in our face,

Nor Germanize our children,

Our forces will rise up in arms

The Spirit will lead us.

We will go when the golden horn sounds.

So help us God!

So help us God!

We won’t have Poland’s name suppressed,

We won’t step alive into the grave.

In Poland’s name, on its honor

We lift our foreheads proudly,

The grandson will regain his grandfather’s land.

So help us God!

So help us God!

 

As a historical text, this speaks to the emotions provoked by the oppressive program of Germanization in what is now western Poland during the late 19^th and early 20^th century. And since then, Nowowiejski mournful, evocative melody has ensured that the song has lived on in the canon of Polish patriotic music. I’m sure that most Poles recite these familiar lines without even thinking about what they mean, which is precisely why they are so disconcerting when heard sung by a children’s choir in 2016. Konopnicka’s own linkage between the German government of her day and the Teutonic Knights already elicits a sense of an eternal menace, and a child learning the words now would be forgiven for assuming that the references remain relevant today.

When all of this is put together, we are left with a picture of a Poland that is eternally under siege by enemies trying to “spit in our face,” and a formulation of the mission of an elementary school as a place where children learn above all “to work for the fatherland.” In case the kids forget, they are greeted every day by this stairway at the entrance to their school:

Nearly every event on this chronology of Polish history is a battle or uprising against one or another of Poland’s neighbors, inter-spaced with a handful of acts of oppression or aggression against Poland. The only exceptions are the references to the baptism of the tribal chieftain Mieszko in the year 966 (described here as the “baptism of Poland”), the Union with Lithuania, the Constitution of May 3, 1791, the re-establishment of Polish independence in 1918, the round table talks of 1989, and the attainment of EU membership in 2004.

None of this will necessarily produce a population of nationalists, no more than does the recitation of the “Pledge of Allegiance” in US schools. And all the references to the “Polish Faith” will not guarantee obedience to the Roman Catholic hierarchy (though on this point, the inclusion of religious instruction in the schools and the crosses hanging in every classroom are sure to have an ongoing impact). The imperfection of cause-and-effect here is demonstrated by the huge recent demonstrations on behalf of liberal understandings of civil rights and democracy, the massive opposition to the Church on issues like abortion, and the even more basic fact that the “victory” of PiS in 2015 came with only 38% of the vote (and a far smaller percentage of the eligible electorate). So to characterize what I’ve described here as “indoctrination” would lead us to wonder why it is so ineffective.

No, none of this is PiS propaganda. This is the just the background noise in Polish cultural, educational, and political institutions that everyone takes for granted and repeats without much thought. But taken together, it does produce a worldview in which the nation must be united in vigilance against eternal foes. To challenge this worldview requires hard counter-cultural work, and far too few members of the political or cultural elite—including, above all, those who are trying to defeat Jarosław Kaczyński—even see the need for such work. Until they do, they will be conceding to PiS nearly all the fundamentals, and squabbling about the details.

 

 

 

 

Our Perpetrators, Our Victims

Two controversial movies have been released in Poland in recent weeks. The first, which I’ve already written about on this blog, is Antoni Krauze’s Smoleńsk, a tendentious regurgitation of the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2010 crash that killed an airplane full of Polish dignitaries, including President Lech Kaczyński. The second was Wojciech Smarzowski’s Wołyń, a powerful retelling of the infamous Volyhnia massacre during WWII, in which tens of thousands of Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists. Artistically, these two have little in common. The former is laughably bad, with a 2.9 rating on filmweb.pl, whereas the latter is already accumulating awards and enjoys a score of 8.4. Thematically, they seem at first glance to be equally divergent: both deal with death, but one explores a tragic accident (which it tries to embed with mythic importance through fantasies about nefarious plots), whereas the other relates a complex tale of war, ideological perversity, nationalism, human debasement, and heroism. Krauze’s film will be soon forgotten, whereas Wołyń will gain a place in Poland’s cinematic pantheon alongside Andrzej Wajda’s 2007 film, Katyń (which, by the way, only gets a 6.8 on filmweb.pl, though the 94% score on rottentomatoes.com more accurately reflects its critical reception). Most importantly, Smoleńsk is based on a fabrication, whereas Wołyń deals with a massacre that actually happened (though, as at least a couple of others have pointed out amidst the near universal praise, there are some important errors of omission and commission in Smarzowski’s film, too).

