President Institute of National Memory will be ran for presidential election – according to the declaration as a social candidate, and in fact as a typical of the erstwhile power camp in Poland. If Karol Nawrocki can be associated with anything, it is likely with the alleged “decommunisation”. For the past 8 years IPN was mainly active in the dismantling of monuments from the times of the Polish People's Republic and changing street names, so that there is nothing left to associate with the left.
It seems that anti-communism is treated as political fuel, something that can win elections. What precisely is “something” and how does it work? An interesting thing, considering that for more than 30 years they have been glowing to look for people in Poland who would identify with communism.
Communists, or anti-Poland
Exactly: there is no communism, there are no communists, and anti-communism is. It happens in the social world. For example Real Jews are not needed for anything. They'll have adequate fantasies that make and make their own business. The Jews of flesh and blood are being struck, no substance who they truly are or what they truly do.
Anti-communism is similar. The most crucial thing is the fantasies of anti-Communists about communism. They're worth a look.
In short, communism is simply anti-Poland. Communist means non-national. Since the strikes in August 1980, the Polish community has been formed as an anti-communist community and united against the communists.
When there was inactive a Polish People's Republic, it might have made sense, due to the fact that under the word "communists" the authorities of the time were understood. How much they had in common with any understood communism is another matter. After the turn of 1989, no 1 wanted to admit their association with the Polish People's Republic. The association with the “community” acted as a death sentence, coupled with the removal of public rights forever.
On the 1 hand, they were taken for tracking communists, pulling out files, and accusing, and on the other, a collective escape from left to right began. Over time, anti-communist notions of communism have increasingly lost their connection to reality, until the state of full decoupling. present North Korea lands in 1 bag with Charles Marx, Stalin with the European Union and General Berling with feminists.
All these elements have small in common, but in the fantasies of anti-communists they have something in common: Stalin, like the European Union, works against Poland, wants to destruct it, to take something distant from us. He's a threat and he needs to be defended.
Polish heroes must be those who argue communism. Opposition? I don't think so, besides much nuance and besides much PRL. The best soldiers were cursed, hard standing on the Polish side, or anti-communist side. There is no way: we request to decommunise that Poland is Polish. Even the Red Verses may be suspicious.
Two totalitarianisms
Communism is to be feared, so the images of anti-communists demonize it.
First of all, historical communism breaks out from the realities in which it existed, and thus deprives the right. My father told me that in 1930, in his hometown, homes were considered to be well suited, where bread lay on the table all day and a part could be taken. There weren't many. It's hard to imagine my grandmother's household in the 1920s. As a child, I could not realize that erstwhile she was a fewer years old, she was given to the alleged “service” to a richer host due to the fact that she lacked food.
1945 was a crucial change for people like her, and it was a change very close to the skin. In short, the elimination of utmost poverty, decent material surviving conditions, courses for illiterates, the anticipation of education or available medical care meant milestones towards democratisation and indeed were. Poland had nothing to do with democracy before 1939, despite elections and the existence of parliament. They were in a lost position, and they knew it.
In order to scare communism, it all should be cancelled. Fantasies about “two totalitarianisms” are large for this. Communism compared to fascism he is an opponent of democracy and freedom.
The importance of democracy itself narrows down. The social context that I mentioned above, exclusion, real opportunities for circumstantial social groups, their access to power and voice – all of this ceases to be crucial and disappears from sight. Incidentally, I met many people who remembered the end of the war, and for everyone, the discrimination between Hitler and the russian Army was, without exception, a fundamental difference, organizing their imagination of the world: the difference between business and liberation.
Eric Hobsbawm as a historian confirms the existence of this difference in the awareness of people surviving before, during and after planet War II. Fascism and communism were real opponents not as fighting totalitarianism, but as highly different social projects, 1 of which was egalitarian and the another not. There were different rates and values behind them.
If this happens that social realities become the subject of conversation, anti-communism – the 1 that is valid in Poland present – does not let them to be connected to the communist movement, the historical one, actually existing. This besides applies to the left side of the Polish political scene. People's past of Poland does not mention communists as people who have opposed social inequality since the end of the 19th century, nor the political movement in which the excluded people were organized. Similarly, feminism has a real allergy to initiatives – including bottom-up ones – the emancipation of women in People's Poland.
Without a context where the rations and values behind communism become clear and visible, it turns to guilt. It can be said that it is simply a “success”, “crazy” or another “hedge bite”. It must be explained as if it were a devotion to the soul of the devil, not a reaction to the unjust world. A reaction that was understandable, otherwise natural, and before 1945 very risky and challenging.
