Alan Fimister

Poles apart: The EU will never understand Poland

(Photo by JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Poland was the largest state in Europe for over two centuries. It was a multi-ethnic commonwealth, a refuge for Jews, a bulwark of the counter-reformation with religious liberty and an elected monarchy. Jan III Sobieski, King of the Republic of Poland, reversed the millennium-long expansion of Islam at the gates of Vienna in 1683. If Rome was the heart of the faith, Poland was Christendom’s spear. In the 20th century, Józef Piłsudski prevented the Bolsheviks from exporting the Russian Revolution to the West. And John Paul II drove a stake through the heart of the USSR. The Poles do not believe that they need any lessons about freedom or sacrifice from the European Union.

Yet the EU is pursuing Poland for its alleged attack on democracy. Brussels, founded as an economic union, has now become a ‘community of values’ — these are not the values cherished by the Polish government in what is still a Catholic country. For the last six years, Poland has been ruled by Law and Justice. Since its foundation in 2001, the party has shifted from a centrist Christian Democrat position to a more nationalist and socially conservative one.

Although Poland’s constitution bans ‘Nazism, fascism and communism’ from its politics, collaborators with the former communist regime were not, as in the neighbouring Czech Republic, excluded from public office. The idea that Marxists still hold key positions in the establishment has long gnawed at most conservative Poles. Many see elements of Marxism in the new LGBT ideology and in the EU, one of its principal instruments of power in the Old World. Supporters of the government suspect that the old Marxists have propagated themselves in the courts and that a purge is necessary. Structures were created to enact this purge, which the EU found unacceptable.

The Poles do not believe that they need any lessons about freedom or sacrifice from the European Union

But Poland’s government has blinked, at least for now.

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