Foxy Lepper and Giertych to form new party

It’s going to be called LiS – ‘lis’ is Polish for fox.

Stop sniggering…it’s true – Andrzej Lepper’s Samoobrona (Self defense) party and Roman Giertych’s Christian nationalist Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families) will unite. Take the first letter of Samoobrona and the first letter from Liga, add an ‘i’ (and) and you get LiS.

When asked which of them would be the leader of LiS, Lepper said that it would probably be a joint leadership: “Me - balanced, calm and serious. Vice premier Giertych - eloquent, intelligent, witty.”

One possible election slogan for the new LiS party, says Lepper, could be: ‘Strong as a lion, cunning as a fox’.

Is this man on drugs?

But why and how, I hear you cry, would an ex-Stalinist like Lepper (previously a member of the old Polish communist party) and an uber-Catholic nationalist like Giertych get together and form a party? What have they in common, ideologically?

Well, not much, really. Policy-wise though, they both want to de-privatize much of what was sold off after 1989. They both want to limit foreign influence and renegotiate Poland’s membership of the EU. But that’s just about it.

What they have most in common, of course, is that both their parties have little support left in the country after a year and a half in the coalition government with PiS, and if an election was held now they would be left with no members of parliament at all.

Hence the emergence of LiS – the cunning fox. Lepper thinks that if they stand together they could get, ‘around 17 percent of the vote…’.

I think that is more than wishful thinking. I think voters will see it for what it is: the naked opportunism of two desperate men. LPR voters, what’s left of them, won’t stomach voting for Lepper, who has just been thrown out of government on suspicion of being involved in a corrupt land deal. And there are lots of other Christian nationalists to vote for that are outside Giertych’s party – like Marek Jurek’s PiS splinter group, for instance.

This unbelievable new alliance – LiS – looks less like a cunning fox, and more like a dumb, mangy old mongrel.

Warsaw Equality Parade passes off without much opposition

4,000 turned up for what is becoming an event in the calendar in Warsaw.

Maybe only 100 turned up for the counter demonstration by the new youth wing of the League of Polish Families (LPR) – an organization hastily cobbled together after All-Polish Youth got kicked out of the party after one too many embarrassing neo-Nazi type antics.

LPR had tried to get the Equality Parade banned, of course – this time on the feeble excuse that homosexuality was against Christianity, and the Polish Constitution [?] which apparently privileges relationships between men and women.

Unfortunately for LPR the Polish Constitution also guarantees the right to free speech and assembly, a concept that they and many in the present government are still struggling with. And as Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the Mayor of Warsaw pointed out, to ban the march would be to go against a recent ruling in the Court of Human Rights.

I was sitting in the Jazz Bistro in the centre of town watching the parade pass. It looked fun. One old lady sitting at a table next ours said to her elderly companion: “Such a lot of young people….it’s that Roman Giertych I blame….”

Photo by Joseph Vogt

p.s. - Some moron has been impersonating the beatroot on the All-Polish Youth web site. The second comment is me, the first is not. How sad.

pps – There was a March for Family and Life in Warsaw today, organized by ultra-conservatives. It’s hard to know how many turned up. It says here between ‘600 and 3,5000’, which is rather vague. Was that the gap between what the organizers said and what the police think? .

Abortion, euthanasia: so give us a referendum!

Pro-life and pro-choice supporters march through Warsaw today. (photo: Gazeta Wyborcza)

Two separate marches merged into a demonstration of 4,000 people in front of parliament, where lawmakers were debating amending the constitution to tighten Poland's anti-abortion law, already among the most restrictive in the EU.

See here and here for details.

The pro-lifers want to stop even women who were raped having an abortion, and want to enshrine into the constitution the ‘right to life from conception to natural death’ into the Polish constitution.

Usually, a change in the constitution requires a referendum to decide. That’s why there was one before joining the European Union.

So why do you think that the League of Polish Families, Radio Maryja – and the ruling Law and Justice – are trying to avoid having one?

Because they think they would lose.

I called for a referendum on this issue a long time ago. We need to debate this issue in this country.

The only folk who should be afraid of democracy are those who don’t feel very comfortable living in one.

