Poland’s far-right: Opportunity and threat for ruling PiS
WHEN activists from eastern Poland travelled to Warsaw to join a far-right march, the local mayor from the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) paid for some of their travel.
The march caught the attention of the world’s media because some of the 60,000 participants carried banners bearing racist and xenophobic slogans such as “pure blood, clear mind” and “Europe will be white or uninhabited”.
Stalowa Wola’s PiS mayor, Lucjusz Nadberezny, does “not regret the decision to support the trip”. His office said in a statement the November Independence Day march was a “safe and joyous manifestation of patriotism” and that people from his town did not participate in any “provocations”.
A resurgence of farright sentiment poses a dilemma for the PiS, a socially conservative group with a nationalist agenda.
Far-right voters are a threat and an opportunity. The party tapped into frustration with western liberal values, when it won the 2015 election with the biggest majority by any party since the end of communism.
In other European states where anti-establishment right-wing slogans are also increasingly resonant, several far-right groups have got a foothold in power.
But in Poland they have had little success, or desire, to compete for office. This is in large part because the PiS has tailored its message across the spectrum of right-wing voters.
The PiS is mindful of the need to retain the support of all right-wing voters, including far-right, for elections in each of the next three years. It is also wary of the risk of a breakaway, ultraconservative group emerging to challenge its majority in parliament.
Tadeusz Cymanski, deputy head of the PiS parliamentary caucus said it is better if far-right organisations such as ONR, which helped organise the Warsaw march, do not feel threatened by the PiS.
“Any association [of ONR with PiS] is painful and unpleasant, I reject it with shame, but I think it would be better even if I, or my faction, were associated with them rather than these forces were to gain in force,” he said.
Another outspoken PiS member, Ryszard Czarnecki, said the party gave all right-leaning voters a sense of belonging, in contrast to the previous centrist government which was seen as “cosmopolitan”.
ONR and other farright Polish groups such as Mlodziez Wszechpolska refuse to release membership figures but analysts say acceptance of xenophobic slogans as well as violence against Muslims is on the rise.
In a November 2016 survey by CBOS, a pollster overseen by the government, 95 per cent of Poles said they did not know anyone from a far-right group. However, more than one in three said they supported far-right activities.
Hate crimes committed against Muslims have grown by more than 300 per cent between 2013 and 2016, according to data from the Warsaw University’s Centre for Research on Prejudice.
In 2016 the PiS government disbanded the Council for the Prevention of Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerancee, an advisory body to the government, and a unit at the interior ministry responsible, among others, for monitoring hate crimes.
And with local elections expected in late 2018, a parliamentary vote in 2019 and presidential elections in 2020, this tactic is expected to continue. Polls expect the PiS to do better in the local elections than four years ago.
Poland, like Hungary, has refused to take in any of its European Union quota of refugees from Syria and elsewhere on the grounds that Muslim immigrants are a threat to national security and stability.
New PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the state-run television TVP on Monday that the government’s stance on migrants is not going to change “in years to come”.
“We will not accept refugees, migrants from the Middle East and Africa. This is our sovereign decision,” Mr Morawiecki said.