But in an important sense, all of the aforementioned films fit together, because all of them are Polish films about Polish victimization, about what “they” have done to “us”. As such, they fit within a very familiar story-line about Polish history, one that I’ve been trying to call into question for quite some time. There are many strictly historiographical debates about how to properly contextualize and explain collective instances of mass violence, particularly those that took place during the Second World War, but that’s not my only area of concern. Even more important is the pernicious role that martyrology plays in the present—a danger that the current regime in Poland is demonstrating all too well. When we see the past as a tale of suffering and victimization, it is all too easy to assume that the present and future must be characterized by similar historical dynamics. That’s precisely why the Smoleńsk conspiracy theories make so much sense to so many Poles: the leaps from coincidence to analogy to perceived historical continuity are all too easy to jump across. And if that continuity is real, then we must be vigilant. “Never again,” in this context, doesn’t mean “let’s be on guard against the emergence of comparable evils in other settings, involving other players in other contexts.” Instead, it means “let’s be sure that they never do this to us again.” Not only does this encourage national stereotypes and tense international relations, but it promotes authoritarian politics in domestic affairs. After all, if the nation is under threat, it cannot afford the luxury of liberal democracy.

I’m not arguing that there is some sort of inexorable slippery slope between martyrological history and nationalist dictatorship—that would be a silly overstatement. But I am arguing that the former facilitates the latter, in the literal sense of making it easier to achieve and sustain. And at times like the present, when an authoritarian Polish government is explicitly promoting a victimological approach to history, and using the educational system to create a new generation of “patriotic” Poles (militaristic, obedient, Catholic, and committed to the cultivation of national grievances)—at times like these, the inevitable political appropriation of a film like Wołyń will trample upon the author’s (undeniably good) intentions.

With these thoughts in mind, I recently dashed off the following poorly stated comment on Facebook:

I’m inclined to believe that the best films or books about historical crimes are made when the director/author identifies him- or herself as a member of the same nationality as the perpetrators, not the victims. A film that attempts to explain “how could people like me have done such horrible things?” is usually going to be much more nuanced and insightful than one that cries out, “look how much we have suffered.” The former promotes human understanding (even the really uncomfortable kind), whereas the latter very easily devolves into martyrology and insatiable grievance.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I received a lot of criticism for these remarks (some of it right there on Facebook, some of it through other channels). I can easily dismiss the ad-hominem attacks or the simplistic insults, but I do respect the reasoned counterarguments that several people offered. Most compelling was the Kantian challenge: would I really be willing to universalize my claim, and suggest that Germans rather than Jews should write about the Holocaust, or American whites rather than blacks should write about slavery?

No, of course I would not make those generalizations, nor would I say that Poles cannot write about Polish victimization. Of course they can. But there are serious difficulties that must be addressed. 

I want to proceed very carefully, not because I’m afraid of violating any polemical taboos, but because I sincerely recognize that this issue is extraordinarily complicated. The most important point to emphasize—not as a tossed-off qualification, but as a fundamental point—is that I’m thinking here about broad tendencies and not universal rules. As a historian I must believe that it is possible to stretch one’s own subject position, because otherwise historical empathy would be impossible and our discipline would be reduced to the role of cultivating the memory of one’s own community. As an American who has dedicated his career to writing about Polish history, I refuse to accept such a limitation.

Keeping this in mind, let me formulate my argument in a more systematic and precise way. There are three components to my claim, and I recognize each as worthy of further discussion and reconsideration.

