Paulina Januszewska: Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) – an event you and Robert Kowalczyk wrote about in your late published book TrumPolacy. Who in Poland is waiting for the second American revolution, will visit Poland. What should we know about him and who is excited about this party?
Adam Sokołowski: CPAC is simply a major convention of American Conservatives organized since the 1970s, which sets the direction of the Republican Party's policy. For respective years, this event has been gradually exported to Europe, specifically to Hungary. There it has been held cyclically since 2022. The 4th exit is shortly underway, and all 1 so far has been an evident vulnerability of Trumpism to Europe.
Why is it obvious?
Nobody hides that CPAC in Budapest organizes ideological and political entities related to Trump, including his and Putin's ally Viktor Orbán, as well as Alapjogokért Központ – Center for Fundamental Rights (the alleged gongo, a non-governmental organization organized by the government – for example auto), the Hungarian equivalent of the Institute of Legal Culture "Ordo Iuris". As well as the American Conservative Union – an umbrella organization stretched over the Republican Party. ACU leaders came to Hungary in large numbers with their blessing, saying that they implant their own ideas and support for Trump on European grounds as part of his campaign. The hopeful triumph was called the answer to the most crucial problems affecting the modern world.
What were Trump Poles doing at the time, or Polish supporters of Trump?
They were applauding. Jerzy Kwaśniewski, president of Ordo Iuris, regularly traveled to Budapest, and last year there was a large representation of the United Right: Mateusz Morawiecki, Marcin Mastalerek, Ryszard Czarnecki, Janusz Kowalski, Patryk Jaka and Marek Kuchciński. Now they won't gotta go anywhere, due to the fact that they're going to have the same organization at home, already with Trump at the helm of restoring conservative order, or alternatively – making a blindly demolished present.
CPAC recalls what Agenda Europe, an global network of conservative organisations, said to me by Kamila Ferenc of the FEDERA Foundation, "are fighting against the secular states in order to replace the religiously neutral regulation of law with fundamentalist principles that bring together Christian religion." But are these truly the same environments that trust the unpredictable Trump future?
Of course, it is not that participants in the Agenda Europe lists, but besides the first Russian-American planet household Congress, modelled on the MAGA of the Make Europe large Again and CPAC movement, agree 1 to one, but prosecute akin interests and represent the same entities.
What?
For example, European far-right parties with an anti-EU scratch and a clear putinophical element, specified as the Austrian Freedom organization and Orbánowski Fidesz. We besides have spiritual fundamentalists here, like the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Trump and implemented by him. Project 2025and has been working closely with Ordo Iuris for a year and a half. The latter, as we know from the emails revealed in 2024, has been operating in Agenda Europe almost since its inception. The AE itself was formed as a lobbying group of utmost conservatives whose aim is to carry out a large moral counter-revolution by influencing global institutions from within, for example the European Union, the UN, the European Court of Justice.
That's it?
Anti-globalism is getting stronger and stronger. These groups are not only opposed to abortion, LGBT+, sex education or another modern “left” pulpit, but besides adhere to the governments of the “disturbance, global dictatorship of the EU”. In a word: they entered the game theories that we knew so far from YouTube movies with yellow subtitles.
Ordo Iuris after the change of power in Poland stopped. Trump's regulation will dare them?
Heritage Foundation, which is Trump's intellectual base and is simply a channel for the distribution of Trumpism to Europe, seeks subcontractors. 1 of them was Ordo Iuris, who wants to be the intellectual base of the Polish far right. His representatives at 1 of the conferences organized jointly with the Heritage Foundation, under the supervision of which they are trained, enthusiastically stated that Donald Trump plays a geopolitically akin function to that played by Woodrow Wilson after planet War I, or Ronald Reagan, in the Polish People's Republic of Poland, and so is to reconstruct real freedom to Poles. That's a beautiful clever thing to do.
Why?
Because he's missing the political level. That means Trump will not call Duda or Kaczyński, saying, “it is to be so in Warsaw.” He'll do it in white gloves. The Heritage Foundation, together with Ordo Iuris, will lobby or social campaigns push what is in their interest, Trump, as well as the fight against the EU and the "damaged West" Kremlin.
However, it is not in the interest of Poles to be pro-Russian. How, then, can we explain the support for the pro-putin president from at least the declamatically opposed politicians in Russia? Is this about following in the footsteps of Hungary?
Hungary has been looking at Russia for at least a decade. For 8 years the writers wanted to introduce a model akin to Orbánowski. They were fortunately unsuccessful, but the difference is that the PiS was formally and officially anti-Russian and helped – as if not look at it – Ukraine. Orbán never covered that he was playing for Putin's goal. So PiS began to usage narratives taken from top MEGA influencers, specified as Rogan O’Handley (known online as DC Draino), Elon Musk, Laura Loomer, and Vice president J.D. Vance, who may distribute not straight pro-Russian but highly anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. The same thing, of course. But at first glance, it may seem to be logical and even pro-democratic reasoning.
