Religious hate is alive and well and living in Poland

Father Henryk Jankowski - better known to people with longer memories as the “solidarity priest’ and one of the heroes of the Solidarity revolution – is, in reality, just an unreconstructed bigot. Period.

As Poland celebrates 25 years since the birth of Solidarnosc – the first free trade union in the communist bloc – all eyes are on Gdansk, the city where the union was conceived.

One of the key concessions that Lech Welesa and others won from the communist authorities in August 1980 was the construction at the Lenin Shipyard of a monument to workers who were killed there in 1970, as they protested against price rises. The monument was blessed by Father Jankowski, who became known as the 'Solidarity priest'. What a hero!

Little did we know that this guy is quite a nasty piece of work. He was then, and he still is now.

At a rally marking the Solidarity Revolution this August, Jankowski went into a tirade against ‘Jewish bankers’, and other foreigners who are a danger to present day Poland.

Foaming at the mouth, our cuddly Polish priest said: "The recommendations of Brussels commissars and Washington economic gurus are threatening Poland's identity and sovereignty. We are filled with horror when laws are imposed upon us that are thought up by anti-Catholic Masons, Jewish bankers and hell-born atheistic socialists."

He's made these sorts of remarks before: many times. In 1997, the Church banned him from preaching for a year after he stated that Jews had no place in the Polish government. In 2004, he reacted to allegations of involvement in the sexual abuse of children by alleging a "Judeo-communist plot".

The thing is: what should we do with idiots like Jankowski? Should we ban them? Should we boil them in oil? Or should we let them spout off their odious rubbish and then expose them for what they are – complete fools?

I’m for the latter. Banning hate will not make it go away. But getting it out in the open is the way to belittle it, and defeat it.