See video of pro-life march at tvn24.pl

Giertych-isms of the week

Roman wants any new EU Constitution (yawn) to include a ban on abortion and rights for homosexuals.

Education and deputy prime minister Giertych has been justifying what he said in Germany yesterday: legal abortion is a ‘form of barbarianism’, and homosexuals threatened the future of European civilization as we know it.

‘The propaganda of homosexuality is reaching ever younger children." [Giertych said in the speech released to the Polish media Friday].

"In some countries it is even forbidden for children in hospital to talk or read about mommy and daddy, because this allegedly violates minority rights. Let's free ourselves of this unwise political correctness."

"If we will not use all our power to strengthen the family, then as a continent there is not future for us. We will be a continent settled by representatives of the Islamic world who care for the family."

Of course, the image of gays ushering in the European Islamic Caliph is a delicious one and should be cherished by us all.

And it follows nicely on from the recent bizarre ramblings of his father, Maciej, whose nasty little pamphlet, Civilizations at war in Europe, proved that these are minds locked into a 1930s time-warp (see my review here).

Responding to charges that he is an anti-Semite loon, Maciej told the European Jewish Press:

‘Those who said [the pamphlet] is anti-Semitic haven’t read it. My impression is that critical comments come from people who have not read the book. They read only a few sentences".

No Maciej, I read the lot. Every word. It’s anti-Semitic tripe (and much more besides). The EJP continues:

He said his text, published in English, is an attempt to promote the teaching of Polish professor Feliks Koneczny, who has developed a "very interesting" method of classifying civilisations. "I am presenting his methods of classification," Giertych said. "It is in fact a contribution to the big discussion occurring in the world at the moment about the clash of civilisations."

I like the tense of ‘...Feliks Koneczny, who has developed a "very interesting" method of classifying civilizations.’ Note ‘who has’...but the guy died 58 years ago. Koneczny, and his ideas, are well and truly in the past (very simple) tense.

And that’s where the Gietychs should be. There has been a big fuss over the latest antics of the Giertych dynasty. But these people are no big deal, and their ideas – so antiquated – will gradually fall to bits like an old, pre-war, wardrobe.

Giertych-isms are well passed their sell by date.

The gibberish of Maciej Giertych

Take a deep breath and come with me as we delve into a mind stuck in the 1930s.

‘Jews form ghettoes’….’they settle in our civilizations, preferably among the rich…’

That’s one of the classic lines in a just released ‘scholarly pamphlet’ you can be sure will be on all Polish school students’ reading lists, any time soon. His son is the present education minister, Roman Giertych, and the magnificent piece of scholarship is LPR Member of the European Parliament Maciej’s rambling ruminations on Civilizations at war in Europe.

I just read the whole thing. It’s…..er...

Maciej Giertych goes neo-con?

No, no, no. This tract is not the product of the pre-Iraq war neo-conservative ‘battle of civilizations’, but back, way back to the 1930s, to nationalist politics frozen in time from 1945 - 1989, now seen staggering around Poland like a man recovering from long Soviet years of frozen animation, into the blinding light of post-Communist Poland.

That was a long sentence, wasn’t it?

Civilizations at war in Europe is based on what Giertych believes was a truly marvelous writer, odd-ball Polish historian Feliks Koneczny, the founder of the so-called ‘comparative science of civilizations’, who died in 1949. It takes in garbled sociology, tongue-tied linguistics, and a bit of 1930s race biology is thrown in for good measure.

Giertych on race

Civilization is a strong marriage barrier. People normally look for a spouse from the same [culture] as their own. They expect to share civilizational norms with the spouse. As a result the covilizational barrier becomes a biological one. In biology animals and humans develop as a consequence of isolation.

In the introductionary passage he seems to use the concept ‘human race’ and the differences between races of animals, synonymously. Whites, Arabs and Africans are, for Giertych, like the biological variations between wild cats and domestic cats.

That’s something mainstream biology gave up decades ago when categorizing humans. Human races – in the plural – is not a biological concept, but a social one.