Can you give me an example?
Recently, PiS MP Teresa Pamula stated that Zelenski was a dictator. Karol Nawrocki, saying that “sociaries defend only those who can defend themselves,” calls into question the meaning of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (he declares that any attack on 1 of the NATO members should be interpreted by the another associate States as an attack on them alone—cars). Grzegorz Puda, a erstwhile minister of agriculture and agrarian improvement and funds and regional policy, believes – contrary to what his idol, Lech Kaczyński said – that it would be a good thought to have a deal on Ukraine over our heads. In the end, Elizabeth Witek, 1 of the top politicians of the Law and the erstwhile talker of the Sejm, decided that it could not be that no elections were held in Ukraine. This is argued by the following: since Poland chose the president despite the pandemic, it should be the same in Ukraine – even despite the war. She said it immediately after very akin rhetoric was launched by the ideologists of the MAGA movement. In virtually a fewer days, politicians of the Law and Justice have made an anti-Ukrainian turn, motivated solely by their Trumpism.
I understand, but it's inactive evading logic. Trump approaches global relations as regards business transactions and does not gotta reward Poles' loyalty at all, while anti-Ukrainianism poses a real threat to Poland from Russia. How to realize this – as naivety, stupidity, cynicism?
We show in the book 4 levels of motivation of the TrumPoles: emotional, intellectual, political and geopolitical. Even the PiS itself is not a monolith. any of his activists – mostly those from the lower level – most likely naively believe that just came in line with everything they have been saying for years, cultural counter-revolution. There is besides a large group of politicians who dress with their feet to think that Trump will aid them return to power as he did by providing AfD support in Germany, or as Musk tried to – support Nigel Farage and UK improvement in the UK. Or how he late blocked the accounts of Turkish oppositionists to aid Erdoğan while he was again tightening the screw and arresting his main rival. There is besides a strong conviction within the organization that the EU will fall apart, but Poland will stay under the umbrella of the US, which will supposedly defend us from Russia. It is so possible to play freely on the dissolution of the community, becoming – in accordance with the popular concept of Intermortar Marek Chodakevich – under American protectorate. So erstwhile you ask me about the paradox of stupidity and makiawelism, I think that they do not exclude themselves, and are surely calculated for a short-sighted political gain. Those at the bottom of the organization hierarchy are mindless drones that fly where Novogrodek says, even to get to Novgorodka. There are no shortages of those who are able to trade much for political gain in Novgorod alone. So on a higher level cynicism wins, which does not regulation out stupidity lower and vice versa.
You separate respective groups of Poles who have been waiting for Trump's second term. It is not only Ordo Iuris, PiS and its entrees in the United Right, but besides the Warsaw Enterprise Institute, right-wing media with Luke Warzecha at the head, Rafał Woś as the sole typical of the propisist left, as well as the Confederate. Were there any changes in this line-up after the election?
After the inauguration of Trump, the Confederacy radicalized its pro-Trump message. In the book we wrote that the Confederates maintained abstinence, which was most likely the consequence of the presence of the anti-American wing of braunists, or Confederation of the Polish Crown. possibly they besides wanted to separate themselves from the PiS, who had been loyal to Trump for years – even more than the Republicans themselves who doubted him for a moment. Currently, after the release of Braun and the run fire – which gives any hope that this will end after the second circular of the election – we are watching the race for the title of the largest supporter of the current White home tenant. The Warsaw Enterprise Institute besides participates in this race.
WEI is simply a "conservative think tank, founded in 2014 as a substantive and analytical background of the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers (ZPP)". It is created by PiS-related people, and is chaired by writer Tomasz Wróblewski.
Wróblewski – as a associate of Trump's fandom and self-appointed expert on America – deserves attention here. He has been telling the same communicative in the media for a long time about the poor, sequestered Trump on all sides, whose establishment tried to throw in jail and kill. He considers winning the election as proof of his innocence. Although 1 can be a criminal and a president in one, with the CEO of WEI effectiveness is synonymous with moral right. Since “all Americans” chose Trump, that means that no Russian agent or man breaking the law is.
But it wasn't a crushing advantage.
One of the foundations of Trumpism is the belief that Trump has responded to the landslide triumph and that his choice is simply a sign of a tectonic change in the American people, the rejection by most Americans of vokeism, leftist, globalism, etc. However, it is adequate to enter the English Wikipedia dedicated to the American presidential election to see that Trump does not fit even in the top fifty. Building the communicative that there has been an historical breakthrough, and at the same time diminishing Biden, who won six million votes (against just over 2 million for Trump), is pure manipulation, undermining the thesis that, first of all, we are dealing with something irreparable that is not worth fighting, and second, with something good, just and legitimate throughout society.