• First Claim:
  • If one has an (explicit or implicit, acknowledged or unrecognized) emotional bond with a community,
  • and if that community is understood to have a trans-historical continuity that links people in the past with people in the present,
  • then it is more difficult (not impossible, but certainly more difficult) to write about episodes of suffering by that group in ways that avoid the pitfalls of martyrology.
• Second Claim:
  • When focusing primarily on the suffering of victims in acts of mass violence, it is likely (not inevitable, but much easier) to present the perpetrators as agents of absolute evil (either willfully evil, or trapped within evil structures).
  • When focusing primarily on the suffering of victims in acts of mass violence it is likely (not inevitable, but much easier) to locate historical agency among the perpetrators.
  • When agency is located outside the primary topic of a historical study, then the point of the study is no longer to ask questions about why or how something happened, because the why or how have been (by definition) positioned outside the main area of study.
  • If we are not interested in how or why something happened, then our goal is not to understand in the fullest sense of that word, but to commemorate.
  • If the point of our work is to commemorate rather than understand, see my first claim.
• Third Claim:
  • It is impossible to truly understand someone without establishing some level of empathetic bond with those whom one is trying to understand.
  • Explanations that position historical agents as themselves victims (“brainwashed” or trapped within irresistible structures or systems) just pushes the question back one level without resolving much.
  • If one has an (explicit or implicit, acknowledged or unrecognized) emotional bond with a community, it is easier to establish historical empathy with others who claim membership in that community, and harder to establish historical empathy with those in conflict with that community.
  • Therefore, in such cases it is easier to develop an understanding of the actions of those within “our” community, and correspondingly harder (not impossible, but harder) to understand the actions of those in conflict with that community.

Those who see their mission as one of commemoration rather than understanding will find this whole train of thought irrelevant. I don’t deny a role for commemoration, I just don’t see that as the task of historians. Commemoration is always and everywhere a political act that is more grounded in the present than in the past. Good history is always political too, but in a different way: good history poses questions and encourages us to see the nuances and complexities of everything around us. Above all, good history builds empathy, which is political in the sense that it mitigates against authoritarianism, intolerance, and violence. Empathy is the opposite of martyrology, and therefore martyrology is not good history.

The Real Smolensk Lie

The Washington Post is a fine newspaper. But even the best stumble at times, and they did so today in a way that made my jaw drop.

Here’s the headline: “New report rekindles questions about 2010 plane crash that killed Polish leader” The article then offers a he-said-she-said account of the “controversy” regarding what happened.

I was struck that this came on the very same day that Donald Trump actually acknowledged that President Obama really was born in the United States. The Post, along with every even vaguely respectable American news outlet, has consistently described the accusations about Obama’s imagined Kenyan birth as manifestly false babble. In fact, the Post itself has a piece by Aaron Blake today in which he demonstrates that even Trump’s flirtation with reality is couched in more lies. The American media has (with a few exceptions, sadly) come a long way since the days when it was typical to present global warming, evolution, Iraq’s sponsorship of 9/11, etc., as if these were “debates” on which intelligent people can disagree. And then this…

Let’s get this out of the way: there is no legitimate controversy about what happened in 2010. Sure, some minor details may yet tweak the story in inconsequential ways, but the airplane carrying those Polish dignitaries crashed in a tragic accident. If anyone wants a clear discussion of the issue, click here, here, here, here…I could go on, if you really need more.

The people pushing the Smolensk assassination legend are the same people who believe that Lech Wałęsa was a communist agent who engineered the events of 1989 to make it seem as if communism had fallen, while still allowing the same evil networks to manipulate Poland from behind the scenes. These are the same people who believe that Polish “independence” only came in 2015, when they were elected to office. In their imagination, the last quarter century in Poland has been dominated by foreign interests and a cabal of cosmopolitan, elite puppets who are not “true Poles.”

I did not want to have to write about this any more. Debunking conspiracy theorists is like playing whack-a-mole; if you try to refute their arguments, they just assume that you are part of the plot (or too naïve to understand the hidden truth). I’m never going to convince anyone who actually believes in the Smoleńsk mythology, and I don’t want to bother trying.

