A right-wing national weekly newspaper in Poland has published an article on its front page that explains to its readers “how to recognize a Jew.”
The Tylko Polska, or Only Poland, ran the story alongside its main headline, which read, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris,” and voiced anger at alleged anti-Polish speakers at a Holocaust studies conference in Paris last month.
The “recognize a Jew” piece lists “names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and even supposed “disinformation activities” that might mark out a Jewish person, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. The headline added, “How to defeat them? This cannot go on!”
The newspaper was delivered to the lower house of the Polish parliament—the Sejm—on Wednesday, as part of the weekly package of publications sent to lawmakers there.
Michal Kamiski, of the center-right Poland Comes First party, told a press conference that the newspaper’s presence was unacceptable, Polsat News reported.
Only Poland is published by nationalist political candidate and musician Leszek Bubl. In the past, he has sung anti-Semitic songs about “rabid” rabbis, the JTA reported.
Initially, Andrzej Grzegrzolka—the director of the Sejm Information Center—said the newspaper was being sold in kiosks within the parliament, meaning it was not up to the Information Center to regulate its sale. He suggested law enforcement authorities were more suited to deal with the issue.
But as outcry grew, Grzegrzolka said the Center would request the removal of Only Poland from the parliament’s press kit, to avoid causing further offence.
The anti-Semitic headline ran alongside the front page article complaining that speakers at last month’s Holocaust studies meeting in Paris had been attacking Poland. It was printed with a photo of Jan Gross, a Polish Jew who teaches at Princeton University.
Gross has regularly said that Poles collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, helping Adolf Hitler’s regime murder millions of their Jewish countrymen. He has become a favored target for Polish nationalists, who rail against any suggestion of Polish complicity in the genocide.
Gross was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 1996. However, in 2016, the nationalist Law and Justice government was reportedly considering stripping the scholar of the honor for what it considers his anti-Polish work.
The government has been accused of trying to rewrite history by banning any suggestion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Use of the phrase “Polish death camps” to refer to Nazi-run concentration camps like Auschwitz, for example, is now punishable by up to three years in prison.
Polish Nationalist Youth March Draws Thousands in Capital: Crowd of mostly young people carries banners that read ‘Europe Will Be White’ and ‘Clean Blood’
[…] The largely young crowd shot off roman candles and many chanted “fatherland,” carrying banners that read “White Europe,” “Europe Will Be White” and “Clean Blood.” Some of the marchers flew in from Hungary, Slovakia and Spain and waved flags and symbols that those countries used during their wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany.
A number of people in the crowd said they didn’t belong to any neo-fascist or racist organization but didn’t see a problem with the overall tone of what has become Poland’s biggest independence day event.
“There are of course nationalists and fascists at this march,” said Mateusz, a 27-year-old wrapped in a Polish flag, “I’m fine with it. I’m just happy to be here.”
The march, organized by a group called the National Radical Camp, underscores the rightward politics of a growing section of Polish youth. The Radical Camp presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which fought to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. A second group, All Polish Youth, also named after an anti-Jewish interwar movement, co-organized it.
Officials in the city government said they thought the march reflected poorly on Poland, but they said they had no choice but to approve the demonstration, as it fulfilled the legal requirements: It qualified as a celebration of Polish history. “This is not the type of event I would take my children to,” said Agnieszka Kłąb, spokesperson for the Warsaw City Council.
The Radical Camp has been holding independence-day marches since 2009. Until several years ago, it struggled to attract more than a few hundred people. In the past three years, it has become the largest independence-day occasion in Poland, and one of the largest nationalist marches of its kind anywhere in Europe. Saturday’s was expected to be the largest ever. Police estimated the crowd at 60,000.
“It’s getting more and more vicious,” said Jakub Skrzypek, 25, one of about a dozen counterprotesters standing behind a banner that read “We Are Polish Jews” and surrounded by police. “We are really in fear.”
The Radical Camp’s followers argue, on their social-media accounts and in their literature, that the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe is part of a conspiracy driven by Jewish financiers, who are working with Communists in the European Union to bring Muslims into Europe, and with them, Shariah law and homosexuality.
The group has regularly held events to mark a 1936 pogrom against Jews. Its symbols were displayed on a banner that appeared over a Warsaw bridge, reading: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.”
This year, the group said it was adopting a new slogan, a quote from a July speech here by President Donald Trump : “We want God.”
The crowds drawn to Saturday’s march reflect the politics taking hold in the soccer clubs and youth hangouts where Radical Camp recruits. The group holds a staunch nativist standpoint, saying the European Union and Russia represent equal threats to Polish sovereignty. It argues that Polish people should nationalize the assets belonging to foreign corporations and distribute the profits across an ethnically homogenous state.
Similar movements have taken hold—even captured seats in parliament—in Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. Some of these countries are among Europe’s most prospering. Poland is the only country in the EU that didn’t experience a single quarter of economic contraction after the financial crisis.
Still, the fear that Poland is under siege by distant elites has captured the imagination of some here, as has the worry that hordes of immigrants could soon pour over the border. Government-controlled media broadcasts near-nightly reports on crimes committed by Muslims in Europe. On Saturday, Polish state television called the procession a “great march of patriots.
“It’s like this inner need we have,” said Lukasz, a 24-year-old protester. “We want a Poland that will be for Polish people.”
Polish Nationalist Youth March Draws Thousands in Capital (November 11, 2017)
Notice how closely intertwined Islamophobia and antisemitism are intertwined in their white nationalism
Of course, western capitalist media coverage of modern Polish fascism is mostly garbage that downplays Polish fascism as “center-right”, “patriotism,” “independence after communist oppression”, “still struggling after living under soviet tyranny”, etc.
A far-right activist in Warsaw, Poland, holds a Confederate flag and a White Pride flag while taking part in a July 2015 demonstration against accepting over 2,000 immigrants to the country. (WOJTEK RADWANSKI via Getty Images)
“A far right activist” 🤢🤢🤢
White Polish Christians have been so fucking bitter that they didn’t get to continue having their Nazism for the rest of the 20th century after the defeat of the Nazis by the Soviets, and now they’re going full-steam ahead with it again
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
