Hate is only a force if it works, if it creates its own forces or destroys strangers. Hatred, which destroys its own forces, and to strangers nothing but harm, is just a national suicide" (Aleksander Bocheński “Acts of Stupidity in Poland”)
“In the bondage of feelings” – is the title of an excellent fresh William Somerset Maugham showing the catastrophes that can bring on us besides easy and unreasonable to give in. However, increasingly frequent punishment for manifestations, and de facto for the same feelings that happen both in the Polish penal code (KK) and in court practice, means a real breakthrough on the way to a totalitarian – therapeutic state, in which KK is to service not only to punish actions, but besides to remove the flaws of human psyche.
The Polish dictionary describes hatred as “a very strong feeling of resentment and hostility towards individual who may be accompanied by a desire for something bad to happen.” In the dictionary, she is thematically qualified for the section: “man as a intellectual being” for “human relations”. On pages dedicated to intellectual health, we read in our own sinful experience that hatred is simply a natural condition and that all individual experiences it at any point. A sense of harm or danger, fear and political manipulation are frequently cited as causes of hatred. Hatred besides appears to be a fixed feeling of anger causing a desire for revenge for suffered or imaginary harm. Very frequently it is simply a consequence to contempt and disregard. On a regular basis, the most common is the hatred that comes from feeling inferior to someone's superiority, due to God's responsibility or the nature of the difference that cannot be overcome. Therefore, hatred is considered embarrassing and even humiliating. Arthur Schopenhauer described the mechanics of its formation as follows: “If 1 finds and feels the considerable advantage of his interlocutor, then deep in mind, not realizing it, he concludes that he states and feels his own inferiority and spiritual restraint. This entememmation evokes violent hatred, aversion, animosity... In addition, average nature is storming at the sight of its opposite, and the secret perpetrator of this rebellion is jealousy.” “Classical” a variety of hatred is frequently described by border Poles reporting atrocities and vandalism of Bolsheviks and Ukrainians after the October Revolution, and its symbol is skinned alive by the title “Horse on the Hill” from the communicative Eugeniusz Małaczewski. Therefore, Polish members of the higher classes under russian business tried to match the proletarians or black-looking ones, the way they were, but could betray a thinking, more subtle expression of the face or hand not destroyed by physical work.
The Palette of the shades of hatred presented here, although incomplete, proves that the crusade in which Minister Żurek was engaged with specified enthusiasm, has been immersed from the very beginning in the cloudy depths of obscure intellectual definitions, gradual and variable emotional states, which yet makes it highly likely to prove the fact of the claim Lao Tsy: “When individual who is willing to change the world, takes to renew it, it is easy to see the end in it.” So let us callback the celebrated speech of the Polish minister during the Ukrainian national festival: “I have appointed over a 100 prosecutors all over the country, who since February this year have been actively pursuing with the police all act of hatred... Those who thought that impunity could insult, mock, beat, the next day are led in chains to court and go to jail. We have taken non-ad hoc, but systemic action. No 1 will destruct our friendship.” To the elderly, both the speech and the somewhat grotesque persona of Minister Żurek surely brought to head at this point the character of the “young doctor” from an unforgettable series of radio broadcasts, in which the heroine's unnecessary or embarrassing intellectual state removed with sounding cuts of the scalpel.
A Motive More crucial Than an Act
What the KO policy amazes and concerns most is the disproportionately advanced emphasis placed not on actions but on motivation. In classical crime detectives usually besides look for motive, but not as a mark and fundamental crime, but as a tool to identify a possible perpetrator. The hatred that motivates revenge is 1 of them, the same is actual of another qualities of human nature, among which greed leads to an crucial place. In the case of the Minister Waldemara Żurka However, we are dealing with a reversal of the classical police and prosecutorial process of thinking, a comparatively tiny and harmless act which many encounter constantly in everyday life, which is usually not punished, serves to look for motives and in practice these motives, alternatively than actions are punished highly severely. Although the alleged low motives have long been 1 of the circumstances that affect the amount of the penalty, their amount has fundamentally been determined by the action, not the motive. In the communicative of the Polish Minister of Justice and the full army to him, akin volunteer hunters of sinful thoughts are the opposite. On the another hand, execution in passion is coded for little than cold and calculating murder. Can specified an effect be justified by hatred, or the state of emotional agitation, of the attitude of the Ukrainians as a nation and the manner in which its representatives behave in circumstantial situations?
