WARSAW — When doubtful, invent an enemy.
That was the technique the communists who took over Poland after World Warfare II used to remain in energy after they scapegoated Jews to maintain the Poles from rebelling in opposition to their rule. And the conservative Legislation and Justice social gathering, which has ruled Poland since 2015, is tapping the identical playbook, consultants mentioned.
Led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Legislation and Justice — additionally recognized by its Polish acronym, PiS — has discovered new enemies to fire up its conservative base whereas pushing Poland rightward and undermining democratic establishments and the judiciary in a rustic that was as soon as a beacon of freedom in Jap Europe, the consultants mentioned.
Homosexual folks, migrants, feminists — all have discovered themselves demonized by this Polish authorities, based on Sebastian Rejak of the American Jewish Committee and different analysts monitoring the federal government.
“Discrimination could begin with Jews, however it by no means ends with Jews,” he mentioned. “If others are focused, Jews, ultimately, will even be focused. We subsequently get up in protection of different minorities.”
He mentioned Legislation and Justice isn’t reduce from the identical antisemitic material because the communist social gathering that purged Poland’s Jews in 1968, however it does draw assist from the elements of Polish society during which prejudice in opposition to Jews persists.
Of late, determined Muslim migrants trapped on Poland’s border with Belarus have turn into political pawns in an influence play by Legislation and Justice because it tries to shore up its assist. Lots of of migrants are hiding in forests on the border and contending with freezing circumstances. A number of have reportedly died.
Poland and the Baltic states, together with the European Fee, contend that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko created the disaster as payback for criticism of his authoritarian regime by permitting migrants hoping to achieve Western Europe to cross by way of Belarus after which cross its border into E.U. neighbor states.
However critics say Legislation and Justice has additionally used the disaster to point out its conservative Roman Catholic base that it’s a “bulwark of Christianity” defending the nation in opposition to Muslims.
In an obvious try and drum up anti-immigrant sentiment, final month Polish Inside Minister Mariusz Kaminski displayed a photograph of a person copulating with a cow that he claimed got here from a cellphone that was confiscated from a migrant who had tried to get into Poland.
TVP, the state-funded tv station that critics say operates as a propaganda outlet for the ruling social gathering, shortly trumpeted his declare with the headline: “He raped a cow and needed to get into Poland? Particulars on migrants on the border.”
That try and smear the migrants imploded when the photograph turned out to not be of a migrant however was traced to a zoophilia porn film broadly obtainable on the internet — and which concerned a horse and never a cow, quite a few information shops reported.
However Kaminski’s transfer managed to horrify sufficient of a broad swath of Polish society that it drew a uncommon rebuke from the highly effective Roman Catholic Church, which has largely been marching in lockstep with the ruling social gathering.
“The state of affairs with immigrants isn’t new,” mentioned Sarian Jarosz of Amnesty Worldwide, which has been monitoring the humanitarian disaster on the border. “In 2015, there was additionally a disaster in Europe. However then the migrants had been far-off, not on our border.”
“Even then the PiS authorities was constructing an ‘enemy’ who’s exterior and desires to get to us and harm us,” he added.
Actually, the difficulty of Syrians fleeing that nation’s devastating civil struggle and flooding into Europe in 2015 helped propel Legislation and Justice to energy — Kaczynski had vowed to defend the border in opposition to Muslim migrants, whom he characterised as carrying “all types of parasites and protozoa” and who would impose Shariah, or Islamic legislation, and use Catholic church buildings as “bathrooms.”
“What they need is energy, and concern is a giant motivator,” mentioned Alexander Storozynski, a Polish American activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and creator.
“In case you have an enemy, you’re extra prepared to battle. They’re making folks afraid of ‘the opposite’ they usually’re utilizing the identical ways because the communists,” mentioned Storozynski, who has met with Kaczynski and different high Legislation and Justice officers through the years.
The Different and the Enemy
Who’s “the opposite”?
“Anyone who isn’t a standard Polish Catholic,” Storozynski mentioned.
NBC Information reached out to the Polish authorities’s spokesman for remark. However there was no response.
There are additionally indicators the federal government’s makes an attempt to demonize the migrants is backfiring. The Gallup polling firm, which maintains a Migrant Acceptance Index, reported a giant leap final month in public acceptance of the beleaguered migrants, most of whom are from the Center East.
Additionally, many unusual Poles have defied their very own authorities to assist and assist the migrants.
Kamil Syller, a Polish lawyer who lives near the border, is urging individuals who wish to assist to show inexperienced lights so the migrants realize it’s secure to strategy their properties for meals and shelter.
“We, the inhabitants of the borderland, who see human drama and struggling, wouldn’t have to calculate,” he advised the nation’s main newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “We should stay human.”
To rally its base of deeply non secular voters, Legislation and Justice has additionally demonized ladies protesting in opposition to abortion restrictions and forged the LGBTQ group as spreaders of a overseas “ideology” and has promoted “LGBT-free zones.”
To counter criticism from the European Union that it’s undermining Poland’s court docket system and press freedom, the ruling social gathering has tapped the deep vein of Polish patriotism and paranoia by accusing the E.U. of trampling on the nation’s independence.
“The PiS authorities isn’t solely in search of enemies exterior, however for years has been constantly constructing inside enemies: ladies, gays and lesbians, and through a pandemic even medical doctors and paramedics,” Jarosz mentioned.
Polish homosexual activist Bartosz Staszewski mentioned Kaczynski and his social gathering have used ways even the communists didn’t dare use.
“A hate marketing campaign in opposition to the LGBT group in Poland has been occurring since 2019,” he mentioned. “It’s unprecedented. It has by no means occurred earlier than, we weren’t even criticized so overtly beneath the Communists, as we at the moment are.”
In contrast to the US and different international locations, homosexuality has by no means been unlawful in Poland and up to date polls present rising assist for homosexual marriage. However that has not stopped Kaczynski and his allies from utilizing the TVP station to falsely “equate LGBT circles with pedophiles.”
“I’ve the impression that now a brand new enemy has been discovered, that are refugees searching for asylum in our nation,” Staszewski mentioned. “Poland treats them worse than the animals, which signifies that they die within the forest from hypothermia and hunger.”
In line with him, the federal government has managed, to this point, to remain in energy by tapping into the deep resentments of the Poles who had been left behind when the nation’s new capitalist economic system took off, or who felt unmoored by the fast societal modifications that got here after Poland shook off its Soviet shackles and joined the European Union.
In the meantime, antisemitism persists in Poland regardless of the actual fact many of the nation’s greater than 3 million Jews had been worn out by German occupiers throughout the Holocaust. In 1968, the communists harnessed that hatred and used it to drive 13,000 Jews out of Poland and, afterward, continued persecuting the few who stayed.
Since Poland broke out of the Soviet bloc in 1989, there was a revival of the Jewish group, and Rejak mentioned the present Polish authorities “is investing lots in tasks aiming at restoring Jewish cultural websites.” Nevertheless it hardly ever repudiates the bigoted voices on the far proper.
“This silence of decision-makers on the subject of demonizing Jews by the unconventional proper could end result from concern,” he mentioned. “The concern that if authorities officers had been to sentence antisemitism, some voters may ask the tough query, ‘Why are you defending the Jews?'”
Ewa Galica reported from Warsaw; Corky Siemaszko from New York Metropolis
