This text was co-authored by Anja Rubik, model and editor, Antoni Komasa-Lazarkiewicz, film music composer and producer, and Natalia Brzezinski.
We are three new generation innovators, proud to be Polish.
We’re also global citizens belonging to a larger creative community that values independence, raising your voice for change and challenging convention- all things that symbolized what it meant to be “Polish” when the three of us were coming of age in the 1980s in both Poland and the United States.
We come together now to write about the current situation in Poland since we fear for the future of the place our ancestors called home. Political authorities in Poland, the Law and Justice Party, are threatening the values we were raised with.
It’s time for Poles once again to stand up for their beliefs, for equality and for the future, and not be mired in fear and the past.
We find ourselves in a dystopian novel. We feel as if we’ve woken up in a parallel universe, in which the sequence of events starting from the democratic revolution of 1989 until the present has been distorted. Polish state television depicts the West as evil, degenerate and corrupt. They argue that Lech Wałęsa, the legendary leader of Solidarity, was in fact a soviet spy. The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs congratulates the Turkish government on the anniversary of the failed coup.
The Muslim war refugees from Syria are vilified so badly that the country descends into a state of collective hysteria, with mounting racial violence against those few poor people who happen to have a darker skin tone— a music conductor from Latin America, a Kebab stand owner in a small town, a Syrian Christian, who has lived in Poland for 20 years. Poland, a country devastated by the most bloody racist war in history, and a nation of refugees, is turning racist and xenophobic.
Is this a nightmare? Can somebody pinch us?
The founders of the new Polish republic had created a wise Constitution for Poles, with safeguards, checks and balances in place. Poland was incredibly fortunate to be led for a brief but crucial moment in history by people of great wisdom and authority. Coming from all walks of life, they were able to craft a balanced and efficient distribution of power with new principles and values for post-communist Poland, including the separation of church and state as well as numerous human right norms.
This was a remarkable feat for a country that had not experienced democratic rule for six generations. The system survived intact for almost 20 years, tested in times of crisis and turmoil. Poland remained stable and sound, and became a poster child for the over-simplified narrative of the regional success story. This was our role to play, and we played it well, ignoring for a very long time the social problems simmering underneath the surface. We ignored it to our own peril.
The liberal conservative government, which led us through the better part of Poland’s first EU decade, was eager to create a new myth of Poland. They melted elements of national martyrdom, a feel-good story of liberation from Soviet oppression, an amalgamation of Catholicism and capitalism, and propagating this narrative through cultural and media establishments.
The result was twofold and eventually led to an eruption of hatred, xenophobia and nationalism.
Firstly, this vision stressed over and over again the fate of Poland as a victim of foreign aggression, never an aggressor herself. Everyone who understands the historical implications of Poland’s role in the relationship with her neighbors and minorities knows that this is a complete historical falsification.
Second, a numbness. Dull and dissolved in a language of political correctness, many young people in Poland received a very comfortable identity matrix to project their frustration, but did not receive the excitement and activism needed to express it. This was an unsustainable way to live.
The right-wing opposition found an opportunity in this vacuum. Despite being part of the ruling establishment for twenty-five years, they were able to paint themselves as the anti-establishment party. They manipulated a feeling of a need for vindication to all those whose frustrated ambitions were woken by Poland’s economic success. They took the myth created by their predecessors and infused it with a promise of revolution, uninhibited violence, and a complete takeover of the state. The excitement they created was great enough to activate new sections of the otherwise politically passive society and achieve unprecedented electoral success. The radical social-conservative PiS party won the election in a landslide.
In 2017, we wake up in a nightmare where the bulldozer of nationalist revolution drives over everything creative Poles built.
The success of the Polish cinema, crowned by the Oscar for “Ida”, is now being demolished by our Prime Minister who thinks the film is anti-Polish, and condemns the verdict of the Academy.
The unique international fame and heritage of Polish theatre is irreversibly destroyed within a couple of months since the leading theatre companies have been illegally taken over by the current government. Our national pride, the only truly wild forest in mainland Europe, part of the UNESCO heritage, Białowieża, is vanishing due to the lodging of the forest for commercial purposes, granted by the Minister of the Environment under the pretext of fighting against woodworm.
All ecologists protesting are accused of being secret agents of foreign powers.
The European Union’s concerns over the dismantling of our Constitutional Court is being translated into a narrative of corrupt, unelected Brussels elites trying to defend their friends in Warsaw against the justice of the people.
Then there is the appalling attack on women’s rights.
Polish women are strong and outspoken, we have been raised to fight for our voice and place in the world. Today in Poland, our dignity and strength us under attack.
There have been attempts to make abortion illegal under all circumstances including rape. The government made it obligatory to obtain a prescription for the morning-after pill, despite the average queue to a gynecologist lasting three months. The Ministry of Education overturned the school reform which brought Poland into the worldwide educational elite, with PISA results second only to Finland.
Like any bully, the current Polish government has attacked the softer edges of the cultural and conservative left before undermining basic human rights as they seek total control on their path to dictatorship.
This has been the news coming from Warsaw in recent months. Our sense of decency and reality has been violently raped, over and over again. The reality of our homeland as we used to know, is gone. A completely new reality is emerging.
It’s a reality in which the nationalist government, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, set the rules, without any significant opposition. Finally two weeks ago, the governing party decided to take full control over the judiciary branch.
The governing party led the proceedings of the new judiciary law in a manner that insulted and broke every possible standard of democracy. They blatantly ignored all the voices of international organizations and NGO’s. They trampled every right of the parliamentary opposition, pushing the unconstitutional regulations, which completely change Poland’s division of power. This was all done under the cover of the night, pushed through two chambers of the parliament within four days. They resorted to verbal and physical violence against their opponents, formulating open threats and insults. They used the power of state-controlled media to unleash a campaign of lies and manipulations, comparable only to the likes of Stalin-era Pravda newspaper.
At this point the masses had had enough.
Historically the powerless and suppressed societies had no means to unite and resist. In 2017 technology has empowered us in unprecedented ways. Not just the alienated elites, but average citizens started organizing Facebook groups, and taking to the streets in unprecedented numbers, expressing their anger, despair, pain and their longing for truth and decency.
Their marches are peaceful, full of self-deprecating and ironic humor, restrained but also at times very solemn. The politicians are guests at their rallies, but never the hosts. They hold candlelight vigils and listen to Chopin in front of the building of the Supreme Court in Warsaw, as well as in hundreds of cities and towns throughout the country.
Adversity creates positive change. The upsides are the emerging new, young leaders not related to Poland’s former communist establishment. They respect the cultural elites and see them as natural allies, but they also exercise a high level of autonomy. They know how to use modern means of communication and are redefining modern leadership. Within a couple of days they have been able to make demonstrating sexy again.
Does this mean that we will win this battle? We don’t know. All we know is that we’ve already achieved a great spiritual victory by overcoming our own social complexes and divisions, and by coming together as the next generation of Poles, and Polish-American, to raise our voice for justice.
We have formed a new sense of community, something that we had failed to do in the crucial years right after the fall of communism. We can only hope that we will not share the fate of the people of Turkey, for whom this revelation came a little too late.
As we write this paradigms are shifting. At a time of Brexit, Russian pressure and threats form the East, the last thing that Europe needs is a collapsing democracy in Poland.
In a country, in which sanity is officially deemed insane and where legality has become a crime, every signal from the outside, reaffirming our values, has immediate healing power. This is why we hope for more signs of support from the family of democratic nations. In the long term, we are absolutely confident about our future. We have very little choice.