The practice pursued by subordinate prosecutors and the independent but absorbing spirit of the judge's past confirms the presumption of a fundamental change. A trained Ukrainian martial arts, who abruptly attacked and broke the Polish boy's eye sockets on the field in Suwałki, is treated more mildly than his victim by the Polish household court, due to the fact that the perpetrator of the beating accused her after beating of earlier behaviour (word?) motivated by hatred. Breaking the rules of cultural behaviour in the mediate of public transport a teenager provocatively recording an aged You are treated like a victim due to the fact that you have carelessly pointed to her nationality. For keeping his legs on the seat base he gets a free ticket, and you are not elegant adequate to draw attention to a severe punishment.
In the penal code, as he writes Dr Grzegorz Maroń in an article entitled “Motivation of Hate”, as an aggravating condition in the Polish penal code and legally – comparatively – the word motivation appears 8 times, 4 times in Article 53. Hatred as a motivation peculiarly aggravating and affecting a larger punishment was added to it in 2022. Prior to that, both the ultimate Court (SN) and the Constitutional Court (TK) dealt with the notion of hatred. It is peculiarly worrying to see the resolution of the ultimate Court of 5 February 2007 in which he described the "call for hatred" as "this kind of speech that inspires feelings of strong aversion, anger, disapproval, even hostility to individuals or full social or spiritual groups." According to this passage, even describing or recalling the crimes of the listed entities can be considered hatred speech. Does the information about the ways in which Ukrainians murdered Poles and the cognition of Ukrainians' glorification of criminals liable for that genocide not make strong aversion? At the same time, the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in Article 54 states that: 1. Everyone is given the freedom to express their views and to get and disseminate information. In this case, then, we have a clear example of the SN's giving reasons and judgments that are manifestly contrary to the Constitution. The information that angers the SN seemingly represents an exception that the Constitution forgets.
From the past of Fighting Hate
The most commonly utilized to suppress freedom of speech under the pretext of fighting hatred are Articles 256 and 257 KK containing a literal mention to this feeling. They were passed in 1997 and in Polish law appeared a year later together with the fresh KK. Only a twelve right-wing MPs voted against the fresh KC, but their criticism mainly afraid the abolition of the death penalty. For who would dare to defend the right to hate? hatred is limited in these articles, i.e. hatred is punished for certain circumstantial reasons and certain circumstantial groups. Paraphrasing the lyrics of the Elder Lords' song, it follows that: “If you hatred impunity, it is better individually.” The number of types of hatred subject to peculiarly severe penalties in Polish law was attempted to increase by further groups in 2023, but president A. Duda prevented the introduction of the extension of unauthorised types of hatred by sex, age and sexual orientation by sending a draft of changes to the TK.
Therefore, Minister Nowacka does not fall under hateful paragraphs for naming conservatives "grandparents". The number of groups peculiarly protected against hatred crimes varies across Europe. According to G. Maroń, “the Kazuisticism in this regard, which marks an expanding number of legal orders, gives the impression of a circumstantial ‘lying’, which the legislator will make an impression of a more ‘progressive’, ‘empathic’ towards victims of criminal acts dictated by hatred or discrimination, and at the same time ‘categoric’ towards perpetrators.” The spread in the number of identified causes of hatred which deserve peculiar treatment according to the summary provided in the article varies from 4 in Italy to more than 30 in Belgium. In Luxembourg, hatred is punished for ‘morality’, in Norway for ‘the way of life’, in North Macedonia for ‘education’, in Spain for ‘aporophobia’ (anxiety or aversion towards mediocre people), in Belgium, Kosovo for ‘economic status’, etc., etc. At first glance, these records have a clear political goal in the first and more superficial stage, focusing on how it is done in the 3rd Poland on punishing for dislike of the "national title".