Society loves the law of the stronger. Is that what attracts the Trump Trump Poles the most?
Yeah. 30 years of acute neoliberalism and social Darwinism in Poland promotes even specified reasoning, according to which we talk about war not in the context of dying people, but our profit and failure account, on the basis of: what do we get from it? Even though the war is inactive going on, the Russian army is not under Przemyśl. However, reasoning in terms of business relations is very strong and revealed already in the first days of the invasion, and in the full society now, erstwhile we talk about taking jobs from Poles and 800 plus by Ukrainians. This transactionality perfectly fits into Trump's "peaceful" rhetoric, which wonders whether the US pays to give arms to the Ukrainian army. This falls on very susceptible ground in Poland, which is slow giving up good-hearted volunteering for conventional complaints about publishing.
How do the politicians of the ruling coalition stand up for Trump and Trump itself? Nobody's rooting for the current U.S. administration?
Tusk's fresh speeches clearly show the KO's attitude towards the US situation. No 1 likes it, but it's what it is and you gotta adapt. This is classic, well-known pragmatism. Tusk is besides a cynical politician and he likes to abruptly change the front, like in the case of the Belarusian border or abortion, but I don't think a pro-Trumpian twist is made in the ruling coalition.
TrumPolakami doesn't head Donald Trump going to Moscow and having political-economic ties to the Russians since the 1980s?
Regardless of being or not being a recruited agent, Trump has been acting like an influence agent for years, in a way he has succumbed to Russia and its oligarchs. As early as 1987, after his return from Moscow, he issued political manifestos consistent with the propaganda line of the russian Union. In many Polish media there is simply a conspiracy of silence about this subject, there are attempts to relativize facts. We are dealing with a clique of media debate, where sometimes a capiscon is thrown in the form of unconfirmed information, that Trump was recruited, only to later grumble about those confirmed, specified as the Russian influence on the 2016 elections, which is full documented. From TrumPolaks, frequently invited to tv studios, specified as Tomasz Wróblewski, or to newspapers – as posing as the cursed by the media establishment Rafał Woś – we hear that everything bad and pro-Russian about Trump is simply a conspiracy. Journalists do not always counter akin statements.
You besides accuse them of not writing about the explanation of a uniform execution, although Trump implements it and thus leads America towards dictatorship. Why should we care about the U.S. system?
Let us start with task 2025, or instructions for Trump of Bible thickness. It is simply a plan to carry out a conservative moral revolution and plow the state's systemic fuses, as well as a strategy of massive staff exchange. The project's authors and Trump themselves mention the so-called. Unitary Executive Theory, reinterpreting the second article of the U.S. Constitution.
This 1 is that “the executive authority will belong to the president of the United States of America”. And according to Unitary Executive Theory?
That this evidence is equivalent to the impossibility of limiting the President's executive power. This is not a fresh view – it has always appeared on the margins of American public debate, but it has now entered the government agenda as part of successive decrees signed by Trump. Let us take the agenda F clause, which enables reclassification of tens of thousands of national officials, or civilian servants, into political denominations. The people liable for task 2025, specified as Kevin Roberts, Head of Heritage Foundation, or Russell Vought, have said in interviews respective times last year that the intent of this task is to "institutionalize Trumpism" and to guarantee that officials do not work for their agencies but for the President. This is the acquisition of the state and the creation of a systemic hybrid in the form of an "elective dictatorship", which has passed almost completely unnoticed by Polish media.
The Warsaw Enterprise Institute claims that they are “cuts in the public sector” to destruct bureaucracy, which Poland is unhappy – according to the think tank – the leader.
WEI is afraid with a country where all national agencies, and even those that are "independent of the President", will be accountable to task 2025 author Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget in the White House. So we have the President's decision to say that no 1 can restrict it. The Department of Education is being liquidated. We have calls to plow or burn another institutions. Next in line is the FBI. And even now, the judgments of the courts are ignored, while the ultimate Court provides impunity for Trump. Why am I talking about all this?
Yeah?
Project 2025 is an inspiration and proof given to the TrumPoles on a tray that they can introduce a full elective dictatorship as part of a legal triumph in elections. No 1 was hiding what was in that document. Nothing was introduced by trickery, everything was on the net for over a year. This is explained by the will of the nation and conquered by calls for counter-revolution, or even spiritual fundamentalism, as in the book published just after the election and bearing the introduction of J.D. Vance Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America by Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation. alternatively of looking for a second bottom, let us pay attention to what these people say. You just gotta listen.
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Adam Sokołowski – author of books TrumPolacy. Who in Poland is waiting for the second American revolution (2024) and Regime.Reports from Putinian Poland (2023). He runs a blog Reports from Putinian Polandco-hosts Disinformation Podcast.
