Not only looking at the feats of the Law and Justice in the Sejm and under the Sejm, it is hard to defy the impression that the Polish right to the right from the PO was in a deep crisis. Her biggest organization clearly can't cope with election failure, realize why people thanked her in October for further rule, is incapable to find itself in the function of opposition. alternatively of scoring a government where society would be willing to admit the right of the Law and Justice – e.g. on ambitious infrastructure projects – Kaczyński's organization radicalizes the message, talks about the coup, scares the rulers with life imprisonment, puts themselves in a conflict with the Marshal's defender and observes"even political assassinations" can be expected from the ruling coalition.
Right-wing commentators are starting to see that this is simply a road to nowhere. It's been a while. voice appeared on the portal of the Jagiellonian Club. Paul Musik in his text tries to convince the right-wing that radicalization is an ineffective tactic, and the right-wing, if he wants to return to power again, "cannot concentrate his energy on making a mention to reality, but must accept it." Also, today, “many liberal assumptions are not simply a view, but a breathable air. These are the mill settings of the modern Western.”
In Musik's text, there is 1 thing I cannot agree with: the belief that right-wings in Poland and in the planet are little allowed only due to the fact that they are right-wing, which would make the Tusk government appear to be something for which the Law and Justice Offices would be subject to violent criticism from both Polish liberal elites and Western governments and EU institutions. However, the problem of the Polish right is not that it is unfairly treated – due to the fact that any "excess" distrust of its intentions and actions is, as shown by the last 8 years, full justified – but how it has radicalized in the last 14 years. Which resulted not from how the mythical "liberal elites" treated it, but from the full dominance of 2 parties of the right hand on the Polish political phase after 2005.
I mean, we inactive have a law-abiding government.
Despite the failure of PiS Poland inactive has a right-wing government. It is dominated by a block of parties associated with the European People's organization – PSL and PO. Left is Tusk's weakest partner.
Yes, the PO has moved to the centre in the last 8 years, which is comparatively “to the left”. respective "conservative anchors" have been abandoned and are present a organization far more distant from Polish conservative voters than in 2015. But this movement has simply brought her closer to the place where the mainstream of the European centre-right is today. Although the fresh PO position on abortion is no “left”, only to usage the words of Musik himself, “the mill setting of the modern Western”.
The problem is not that conservative voters are blocked in Poland by these "factory settings", but that the political class is not keeping pace with the changes in society, which increasingly resembles Western societies. Just as they have achieved a certain level of wealth, they become increasingly secular and liberal. Today, as shown by the IBRIS studies published last Sunday for Zero Channel, to the question “Are you in favour of the anticipation of legally having an abortion by 12 weeks of pregnancy?” 51.2 percent of respondents answer yes. However, in the 10th Parliament, there is no majority required to adopt specified a law. On the basis of something that is simply a European civilization standard, only Left and KO stand. PSL is mostly against, Poland 2050 remains divided.
This right-wing dominance was like air in Poland
We frequently do not see how politically-prone Poland is, due to the fact that in the last almost 20 years it is not "liberal ideas", but right-wing dominance in Poland was like air. The elections in 2005 buried the anti-communist division and created a new, based on the rivalry of the PO-PiS, 2 right-wing parties with roots in the environments of democratic opposition from the times of the Polish People's Republic. Both formed on the ruins of a broad right-wing AWS coalition in opposition to Miller's rule, both initially oriented towards the European People's organization and seemed natural coalitions.
However, all calculations of the common PO-PiS government crossed the scale of the defeat of the post-communist left in 2005. 2 closely related genealogically and then the right hands could divide the full Polish political scene among themselves and took advantage of this opportunity. As a result, we received almost 20 years of government not only without any left, but even without the engagement of the unrightly liberals.
Yes, in the times of its highest power, the Platform brought into orbit people from the SLD or having small in common even with the centreright – but it never changed its identity as a EPP party. After 2011, PO continued to regulation with conservative PSL, not with Palikot or Miller. It was only since 2019 that she formed a joint seismic club with the left-liberal initiative of the Polish Barbara Nowacka and Liberal Modern, but Grzegorz Schetyna as the party's chief spoke to the weekly “Networks” of Karnowski brothers and talked about “conservative anchors”.
