The far right shows its strength
Warsaw was an ugly sight on Poland’s independence day, said in the (Germany). Some 60,000 ultranationalists and neoNazis marched through the capital last week, waving banners reading “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White,” and “Clean Blood,” and shooting off red and white fireworks—the colors of the Polish flag. A banner on a bridge read “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.” The march’s far-right sponsors included the All-Polish Youth and the National Radical Camp, which is styled after the virulently anti-Semitic 1930s Polish fascist movement of the same name. These groups believe that the recent influx of Syrian Muslim refugees into Europe is part of a conspiracy driven by Jewish financiers who want to destroy Europe’s Christian character. For their new motto, some of them are using a line from an old Polish religious song that U.S. President Donald Trump quoted in Poland in July: “We want God.”
The resurgence of nationalism is no accident, said Maya Vinokour in Ha’aretz (Israel). The ruling Law and Justice party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has been pushing Polish politics rightward since it first emerged in 2001. In a 2005 opinion poll, half of Poles believed correctly that most victims at Auschwitz were Jewish, but by 2015 nearly as many thought Auschwitz was primarily a site of Polish suffering. Tours at Auschwitz, which is in southern Poland, now “present a vision of history centering on Polish trauma.” This revisionism leaves out the many murderous pogroms Poles carried out against Jews long before the Nazis invaded, because Kaczynski encourages Poles to reject any historical account that shows them at fault. In his words, Poles “never have to be ashamed of ourselves.”
His government is certainly not embarrassed by the far-right rally, said Jaroslaw Kurski in Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland). State-controlled TV praised it as a “great march of patriots.” Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki dismissed the racist banners as the work of “provocateurs” eager to “ruin the fantastic event.” Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak actually criticized the few anti-fascist protesters detained at the march, saying they were apparently “not happy about the fact that Poland is independent.” And Kaczynski, whose independence day speech had called for “the strengthening of our civilization based on Christianity,” simply stayed silent. As did most Poles. “Thus does the passive majority become an active co-conspirator with evil.”
Spoken like a Pole ashamed of his heritage, said Janusz Szewczak in WPolityce.pl. Our brave youth are being “attacked as fascists merely for daring to rise from their knees and state that being Polish has value.” Much of Europe has lost touch with its Christian roots, and Poles are trying to “restore traditional values.” Let this be a message to the European Union elites in Brussels: We will “put an end to the treachery and political correctness” that allow Muslims to trample across our land. Poland will be “the leader of the moral rebirth of Europe.”