Warsaw Mayor’s Campus “Poland of the Future” was yet another manifestation of foreign interference in Polish elections
The financial support given to Campus “Poland of the Future” by the German CDU and American foundations geared toward spreading the neo-Marxist woke revolution around the world is yet another example of US and German interference in elections in other countries, and more specifically in Central European countries that are governed by conservatives.
Olivier Bault
Campus Poland of the Future (Campus Polska Przyszłości) is a political event that has been organized over the past three years by Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is also one of the most important politicians in Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO). Apart from being the mayor of the country’s capital, he was the PO’s presidential candidate in the 2020 presidential elections.
Trzaskowski’s Campus Poland of the Future “is sponsored by a foundation of the German CDU party, which is fed with money from the German budget,” noted then-Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski in an interview with Polish Radio 24 in late August.
This was during the third edition of Trzaskowski’s political event.
“We do not know how much money PO people have received,” the minister from the Law and Justice (PiS) party continued. “In fact, we don’t even know who has received it. In such cases, these are usually grant agreements, i.e. bilateral commitments. Someone is paying and making demands. What did the organizers of Campus Poland of the Future commit to in order to receive the CDU Foundation’s patronage? The public deserves to know this. It is about transparency in public life.”
Asked about the ban on political campaigning that was allegedly in effect during this year’s edition of the multi-day event, where many opposition politicians always appear, Trzaskowski explained that it was introduced because an election campaign was underway and that “this is a festival that is primarily social.”
This declaration, however, stood in contrast to numerous statements that were heard during the Campus discussion panels, such as an appeal by Senate Speaker Tomasz Grodzki (PO), who urged attendees to vote for the candidate of the Senate Pact, i.e. the left-liberal opposition coalition, “even if I think that my candidate would perhaps be a little better in my estimation.”
It also stood in contrast with another statement by Sławomir Sierakowski, a sociologist and the editor-in-chief of the far-Left online magazine Krytyka Polityczna, who defended Donald Tusk’s “populist” announcements concerning the 800+ child allowance and the need to regain control of Poland’s borders. Sierakowski said: “The choice is simple: we can have really hardcore populists, or we can say these things ourselves. Some of it will probably have to be implemented, but at least we will save liberal democracy.”
“This is Poland and not elegant France. Here you have to win against the Red Army, which stands on the other side, and not against elegant, sophisticated intellectuals,” Sierakowski further argued.
A safe space for the liberals and the left
The participants won’t hear voices from the other side – in other words, from the right-wing conservative camp – at Rafał Trzaskowski’s Campus Poland of the Future, which was held this year from August 25 to 31. And it is not only that people with views that differ from those of liberals and the Left do not want to participate. The truth is that the organizers simply do not want them.
This year, the campus was at least supposed to include a panel of “Symmetrists” moderated by the journalist Marcin Meller. Symmetrists, in Polish political language, are those who refuse to stand on either side of the political divide and can praise and criticize both sides.
“I got a call from the Campus organizers asking if I could moderate the panel without Gregorz Sroczyński. I replied that it was not possible. So I heard that the invitation was being withdrawn,” Meller announced on social media a week before this year’s edition.
Due to the withdrawal of the organizers’ permission to have a dissenting speaker on the panel, Meller simply canceled his participation, and even the one Symmetrists’ panel did not end up happening.
“In recent days, we have received many signals from Campus participants and guests expressing their dissatisfaction and discomfort with the public statements of one of our previously invited panelists. Compelled by a sense of responsibility, we felt that a reaction and an attempt to talk about the composition of this specific panel was necessary on our part,” the Campus Poland Foundation (Fundacja Campus Polska), which is the organizer of Campus Poland of the Future, wrote in a special press release, admitting to creating a so-called “safe space” for the left-liberal opposition with their words about the discomfort felt.
As a result, one organization, East (Wschód), resigned from participating in this year’s edition, allegedly “without political campaigning,” explaining that “Campus Poland of the Future was supposed to be a place for meaningful discussions by people with different perspectives. After the news about the removal of a panel of four critical journalists, we decided that East would not participate in the event. We will not be a tool for a party’s struggle for power.”
For this same reason, several other people opted out of coming to Trzaskowski’ Campus during an election year.
