Homophobia in Polish politics
CW: homophobia, transphobia, hate speech;
Right now, it seems that the entire Polish Presidential election of 2020 is revolving around the subject of LGBT people (and yes, I didn’t add a plus because most people here don’t even realise that there can be something more).
Basically, the current President (Andrzej Duda) is right-wing, and he decided to make - for a lack of a better term - ‘the LGBT question’ an important part of his program for 2020. I assume this was a conscious decision, because the nation has been basically severed in half on the matter, and it has been a very controversial subject, to the point that a politician’s opinion on LGBT people could determine their whole electorate. Thus, by blatantly stating his opposition to the LGBT movement, the President seems to be aiming at uniting right-wing voters.
It strikes me as ridiculous and worrying that this subject is a ground for such controversy, and that the thing right-wing people of Poland seem to have in common is hatred for queer people. I am not particularly surprised that homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are common in Poland, but I am worried that more and more, they are becoming a tool of politics and propaganda.
It may sound absurd, but government propaganda in Poland is actually a very real issue. Obviously, it bears no comparison with totalitarian or authoritarian states, but it is getting worse and worse. TVP - the public television receives a truly ludicrous amount of funding. Google is not the best source for such estimations, but TVP was granted the sum of approximately 506 million dollars for it’s operations, and keep in mind - Poland doesn’t have that big of an income in general. This money could have gone into the truly devastated public healthcare system, infrastructure, salaries for workers, anything would be better than to spend it on a corrupt television network, that exists solely to provide citizens with their everyday dose of propaganda along the lines of:
“Our nation is great! It is the greatest! Glory to the martyrs! Glory to the government! Death to the opposition! Death to George Soros! Death to anyone who doesn’t agree with us!”
And I’m only slightly exaggerating. Recently though, the prime subject of public ridicule and contempt in television has been the LGBT movement. This isn’t anything new, as documentaries demonising queer people like “Inwazja” - lit. translated to ‘Invasion’ - have been broadcasted from the TVP platform on youtube as well as on television. I am glad that the court demanded “Inwazja” being taken down from youtube, but it did nothing to stop the overtly negative view of LGBT people presented in our national public media.
I should probably address the thing that hit me the most during Duda’s campaign, wich is the language. I always pay a huge attention to semantics in politics, and what is happening right now is unacceptable. Right-wing people have been sounding alarm about imaginery concepts like: ‘the LGBT lobbyists’, ‘the LGBT terror’, and the Archbishop of one of the biggest cities in the country, publicly calls LGBT people “a plague” during his sermons.
However, this campaign used a very specific phrase: ‘the LGBT ideology’. Fancy, I know. Basically, our President has been quoted saying that:
“LGBT aren’t people, but an ideology”.
I hope I don’t need to explain why this is dehumanising and insulting. Frankly, it doesn’t get any more blatant than that quote. In his program, Duda emphasises the protection of children from this very ideology - a strategy that hits very close with a recent propaganda film released in Russia.
I feel the need to stress how widespread and omnipresent homophobia and transphobia is in Poland. I might be wrong, but if a British, German or French politician spoke in parliament about LGBT people being “perverts” and “deviants” and having an demoralising influnce on people, they would be torn to shreds. Here, the only thing the offender gets, is a remark from the Deputy Marshal about this hate speech being ‘rude’.
This is just the situation in the public sphere though, I am genuinely more afraid of reading any Catholic-oriented media in my country, than I am of going to /pol/ - and not because 4chan alt-right is somehow mild compared to Polish religious television, but because the latter is overtly hateful and is too close for me to think of as abstract. I know that in dozens of small towns and villages in my country, every Sunday the children are forced to listen about how LGBT people are a blight to our society, and are going to end up in hell.
Finally, it’s important to note, that this kind of behaviour and widespread normalisation of hate speech has gotten significantly worse in the past year or so. There was hatred before, but it wasn’t nearly as institutionalised and indorsed in the media as it is now. However, this is my own observation, so don’t take it for granted.
The western media have demanded explanations from the President and criticised his blatantly queerphobic program, but he has responded to the accusations with the usual: “my words are put out of context” followed by a reinforcement of his earlier hateful claims. This post is long - perhaps too long - but I am deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of Polish people who are a part of this disciminated group.
