In fresh days, criticism of the Confederacy has increased. They fall mainly from supporters of Grzegorz Braun, but besides from another environments defined as alleged "antisystem". These expressions are usually highly emotional. However, if we were to extract any common thought from them, it would limit itself to the same size as the enigmatic statement: the Confederacy betrayed the idea.
What precisely is the idea? – it most likely depends on the seat point. There is no specified thing as 1 common thought of an antisystem, or even a conglomerate of ideas, even if they are loosely connected. It is alternatively a wide set of unconnected beliefs, assumptions and concepts. any rational and intellectually worked, others completely absurd. Their only common denominator is that they all do not fit into political mainstream. Most long adequate to make it a virtue.
The only real “idea” to guide the Confederacy on the day of its inception, the only binder combining its highly diverse and reluctant fragments was the request to break out of the political dumpster. Obtaining parliamentary and even better Euro-Men's mandates and state grants. It was an thought in all way right. There is nothing noble in poverty, nor anything sublime in the ordination of "moral victories," alternatively of real victories.
This thought of the Confederacy remained faithful. This faithfulness is demonstrated by a consistent march to the political center. This is not due to cynicism or betrayal (and in any case not exclusively), but to knowing the methodology of the electoral process in the parliamentary democracy system. Here always the centre electorate has a quantitative advantage over the electorate clearly ideologically. Another thing is that what the centre is and what the margin of the political scene is, has not been decided erstwhile and for all. With Overton's window moving, yesterday's populist can become mainstream policy tomorrow. This is precisely what we have been dealing with in the last 5 years in the United States, where after the painful electoral defeat Donald Trump skillfully generated themes leading to public debate, he first dominated his home organization and later triumphantly returned to the White House.
However, let us return to our Polish but besides European backyard. Ideical groups, expressive in the long term, accomplish electoral results inversely proportional to the programming distance from the centre of public discourse. So if you reject the charming dreams of an armed coup, the only way to gain power is to win the voters of the center. This is why today's National Assembly is not peculiarly like yesterday's National Front. Although this is most likely the most spectacular evolution, we can besides mention another examples. This is the way chosen by the Italian League or the German AFD, and late the Polish Confederation. The price for the chance to exit marginalisation and yet to exercise power, so besides the chance to implement part of its first programme, was to abandon any of the demands. And all time the parties decided to pay it.
Paradoxically, however, it is not that there is no area for ideological formations in this ruthless logic of liberal democracy. However, they can only function on their own as a tiny part of a broad political bloc. The Citizen Platform, which evolved into a Civic Dinner, surrounded by vassalist parties. Besides, the same decision is made by the Law and Justice, which occasionally requires the United Right. However, while the erstwhile tolerate a certain autonomy of smaller partners, the second simply absorb them.
It seemed that this mechanics was perfectly understood by Grzegorz Braun. A fewer months ago, guessed about his presidential plans, he said, “My start is like jumping into an empty pool on the head.” Despite this, he took this step, which clearly led to a dispute with the core of the Confederacy and accelerated its drift towards the centre. Confederates deprived of the perfect anchor of the “braunists” were usually subjected to the processes applicable to our political system. The action triggered a reaction. Furthermore, it is hard to defy the impression that Braun's own start has become a convenient pretext for any Confederate leaders to get free of the "anti-systemic ballast".
The question remains whether Grzegorz Braun entered the script written by Przemysław Wipler, or did he play his own script? The form of conducting an election run in the form of extremist happenings, clearly buying around the candidate only the contesting electorate, suggests the first of these scenarios. For in the context of parliamentary democracy, functionally, political groups defining themselves as anti-systemic are completely meaningless. You will purify at the adoption of an apriority assumption, with their goal being to adorn political power. In another cases, it may be completely rational. But this is simply a alternatively grim conclusion.
Przemysław Piasta