It is about punishing Poles for "hate" against millions of Ukrainians coming into our country. However, just as modern medicine seldom seeks causes, and more frequently focuses on combating symptoms, so in the case of “hate” Poles to Ukrainians Poles are punished for symptoms of alleged hatred, but it does not combine them with causes specified as breaking the principles of social coexistence, unjustified pension privileges and many another actions perceived as injustice and ingratitude, or yet from the very fact that a large number of members of abroad and historically hostile nationalities are coming in. If we could decision the full situation to the individual level, we could imagine 2 neighbors. 1 of them's grandparents cut the other's grandfather's saw, the grandma before the belly was cut, and the three-year-old sister was beaten to the table and smashed her head with an axe. Imagine that specified a neighbour not only does not let the dead to be buried, whose bones lie in his garden, but the murderers rise chapels and teach the children that they were heroes. Would not the another neighbor, the grandson of those victims, have reason, or even the right to hate, whether his unwillingness to host that 1 would be justified, and the actions resulting from it would be treated as an act of passion? It is clear that specified a simple transfer of individual situations to collective situations can be unfair.
However, it is striking that politicians and courts completely overlook these circumstances and remind doctors of increasingly powerful drugs, regardless of side effects and allergic reactions. Critics of the application of alleged collective work believe that it is incorrect from a purely moral point of view. This argument is accompanied by the fight against alleged stereotypes. According to this popular thinker, there is no specified thing as the collective attitudes or national characters established by generations with circumstantial advantages and disadvantages. In fact, it is simply a conflict not with stereotypes, but with statistic and facts that statistic describe. In the case of murders, it follows that on average 6 times as many in Ukraine as in Poland, the same applies to corruption or yet state and socially approved cult of criminals. All of this is to be regarded as irrelevant or even nonexistent, to negate mostly the collective as a carrier of separate customs, ethos, cultures and according to multiculti ideology, that differences are to enrich us by definition, and they cannot disturb or irritate us.
Hate and Morality Have Many Names
The tendency to fight all types of hatred is besides second, deeper than only political level. In order to realize the origin of almost all political dispute of moral outrage felt today, it is worth to get to work Arnold Gehlen “Morality and Moral Hypertrophy” in which the author points out that morality has different faces and different anthropological bases for different entities. Simplifying; there is simply a difference between the ethos of the household and the customized and the ethos of the institution. It was already seen in ancient times, as was illustrated by Sophocles by the tragic conflict of Antigone and Kreon. In our day, due to the comparative prosperity and security, the unstable balance between them has been shaken. Hence the collapse of classical institutions and the stronger political position in women's life, who, by their nature, view this kind of morality as the only and binding 1 in politics. Men seeking the voices of a female electorate under democracy, or profits from the work sold to readers are besides subject to “moral” pressure.
An illustration of this phenomenon is the publicist programs conducted by women in a state of moral escalation interrogating "immoral" men. This besides means following the enlightened story of goodness and religion in the anticipation of creating a planet in which, according to Isaiah’s prophecy, “the wolf and the lamb will grow together; the lion will besides eat straw like an ox.” A. Schopenhauer ridiculed this contrary dream experience by writing: “Augustyism with its dogma about first sin and conclusions is... appropriate and pure Christianity. Pelagianism, on the another hand, seeks to return to the flat and primitive optimism of judaic religion."
As a result, the basic tool of political argument utilized by believers of specified emotional – intellectual nodes becomes moral blackmail, which is dripping with today's public debate. On the another hand, the fear of moral stigma caused a delicious joke, sarcasm, and a sense of humor to disappear. However, since reality does not always yield to words, Gehlen describes the effect of specified a policy as follows: “Whoever seeks to “realize an thought will easy feel real opposition as immoral, as the inequality of reality that should be sanded down with guillotine.”