The 3rd Republic brought a real epidemic of apology for communism, mainly the 1 from the fantasies of anti-communists. Grandparents apologized for their grandparents, children for their parents, and it happened that the curious people themselves were cayating and reticing from the past. Home disgrace Jack the Holy Ones to this day unfailing triumphs.
We're all Poles, but...
...but no communists. The demonization of communism makes it "not ours" in Poland today. Communists are strangers, non-Poles. They come from the USSR, they always come from outside, and they're bad for us.
This is evidently not actual – it is not actual for people who, after the war, utilized opportunities that opened up to them, and it is not actual for political activists specified as Róża Luxemburg, Karol Świerczewski or Stefan Żółkiewski. Communists are part of Polish past together, with the fact that national recognition was usually not the most crucial to them.
And yet, if anti-communism is to make a Polish community, exclusion of communists is crucial. This is where we come to the most crucial point that makes it possible to realize Nawrock's candidacy for president.
The nation is, as we know, an imagined community. Unity built on anti-communism is unity around the undisputed Polish identity. Nobody truly knows what she is. It happens once, once, depending on the needs. The point is she's indisputable. Anyone who wants to start talking about her and tampering with her ends up as a communist.
The advantage of this kind of empty imagination is that everyone puts something into it that bites him: desires, fears, attachment. He does not request to realize or formulate them. The little he realizes and the little he formulates, the better, due to the fact that the unification mechanics works more efficiently.
One thing remains unchanged. This something constitutional and most crucial is at risk. unusual communists want to change us, they want things to be different, not like they've always been. They are against customized and common sense. They make you live in a fresh way, eat worms alternatively of pork, destruct your family, female will no longer be a woman, and peasant. They'll take what we know and what we're utilized to. Matches: Brussels, feminists, Joseph Stalin – everyone does the same.
This is evidently not actual again, due to the fact that there is no escape from change. To find out, just go to the clinic with the baby. 30 to 50 percent of daddies, sometimes even more. I bet they don't all vote left, yet they're different from their fathers, let alone their grandparents.
The imaginary Polish identity is the most crucial and undisputed, not only does not exist, it is the plan of change itself. Conservative, but still. Defending household and Polishness is nothing but restoring something that has never been like this. make your own political agenda. Our grandma in front of the children is rather different than our daughter in front of the children, even though the planet has changed and the context of being with the children for both ladies is fundamentally different.
Anti-communism prevents besides much insight into detail. The desire to make changes usually arises from any conflict that would be good to resolve. Meanwhile, in anti-communist fantasies, the nation is happy, united and satisfied with 1 another. Nobody is arguing with anyone about anything, due to the fact that everyone has the good of Poland in mind. Entrepreneurs and employees agree to attach white-red cotillions and grin together. Only the communists effort to divide them and ruin everything.
When conflict does not get to the surface, 1 can become a Pole. As long as you quit emancipation. Those who don't like it get a Communist patch. The operation of this mechanics was well described by Anna Zawadzka in the book Jewish Komuna as a Model of Polish Culture: You may be 1 of us, but you must admit our power and keep quiet. Zawadzka wrote about Jews in the United States and Poland, but the anti-communist mechanics seems to work for the rest. Remember? homo sovieticus The '90s? Those who lost in the transformation and tried to fight for their rights became children of the PRL. Today's renunciation of levitation is mostly about treating women and minorities in the same way.
Who is and who is not a communist, that is, who is and who is not a Pole, is determined by who holds the anti-communist story in his hand. Karol Nawrocki is very eager to do so and has gained considerable experience. Investigating your rights then turns into seeking the interests of power. This can besides be achieved, but in return for the designation of undisputed Polishness and the fact that it is only power that represents it. There are many things that cannot be moved, but I feel that they substance primarily as symbols. After all, a place for enemies cannot be empty.
The conclusion is that there is no request to bid on anti-communism and play for voters in this field. “I am not Moscow's cone, you are Moscow's cone!” Or from earlier times: “We are not pink hyenas, we are Poles!” This is not going to get us far, due to the fact that the unity of societies is not about the deficiency of conflict and the excommunication of strangers. At least not in democracy.
Rather, it is essential to effectively negociate conflicts from which there is no escape. The imagined community then rests in a real community. all turn of the anti-communist mill reduces the anticipation of seeing and negotiating conflicts and distances us from democracy. It's worth realizing.
Maybe it's time to unenchant communism? The French had their revolutions and someway they live. Poles can, too.