But no matter, Giertych is not using race to explain the growth of societies – at least not in this essay. Civilizations are not formed from races, he says but from culture.
.
Giertych on Civilization

He says in the ‘method’ section that the categorization of cultures:

’…will be used hierarchically. Thus within the Latin civilization there are such cultures as British, Spanish, Polish and others. Within the Jewish [civilization] one can find Sephardic, the Hassidim, the Karaim and other cultures.”

Note ‘hierarchically’… But which civilization is on top, we wonder, breathlessly?

He spends rather a long time on trying to demonstrate certain defects in writing expressed in other than the Latin script. He claims that Chinese pictorial writing inhibits abstract thought [?] and that written Hebrew, because it expresses no consonants, leaves ambiguity in meaning[!].

Arabic script, though, is good, because you can scribble it quickly[!!].

Latin civilization (and he uses civilization and culture interchangeably) is the most enduring and successful [shock!] only spoiled if it comes under pressure and does not defend itself from either the outside (historically Byzantine and Turanian cultures, - meaning basically Russia and Germany) or from Jews from within.

It’s a Rip van Winkle world view in a 1930s rain coat. And there is a hole in his sock.

Giertych has a coded go at Law and Justice.

He fights his long dead 1930s nationalist dad’s battles for him, saying that Pilsudski-ites, followers of Marshall Jozef Pilsudski – and arch enemy of Giertych’s nationalist idol Roman Dmowski - were characteristic of the Russian and German cultures, in their preferred political system of a strong leader, leaving decision making to the higher-ups. That’s why they went along, as the Dmowski nationalists did not, with the Pilsudski led coup of 1926.

It’s a historical reference with a contemporary inference: the present Law and Justice led coalition government – of which Giertych’s League of Polish Families is part – consider themselves ‘Pilsudski-ites’.

Giertych’s whole view of today is informed by the nationalist struggles of the past. By bringing up Pilsudski as some kind of example of how Byzantine strong leader culture had infiltrated Poland’s ‘Latin’ culture, he is back fighting the inter-war struggle between the nationalist Endecja movement and the Sanacja government, filled with Pilsudski-ites.

Come on Maciej, isn’t it time to move on, old boy?

Giertych on Jews

Jews are not a race. So, logically, he says, almost proudly, “It’s a mistake to think that anti-Semitism is racism”.

Er….

“We [Poles] consider the Jewish people today as a tragic community, a people that has not recognized the time of its visitation,’ he says.

The real problem with these people, writes Giertych, is that they are still waiting for the messiah, when everyone knows he turned up 2000 years ago in Jerusalem. Jews have suffered for this religious blindness ever since.

The cultures that recognized Christ flourished, but the Jews did not, and:

‘…became wanderers, jealously nurturing their Chosenness, this messianic consciousness, which gives a defining mark to their [culture].'

The essay really starts to pick up speed now, and it all just comes tumbling out.

On intercultural relations

Cultures – civilizations – must remain separate, otherwise they weaken.

This is why a Jew cannot be a Pole. Neither can Gypsies.

“Can a Gipsy become a Pole? Though [sharing the same language and religion] I think most Poles would tell you, and most Gypsies, that no, they cannot.’

After a brief detour into the Arabs (they are coming to get us, you know) he concludes:

‘…differentiate civilizations are mutually exclusive. Integration, middle ground, the ‘melting pot’ are not possible.'....The war between civilizations will be fought in the schools. Who will have the greatest influence on the minds of the young? Who will education our children?

He then makes a little detour back, way back, into his family’s past, to a golden age when men were men and women did what they were told. He bizarrely accuses the work of Polish Nobel prize winning author Wladyslaw Reymont of exhibiting un-Polish, un-Latin, elements.

‘In 1925 my grandfather forbade my mother of a standard text in her school, Chlopi, by Wladyslaw Reymont, because he considered it had immodest content. The whole class read it, but my mother did not…she never did read the book.

Which European school today would respect such a wish….?'

Giertych’s essay is a hymn to the ‘Latin culture’ and how it should defend itself against the invasion of other cultures; divorce, homosexuality, abortion and the EU are all symptoms of this creeping occupation. Poles, with a higher sense of national identity, have a lot to teach other Europeans, if we are to won the war of civilizations.

and so it goes on...and on...It's a pamphlet that should not be put on the shelves of the national library, but the natural history museum, where it belongs.