The large repairmen of the world, erstwhile they took up practice, rapidly realized it. Gehlen cites the example of Robespierre, who, after the first period of preaching the ethos of brotherhood, “recognises the “boundless community” preached by Anarchasis Cloots in the time of the First Coalition War for a safety threat and is consequently forced to cut it down.” A akin evolution forced reality in Stalin. The dominance of detached from the reality of “family” morality in a public political debate is 1 of the reasons for the withdrawal of real power and politics into secret facilities for services, deep states, closed clubs and associations where 1 can say what it truly feels like and thinks.
In specified a climate of emotional falsehood, plots and pervasive suspicions multiply. Minister Żurek and Polish hatred hunters are besides part of the long tradition of political realism. They fight hatred that harms their political goals and at the same time like in 1984 Orwell not only tolerates, but organizes screenings of hatred for those who harm this vision. Its object may be Grzegorz Braun, a heartless granddaughter who wants to kill her grandma by refusing to take an experimental injection, smoking in the oven a climate negationist, and above all anyone who does not share the hatred of the symbol of the masterpiece that is Vladimir Putin. According to the current narrative, he leads a nation made up of barbarians like Tolkien orcs, murdering children, pregnant women and stealing toilets. I do not know the case that Minister Żurek and the Polish justice strategy punish any manifestation of specified directed hatred.
This is due to the fact that hatred can and frequently is simply a tool, including political. He is simply a very strong motivator, he adds courage, he strengthens will, although he frequently blinds, it sharpens the intellect in any situations. Poles felt hatred towards the Germans during the occupation, it was felt by a soldier towards his opponent and it helped him to endure the hardships of war. Hatred can contribute to political success, as in the case of Ukrainians, who after the execution of Polish neighbours took over their land, property, and the territory joined their country. The drama “Termidor” perfectly captured this Stanisława Przybyszewska Putting words in the mouth of the cool - minded chief of Fouche’s police chief as he says to the large speaker, but the impetuous Tallien: “And then you, Tallien, will enter the platform and all your hatred of Roberspierre, all your fear and all your rage you will throw in his face! I and my men will cover the door.” It can besides be the motivation of the full nation to build strength, to remove its weakening flaws to defeat the present or eternal enemy.
This hatred is referred to in this article by A. Bocheński. From my own life, I remembered a scene in which a hateful doctorate reviewer personally read a devastating review, and colleagues next to me assessed that hatred added his work of insight. I myself, after youthful outrage with a wink, but sometimes I read critical analyses of my personality with attention, treating them as an authentic chance to overcome defects. Apt pseudonyms and analyses of the character of recruited opponents that were prepared by safety officers are very interesting in this respect. Poles make the mistake of resenting even delicate criticism alternatively of seeing it as valuable and free treasure.
For example, ratio to Fyodor Dostoevsky, which in “The Karamaz Brothers” showed us as cheaters in cards and surviving from women, proclaiming the lofty phrases of “gentlemen.” Do we not see specified differences between pompous rhetoric and vile prose of tiny acts around us, in large and small, systemic and anti-system politics? And wouldn't it be worth taking it seriously? What is incorrect with hate, as in another dangerous feelings mentioned in many ethical systems, is the deficiency of its leadership, the out of control of reason. Then hatred becomes blind and self-destructive, but the same is actual of blind love, greed and another emotions. alternatively than fighting feelings with paragraph, it is better to build virtues that let them to be controlled and sublimated wisely. keep the virtue of moderation, a kind of indifference and a sense of bold humor.
In the end, according to a beautiful song Czesław Niemen serenely “to marvel at the world” and work on “the demolition of hatred within yourself”. And if that doesn't work, then at least know who, when, where, and how to hate, but never let that kind of feeling be controlled by us like strong alcohol. However, placing specified an effect in the Criminal Code is not only a politically motivated populism, treated as an instrument for oppressing political opponents, but above all an embarrassing seriousness of the law and the regulation of law nonsense.
Olaf Swolkień
Think Poland, No. 39-40 (27.09-4.10.2026)