I don’t fault people unfamiliar with Polish affairs for hearing the announcement of today’s report, and assuming that a document from the Defense Ministry of a major NATO ally must have some validity. But I do fault the Post for not doing basic due-diligence before using that headline, and before printing a “balanced” discussion of the theories of such unbalanced people. There are plenty of excellent Polish studies experts in the US who could have clarified what was going on here, had the reporter bothered to contact any.

This is not a trivial matter, and not just another example of media bashing.  Articles like the one in today’s Post are important, because now the backers of the conspiracy theories will be able to say that prominent international news organizations are finally coming to recognize that there’s at least room for legitimate debate here, for “questions to be raised.”

We must not allow a lie to get transformed into a difference of opinion.

This Weekend’s Hatred in Poland

Midday last Friday, Professor Jerzy Kochanowski of Warsaw University was talking with a colleague from Germany on a tram, when another passenger got upset that they weren’t speaking Polish. After an angry exchange, Professor Kochanowski was attacked. None of the other people on the tram did anything to intervene. The driver eventually kicked both the assailant and the Professor off the vehicle, telling them to take their fight outside—even though it was obvious that what was taking place was an attack, not a fight. The perpetrator fled the scene, and Professor Kochanowski had to call the police himself. Later he was taken to the hospital to be treated for his wounds.

I posted an account of the attack on Facebook, and related my concerns about the fact that my daughter and I often speak English in public here in Warsaw. A Polish-American activist who was recently named a member of the Senate’s “Polonia Advisory Council” responded to my concerns by writing “How ignorant this comment is! How can you compare the symbolic meaning of English language with German language being spoken in Poland? Are you so clueless as to the role of Germany in Europe then and now?” In a similar spirit, one prominent pro-government journalist wrote, “After what the Germans did in Warsaw, the fact that only now someone got hit in the face for speaking German speaks well for the Poles.”

Let’s set aside the implication that in Warsaw in 2016 it is OK to speak some foreign languages, but not others. Instead, let’s move to the next day. On Saturday, a Warsaw resident of East Asian heritage was riding the metro when a man began shouting at her that she should go back where she came from, and leave Poland for the Poles. This time someone did intervene, stepping between the bigot and his victim, and calling the police (fortunately cell phone coverage extends to the excellent Warsaw subway). With impressive alacrity, they appeared at the very next stop, and the man was arrested.

Finally, on Sunday I was attending the harvest festival in Czersk, a small town not far from here with famous medieval castle ruins. In large letters on the road leading to the festivities, everyone was greeted with the (typically ungrammatical) message, “KOD Jews to the gas Mateusz Kijowski.” Kijowski is the founder of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), a nonpartisan organization that has been leading the resistance to the government’s efforts to undermine constitutional legality and the norms of liberal democracy.

I really dislike arguing from anecdotes, so I’ll be the first to admit that these three examples are isolated incidents. All they demonstrate is that Poland has its fair share of assholes and cretins. For many years, I have been insisting to anyone who will listen that bigotry, xenophobia, and thuggery are problems in Poland—but not significantly more so than elsewhere. Moreover, I’ve argued that antipathy towards foreigners has been declining steadily over the past two decades. Since 1993, a leading survey firm in Poland has been asking people whether they have positive, neutral, or negative feelings towards particular ethnic, national, and religious communities (click here for all the methodological details). As recently as five years ago, it was undeniable that the trend-lines were going in the right direction.

Back in 1994 no one was even thinking about what Poles might feel about people from Asia or the Middle East, but when they were added to the questionnaire (in 1998 for Chinese and Vietnamese, in 2002 for Arabs, and in 2005 for Turks), the trend towards declining hostility was equally evident.

Then something happened.

It is hard to make statistical generalizations over time with a chart like this, because not every group is included for every year. Just taking the communities listed here, and just considering a few years in which all of them were represented in the survey, we see a peak of average levels of antipathy across all groups at 51% in 2005, falling to 31% in 2010, then rising back to 40% this year.

What are we measuring here? Probably not actual sentiments, insofar as people may not be willing to admit to xenophobia or racism if doing so carries a stigma. But I think that is precisely the point: we are witnessing an important shift in what is considered publicly acceptable.