How the PiS became an alter-right organization
In order to divide Poland among themselves in 2005, 2 close right-wing formations had to be distinguished. The PO went through a centre-right organization of power, giving Poles peace and proverbial "warm water in the tap", the Law and Justice organization through right-wing radicalization. Contrary to the myths about the "central", "chadecki" Agreement, the Jarosław Kaczyński Center has been a politician prone to extremist diagnosis and actions, formulating seemingly simple populist recipes, freely utilizing innuendos, triggering a language of conspiracy theories, distrusting towards the West, especially Germany.
The SS showed its extremist face between 2005 and 2007, erstwhile all the forces of the state engaged in the pursuit of an "agreement" that was never proved to exist. By fighting the “agreement”, the government crossed further boundaries and frightened Poles who in 2007 massively supported opposition parties to defend Poland from what they saw as authoritarian tendencies.
The defeat even more radicalized the PiS, although this radicalization was kept in any proportions. On the occasion of the debate on the Treaty of Lisbon, the party, following Jack Kurski's suggestion, launched strong anti-European rhetoric, but yet withdrew from it and president Kaczyński signed the treaty.
Turbo-charged radicalization of the PiS brought Smolensk. The PiS conflict with the PO due to the disaster gained an highly toxic dimension of household revenge and the Manichean conflict of good against evil, a "patriot camp" with "agents Merkel and Putin". With further theories about “assassination in Smolensk“ The Law and Justice besides became an increasingly open antiliberal. Both in terms of the approach to the constitutional principles of liberal democracy and the modern knowing of human rights, against which the organization unleashed further cultural wars before gaining power in 2015.
Nine years ago, the PiS won, hiding its extremist face. He presented himself as possibly somewhat populist, but mostly conservative-people, prosocial right. However, Antoni Macierewicz's nomination as the head of the MON showed that this transformation was only a performance, played for the purposes of the election campaign.
In 2015-2023, the PiS showed repeatedly that it had become a organization closer to the utmost than average current of the right. Marine Le Pen, not the European People's Party. Trump, not Republicans, let's get John McCain on it. The Law and Justice has taken over the key points of alt-rights: mobilising the electorate through screenings of hatred against the "liberal elite" and antimodern cultural wars, rejecting the principles of liberal democracy and the restrictions of power therein, aversion to the European Union and sovereign rhetoric. The only difference, although crucial from the point of view of Poland, between the PiS and the American alt-right remained the attitude towards Russia and Ukraine.
In many Western democracies, we see a process of expanding the importance of the far right towards the erstwhile more average one. In France, the hegemon on the right is present National Unity Marine Le Pen, not more centre Republicans. In Germany, an alternate to Germany is growing, gaining highlands not only in peculiarly susceptible to the anti-liberal populism of the east lands, but besides in wealthy western union states. Italy The Prime Minister rules originating from a organization considered to be utmost until recently.
However, apart from Fidesz in Hungary, it is hard to have another as expressive as the PiS example of the change of a organization erstwhile placed in the mainstream right-wing to the power of utmost alt-right.
Is there any way to exterminate the written right?
The biggest challenge facing the Polish right present is deradicalization. Both organization activists and voters. due to the fact that turning the Law and Justice to the far right helped rise an anti-system electorate whose views are problematic from the point of view of liberal democracy. This group is simply a number of PiS voters – but a number most faithful, having a immense translation into the party's activities.
Deradicalisation, however, will not be easy. Just like Le Pen grew right-wing competition Erica ZemmourThat's how the Law and Justice has a Confederate right. The expected success of the extremist right in the European elections, let alone the eventual triumph of Trump in the autumn, will strengthen among Polish right-wing radicals the belief that they are on the right side of past and that we simply gotta wait until the trends seen in the west scope Poland. Issues specified as EU climate policy and migration challenges will make a space for right-wing radicalisation.
The only hope is that in Poland the majority of the isolation radicals will be able to last until the change in global prosperity will yet force them to sober up.
