The actors of Lukashenko. Who in Poland is playing in the Belarusian theater?
The fact that the epicenter of Lukashenko’s attack shifted from the Baltic countries to Poland is without a doubt the effect of Lukashenko’s propaganda, eagerly picked up by the Polish opposition and its media.
Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz
Once again, when the support for the Law and Justice party suddenly falls, Lukashenko’s secret service is organizing provocations at the border. A natural reaction for any Pole is the expression of solidarity with the Polish soldiers protecting the border […], thus Lukashenko’s provocations are strengthening the government. Why is Lukashenko strengthening the government of the Law and Justice party? Because they’re in bed together” – this grotesque comment of Roman Giertych on the organized mob of migrants at the Polish border is perhaps the best example of intellectual and political degeneracy, which the liberal-left opposition has given into, and the case of the eastern border shows this particularly vividly.
The opposition does not succumb into conspiracy theories, which not so long ago eagerly attributed, as manifestation of obscurantism and ignorance, to political opponents, by accident – it is a desperate search for a way out of a dead-end road, into which the formation of Giertych eagerly entered and into which it has gone quite far. Desperate, because the sensation about Lukashenko’s alleged “alliance” has nothing to do with the greatest problem of the liberal left: an unambiguous, even hysterical acceptance of the “refugees welcome” narrative – i.e. an attitude that is completely contrary to this “natural reaction of every Pole”.
The rupturing of Poland
The matter is difficult to express in the categories of rational politics. The behavior of the opposition has resulted in real damages – the fact that the epicenter of Lukashenko’s attack shifted from the Baltic countries to Poland is without a doubt the effect of Lukashenko’s propaganda, eagerly picked up by the Polish opposition and its media. Contrary to Lithuania and Latvia Poland, hit by the immigrant hammer, did not exhibit cohesion, on the contrary – a deep rupture. Politicians of the liberal left, celebrities, artistic and academic elites turned out to be filled with such hatred towards the Law and Justice party (rather towards that which in their eyes the Law and Justice party stands for, i.e. Polish patriotism, religiousness, and tradition), that they volunteered to take part in the “Sluice” operation as the “fifth column” of the Belarusian despot.
But this may no longer be surprising – we have become used to the fact that the opposition stands for “the worse, the better” principle, assuming that the hated Law and Justice party can be removed from power only when Poles feel that their standard of loving has significantly worsened. What is astounding is that the opposition has done significantly more damage to itsself then to the ruling party.
From the very first moment, the narrative of the TVN24 network and other media serving the emotions of the left-liberal “bubble” and simultaneously creating them, aligned with Lukashenko’s and Putin’s propaganda. Those storming the border are “refugees” (even today the media of the opposition are stubbornly adding “from Afghanistan”, even though it has been established long ago that that is false), which Poland is obliged to let in and take care of. Regardless of the legal gibberish of such lawyers as Dubois, Pietrzak, and even Giertych himself, the more significant aspect than the one concerning the illegal presence of Middle Eastern citizens with Belarusian residence visas on Polish territory is the “moral” obligation. By refusing to grant asylum to refugees asking for it, the Polish government and Poles “are failing the humanity test” and ought to receive the highest form of contempt, while border guards and soldiers who carry out “inhumane” orders become murderers of women and children, just like Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen.
Moral chaos
Until the moment when the onrush of migrants was limited to the Lithuanian and Latvian border, the liberal-left media presented the matter in a calm tone and from a material perspective, expressing sympathy for the Balts in the face of the attack by the regime of Lukashenko. As soon as the alleged refugees appeared in the Polish village of Usnarz, moral chaos ensued. Repeating the stories of “emotional blackmail”, streaming from the propaganda mills of Minsk and Moscow, concerning separated families, freezing children, mothers giving birth in the fields, the ruthlessness of the border guards pushing them out of Poland, quickly transformed the liberal-left into a state of hysteria. “Artists” have flooded the media with images containing “refugees” presented as the Virgin Mary and the Holy Family, and the cross and Polish border as barbed wire, “intellectuals” have filled the media with pseudo noble appeals, in which – also following the same style as Lukashenko’s media – the alleged crimes committed by Poles on the “refugees” were presented alongside the never ending insinuations against Poles concerning the “killing of Jews” during the last war. “When I look at what we are doing at the border, I am beginning to understand how the Holocaust could have happened” – said one celebrity to another on their social media profiles. The state of extreme fury caused by a celebrity, known for mobile network commercials and TV shows, who spewed plenty of vulgar words with lots of exclamation marks, shows the extent to which the anti-government circles managed to wind themselves up in hatred towards Poland.
These emotions were not only expressed in a grotesque manner, such as the vulgarity of celebrities, burning grave candles for “murdered refugees” in front of the offices of the Law and Justice party or a parody Nike award gala with “Where are the children?” or “Refugees Welcome” slogans, and a wave of applause to the roars of the writer nominated for the piece about “this fascist sh– we are stuck in”. These actions also took overtly criminal forms, such as attempts – which were luckily thwarted – to massively disclose the personal data of soldiers and officers, as well as calls threatening to “murderer” them, or attempts to demonstratively destroy border fortifications.
In all this, the voice of the opposition’s formal leader, Donal dTusk, completely disappeared, who attempted – in an erratic manner at that – to adopt a position parallel to that of Berlin and Brussels, this time firmly different than Angela Merkel’s “herzlich willkommen” from five years ago. Ignored by the liberal-left media and salons, opted for his typical tactic of running away, in order to disassociate himself from the problem, tried to divert attention away from the border to Polexit, and subsequently to the tragedy of the victim of an error of the doctors in Pszczyna, finally adopted a message similar to the one of Giertych, quoted at the beginning, and accused the Law and Justice Party of benefiting from the whole situation, increasing his popularity.
This is of course a fact, but it does not result from anything else other than the hysteria of anti-government groups described above, which goes precisely against the expectations and sentiments of the public.
A separate matter, which was already explained in our texts enough to deal with it once again, is the falsehood of all the premises and slogans of this hysteria – the alleged “refugees” are not refugees, migrants are not transported to the forest, they are only hiding there, to avoid detainment by Poles, as this closes the path to German welfare, they are not women and children, used only cynically as human shields, but the overwhelming majority are men of recruiting age, and the entire operation is carefully planned and controlled by a mob specializing in the illegal smuggling of people, etc.
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The full version of this article was published in November 2021 in “Do Rzeczy” magazine.