During the communist era, ironically, expressing ethnic hostility brought very little shame. The rhetoric of socialist internationalism had been hollowed out by the “national communism” of Władysław Gomułka, leaving little more than a few empty slogans. Hatred towards Germans and Jews was openly deployed by the communists. While the intelligentsia dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s denounced xenophobia, hostility towards Russians (and less openly, Jews) was common among those opposed to the regime. So when reliable surveys began in the early 1990s, overall levels of explicit bigotry were disturbingly high.

Such views moved into the shadows as more and more Poles came to realize that in polite European society, “nie wypada” (it is not appropriate) to express racism, antisemitism, or xenophobia more generally. In 2005, with the first PiS government, we saw a spike in willingness to tell survey-takers about such feelings, but following their defeat in 2007 a huge drop-off began. When Poland hosted the Eurocup soccer tournament in 2010, it seemed to me that a genuine turning point had been reached. As I argued at the time, the very nature of Polish patriotism seemed to have changed, as nearly everyone gleefully donned the red-and-white. The symbols of national sentiment (the eagle, the flag, the national colors) seemed no more connected to nationalism than the iconography of college football teams back in the United States. This corresponds to the moment, five years ago, when a record low number of respondents were willing to admit to any xenophobic attitudes.

Today the change is obvious. We see it in the survey results, making episodes like those of last weekend feel emblematic rather than deviant. I felt comfortable dismissing the soccer hooligans of 2010 as remnants and aberrations, whereas today they seem to be extreme expressions of themes that have returned to the mainstream of Polish public rhetoric. I don’t think I was wrong then, or now: instead, I think we have witnessed the ebb and flow of what is considered understandable (if perhaps a bit extreme), and what is labeled shameful and beyond the pale.

Right now, many of my friends are despairing, but I’m not. At least, I’m trying to remain optimistic. I look at the sharp downturn of the last couple years and I remember the equally dramatic improvements that came before. Xenophobia in Poland (or anywhere else, for that matter) is a phantasm that occasionally escapes its chains. It does indeed seem to be on a rampage right now, wreaking havoc not only here, but throughout Europe and America. But it will be captured and confined once again. The only question is when.

Tylko świnie siedzą w kinie

During the Second World War in occupied Poland there was a saying: “Tylko świnie siedzą w kinie” [Only pigs go to the movies.] The point was to boycott the Nazi propaganda films, which spread the most vulgar and violent forms of antisemitism and glorified the leaders of the Reich. Occasionally the saying has been resurrected since then, usually during the communist era when the state similarly sponsored the production of movies with obvious political objectives.

Have we arrived at a moment when we will need to revive that slogan? I hope not, but the events surrounding the premier of the new film Smoleńsk by Antoni Krause are worrying. I haven’t seen the film yet (it opens to the public this weekend), but I’m not really interested in the cinematographic merits (or lack thereof, if the preliminary reviews are any indication). What bothers me is the fact that this is a state-sponsored production based on an outlandish, paranoid conspiracy theory that has become one of the founding myths of the current regime in Poland. There is no other description for it than “government propaganda.”

It is perfectly OK for filmmakers to produce movies with distinctive points of views, even ones that promote crazy ideas. It is perfectly OK for movies to have an ideological agenda—in fact, many of the best ones have crystal clear messages. And I don’t mind all that much when movies tweak the actual historical record a bit in order to convey some deeper truth.

The problem arises when a film is explicitly promoted by a government that is already using the media, cultural policies, and the educational system to promote its distinctive ideological vision. When artists, filmmakers, writers, journalists or scholars launch their ideas into the public sphere, they should be allowed to rise or fall based on the degree to which they plug into existing concerns or emotions. The problems emerge when centers of power (private or public) get involved in openly promoting a highly divisive message that advances their own partisan cause, under the guise of entertainment. If the US government sponsored a heartwarming Hollywood film about a terminally ill patient who was saved thanks to the Obamacare reforms, it would make me queasy. That’s roughly what has happened with Smoleńsk, with the added problem that the whole undertaking is based on a fantasy and a political vendetta.