Maciej Giertych’s diatribe to the dinosaurs, which, in its richness and modernity, and it’s breaking of intellectual barriers, will be poured over by scholars for years, is here. Do not read just before bedtime.

Get any strange Christmas cards this year?

Well, several members of the Polish parliament did via email from the ultra-nutty anti-Semites, National Rebirth of Poland (NOP).

According to chief NOP crazy Adam Gmurczyk the e-cards are in reaction to ‘absurd political correctness’.

The two incidents of ‘political correctness’ he is referring to are: the binning by a department store in Germany of thousands of Santa Clause toys showing Old St Nick making a Nazi salute (though the Rossman store protested that Santa was innocently pointing to the sky); and the outcry in Poland by media and most politicians after a film was found showing members of the All-Polish Youth having a kind of outdoor ‘fascist BBQ’ three years ago, shouting ‘Sieg Heil!’…accompanied by a swastika burning in the background.

“It was enough for the All Polish Youth to make some gestures for journalists to think that Fascism had arrived," said Gmurczyk, dumbfounded by all the fuss.

But even Roman Giertych, Head of LPR and founder of the reformed All-Polish Youth in 1989, has since disowned them.

As regards the Nazi Santa toys...well, yes, they could be pointing at the sky as Santa spots where he parked his reindeer. Banning them was silly, but shows how sensitive anything resembling the Nazis still are in Germany today.

But Polish ultra-nationalists dismissing the furor over All-Polish Youth – and producing the very stupid Christmas card above - shows that these people have a rather warped idea of what the word ‘irony’ means.

In that context, the Santa Clause toys, and the Xmas card, become a sick form of ‘fascist ketch’.

Just to give you a flavour of National Rebirth of Poland’s er...’politics’ (the group has been going since 1981) a recent campaign during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict included a poster stating, "Bomby na Izrael - Już czas!!!" ("Bombs against Israel - it's about time!!!")

But I suppose me protesting against that kind of crap is just ‘political correctness’.

Jesus – King of Poland?

A very silly idea, of course. But nothing is too daft for some of Poland’s lawmakers.

46 members of the Polish parliament have tabled a motion to name Jesus Christ as the ‘honorary King of the Republic of Poland’.

The lawmakers are from the governing Law and Justice; alongside junior members from the coalition, League of Polish Families.

There is an historical precedent to this mad move, however. The Virgin Mary was made Honorary Queen of Poland 350 years ago by King Jan Kazimierz (who must have been a lonely soul).

Luckily, the motion has little chance of passing through parliament. But it does give me a chance to name the Beatroot’s Understatement of the Year Award to Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, who said of the wild and wacky idea:

"This kind of action, although it may stem from good will, sounds a bit like propaganda."

A bit like propaganda?

Another PR disaster for LPR…

Maciej Giertych’s assistant joins in the fun at neo-nazi party.

dziennik.pl reports film evidence of a neo-nazi party (that’s having a good time ‘party’, but maybe not only) two years ago in Silesia, with lots of drinking, cries of ‘Sieg Heil’ and burning swastikas etc, attended by members of the All-Polish Youth (Młodzieży Wszechpolska), the Giertych-jungen of the League of Polish Families (LPR).

It gets worse. Spotted at the neo-nazi knees-up was a female assistant of Maciej Giertych, Euro MP and senior member of LPR.

Holding nazi type gatherings is illegal in Poland under article 256 of the penal code.

Leader of LPR, Roman Giertych (and former president of Młodzieży Wszechpolska), denies any knowledge of the matter and says that any perpetrator of improper behaviour must be punished – ‘and that includes All Polish Youth.”

In July this year, the editor of Zielony Sztandar printed an apology for accusations that All Polish Youth were fascist sloganizers, promoting violence and criminal activity. I bet he wishes he had to stuck to his guns.

Don’t forget to support All-Polish Youth’s jolly web site in English. It has comment boxes like a blog, so I am sure they will be glad to hear what you think.

More?
Right-wing Polish European Parliament lawmaker dismisses aide after neo-Nazi rally video, IHT, Nov 30