“You want to have an impact on the future of your country? There are more people like you! Let’s meet in Olsztyn to discuss the opportunities and threats facing Poland in a friendly, relaxed, and open atmosphere,” the event’s organizers urged on their website. “Let’s exchange insights into the economy, think about how to take care of the environment, discuss how to put Poland back on the road to democracy and the rule of law, and how to effectively help our friends in Ukraine. You’ll meet people who want to act and who care about change – activists and community actors, experts and local government officials, columnists and artists.”
The passage underlined and put in bold by the author of this article clearly indicates this event’s political affiliation: these are the people who, until the October 15 elections in which PiS lost power, were on the side of the so-called “total opposition”, that is, the opposition that, since losing power in 2015, had persistently claimed that with the victory of the United Right (the conservative coalition led by PiS), Poland had ceased to be a democratic and law-abiding country.
This is how what was then the Polish “total opposition” justified their strategy of waging a fight through street protests (which ended in failure) and convincing Brussels to withhold funds for Poland (which in turn succeeded).
The previous edition of the event in August 2022 was attended by many politicians associated with the PO or allied parties from Poland and abroad.
Donald Tusk’s key campaign promises made at Campus “Poland of the Future”
The Dutch socialist MEP Guy Verhofstadt, known for his ruthless verbal attacks on the Polish Right, spoke of the need for stronger German leadership in the European Union. Other speakers included the LGBT activist Bart Staszewski, a photographer of signs he himself had erected about “LGBT-free zones,” on the basis of which Verhofstatdt himself spread fake news about Polish towns that were allegedly off-limits to people of a different sexuality; far-left feminist Magdalena Środa; PO MEP Róża Thun, who is known for her calls to financially punish Poland that have been delivered in the European Parliament, and so on.
A year earlier, in August 2021, Donald Tusk himself, as one of the PO speakers who was invited, promised the other participants on the stage of one of the panels that he would remove the governing PiS-led United Right coalition from power, putting it in these words:
“I know how to drive out all those who make Polish politics such an unbearable hell for all of us. You know, it will take two, or at most three years. I am convinced of this, but I am also here not to take anyone’s place, but to make these places free for you.”
And he also made his intention of acting in violation of the Polish Constitution clear, namely by telling people about his intention to violate the general principle that is in force in all European democracies regarding judicial independence. Indeed, speaking of those judges who were appointed under the United Right’s reformed National Judicial Council (KRS), Tusk said bluntly: “If someone has been appointed as a judge by the illegally elected KRS, he or she probably holds very radical views. After the government in Poland changes, these judges will cease to be judges.”
It was also at Campus Poland of the Future in 2022 that Donald Tusk announced that those opposing legal abortion would not be on the PO’s electoral lists for the 2023 parliamentary elections.
In addition to the German CDU foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Konrad Adenauer Foundation), the website belonging to the organizer of Campus Poland of the Future, lists Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) as well as another foundation belonging to the pro-abortion American Left, Bloomberg Philanthropies, as partners, among others. The German Konrad Audenauer Foundation itself invited visitors to its website to the first edition of Rafał Trzaskowski’s Campus Poland of the Future in 2021, and advertised its own participation in this “international youth camp” of the Polish Civic Platform.
There is of course nothing wrong with a leading politician of what was then Poland’s largest opposition party holding such an annual event. Poland is a free and democratic country, and each political party has the right to argue its case in different ways. The fact that PiS does not organize such political events aimed at young people is its own responsibility.
During its eight years in power, it had all the instruments it needed to organize such events. This is what Fidesz does in Hungary, for example. And contrary to what Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski does, Fidesz and other Fidesz or government-related organizations usually invite some panelists – politicians, journalists, and intellectuals – who hold alternative (Leftist) views. The fact that the Law and Justice party did not organize such things is probably due to the failure of the party’s leadership to understand the culture war that is going on, including in Poland.
Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita in the service of chaos after Soros takeover
But the real issue here is in interference by foreign entities in Polish elections, as Campus Poland of the Future was also a political campaign tool of the left-liberal opposition, and it will now most likely turn into a campaign tool of the left-liberal governing coalition.
The financial support given by the German CDU and American foundations geared toward spreading the neo-Marxist woke revolution around the world is yet another example of US and German interference in elections in other countries, and more specifically in Central European countries that are governed by conservatives.
What would the German political-media class say if, for example, the Polish Law and Justice party had supported a similar event using Polish public funds that was organized in Germany by a leading AfD politician, and during an ongoing election campaign as well?
It would be unthinkable, right?