The gala opening of Smoleńsk occurred at the Wielki Teatr (Great Theater) in Warsaw, which usually hosts operas and other large-scale spectacles. In attendance was the President, the Prime Minister, and nearly every important politician connected to the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS). Of course, the actual ruler of Poland, Jarosław Kaczyński, was there, and he expressed his delight with the film.

The basic message is that the 2010 plane crash that killed then-president Lech Kaczyński and almost 100 other Polish dignitaries was an assassination, not an accident. Different versions of that story posit different combinations of conspirators, but Jarosław Kaczyński has repeatedly said that then-prime minister Donald Tusk bears “moral responsibility” (if not direct responsibility), and that Vladimir Putin was directly behind the crime.

Putin is undeniably capable of many vile things, and he has demonstrated a cavalier attitude towards human life. In fact, we Americans are currently witnessing his attempts to influence our presidential elections. But let’s step back a moment to ask the basic question: why would he have wanted to kill Lech Kaczyński in 2010? The Polish president was certainly hostile to Russia, and he had recently expressed support for Georgia’s resistance to Russian territorial claims. But that’s not relevant, because of an often overlooked fact: at the time of his death, Kaczyński was poised to suffer a crushing defeat in his reelection campaign later that year. One month before the catastrophe he was viewed unfavorably by 58% of the population, and favorably by only 31%.  Political pollsters call this being “underwater,” and virtually no one recovers from being 27 points submerged. It’s true that this figure was better than then 46 point deficit he had in mid 2009, but by any measure, Lech Kaczyński was recognized by a huge majority of the Polish population as a failed president.

Just to put this in perspective, Hillary Clinton is now underwater by 12 points, and Donald Trump is underwater by 40 points. Or to stick with Poland, when Lech Wałęsa lost the presidency in 1995, he had a popularity deficit of 34 points. And if we look at the potential rivals for the presidency in those elections of 2010, all the leaders of the main opposition party had popularity ratings between 16 and 39 points higher than their unpopularity ratings. In other words, Lech Kaczyński was an extremely unpopular president who was going to face a popular and respected opponent. I suppose anything could have happened during the course of a campaign, but let’s face it: it was a very safe bet that Lech Kaczyński had only a few months left in office. The only thing that saved him from an ignominious and embarrassing loss was the tragedy that took his life.

The events that followed were the second founding of PiS as a political movement. Jarosław Kaczyński elevated the memory of his brother to the ranks of the Polish pantheon of great leaders, even arranging for him to be buried in the crypt of the Wawel castle in Kraków, alongside the medieval Polish kings. More importantly, a legend was built that positioned the PiS movement within a familiar story of Polish martyrdom. When combined with the movement’s other favorite historical moment, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the idea of dying for the nation (preferably in a hopeless cause) became the very essence of PiS patriotism. This is crucial to their ideology, because if people are dying for the nation, then the nation is de facto at war. And in times of struggle, there can be no room for the niceties of liberal parliamentary democracy. Unity, discipline, and authority are required to carry the nation through the struggle.

So Smoleńsk is not just another tendentious movie with a blatant ideological agenda. It is part of a much broader and much more dangerous campaign to promote a disturbing historical vision that serves in turn to buttress an authoritarian assault on the fundamental norms of democracy. In the weeks ahead the government is going to move to the next stage in its assault on the independent judiciary (more on that in a future post). As they do so, they will see themselves as carrying on the sacred mission of the martyrs of Smoleńsk.

It Could be Worse

In Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” offers Scrooge a horrifying prophesy of his future. English literature’s most famous libertarian then falls to the ground and begs, “Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”

I recently spent several weeks in Hungary. Now that I’m back in Poland, I feel that I’ve awakened from a similar vision of a potential future. Warsaw has not—yet—been transformed into a “Budapest on the Vistula,” but that is precisely the goal that Lech Kaczyński has long advocated. I can understand why: Hungary has become an exemplary “antiliberal state” (as their president, Viktor Orbán, calls it). In an infamous 2014 speech, he said that “liberal democratic states can’t remain globally competitive.” To defend this point, he referred to the supposedly “successful” examples of Russia, Turkey, and China, noting that “none of them are liberal, and some of them aren’t even democracies.” Orbán’s Hungary is indeed a paradise for those in Poland who oppose liberal ideals like pluralism, the rule of law, separation of powers, an independent media, a nonpartisan civil service, academic freedom, and the separation of church and state.

Unlike Scrooge, it isn’t in my power to avert Poland’s Christmas Yet to Come. Some would say that it isn’t even my concern, since I’m not a Polish citizen—though I do feel a strong enough bond to this country to care.

One example perfectly summarizes how bad things have become in Hungary. In early August, the government began blanketing the country with a propaganda campaign entitled “Tudta?” [Did you know?]. In subway stations and bus stops, on billboards, throughout the media: you can’t avoid the ubiquitous blue posters offering “information” about Muslim refugees in Europe (always labeled “immigrants”). All this is leading up to a referendum scheduled for October 2, which will ask Hungarians (with wording the government considers perfectly neutral and reasonable), “Do you want the European Union to be able to mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without the approval of the National Assembly?” Theoretically, Hungarian law (insofar as that phrase has not become an oxymoron) specifies that campaigning for the referendum cannot begin until 50 days prior to the vote, but the government has evaded this by claiming that it is just providing “public service messages” for informational purposes.

What sort of “information” are the posters conveying? Some of the examples include:

• “Did you know that the Paris bombings were committed by immigrants?”
• “Did you know that since the immigration crisis began, the harassment of women in Europe has increased by leaps and bounds?”
• “Did you know that nearly a million immigrants from Libya are coming to Europe?”
• “Did you know that since the immigration crisis began, more than 300 people have died in terrorist attacks in Europe?”
• “Did you know that Brussels wants to settle a whole city’s worth of illegal immigrants in Hungary?”

I guess the Hungarian definition of “city” is quite broad, because the actual number of refugees allocated to Hungary by a proposed EU agreement is a whopping 1,294. Given this, the €16,000,000 propaganda campaign would amount to €12,000 per asylum seeker, had the money been spent on refugee services rather than hate speech.

The depiction of Muslim refugees as utterly alien and evil has become central to Orbán’s ideology. Authoritarian regimes require an enemy, and he has found one. Sadly, it is working: surveys show that over 70% of Hungarians will vote “no” in the October referendum, and insofar as the government is losing any support, it is to the even more extreme far-right Jobbik party. If there is any consolation here at all, it is that vanishingly few Muslims actually live in Hungary, so this campaign of hatred will not lead directly to much physical violence in the short term. But it won’t be hard to redirect these emotions towards other “enemies,” such as liberals, gays, Roma, or anyone else who cannot fit within Orbán’s definition of a true patriot.

One can certainly find similar hate-speech in Poland, but the situation is not nearly as dire—yet. While the state-backed public media spouts PiS propaganda, the viewership of those stations is plummeting. A vigorous independent media remains, both in print and (more importantly) on TV and radio. Ratings for the government’s channels have fallen behind both of the leading independent channels, and the once dominant news service of the public media has fallen into third place. Orbán’s overwhelming popularity cannot even be approached by Kaczyński, who has the highest negative ratings of any Polish politician (he is distrusted by 53% of the population). If elections were held today, PiS would win just over a third of the votes (though they would probably remain in power thanks to the fragmented, hapless opposition). Even the anti-immigrant message can’t work quite as well here, because ironically, the (otherwise strongly pro-PiS) Catholic Church is slightly constrained in its rhetoric by Pope Francis’ forceful support of Christian charity. In other words, pluralism remains strong in Polish society, even if the reins of power are held entirely by Kaczyński.

A year ago I would have stopped there, with a note of confidence and optimism.  That’s no longer possible, because the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come cannot be ignored.  But like Scrooge, I insist on believing that a change of course is always possible.