Poles apart | 19 May 2016

Bono has a new opponent: Liroy, a tattooed Polish rapper whose hits include ‘Jak Tu Sie Nie Wkurwic’ (‘How can I not get pissed off?’). He was outraged when the U2 singer recently claimed that Poland is succumbing to ‘hyper-nationalism’. In an open letter Liroy wrote: ‘Your knowledge on this subject must be based on a rather questionable source and is far from the truth. Both as a musician and a Polish MP I would like to invite you to Warsaw to discuss the subject… and see for yourself the current vibe of Poland.’

It’s obvious where Bono got the idea. Everyone in western Europe seems convinced that Polish democracy is on the verge of extinction at the hands of a right-wing nationalist party that seized power last October. There’s a widespread belief that the ‘anti-liberal’ and ‘anti-democratic’ Law and Justice party (PiS) is trampling on the constitutional court, intelligence services and public media.

For Poles like Liroy, however, this is a partisan narrative, accepted uncritically by foreigners. The ‘Poland lies in ruins’ line, they say, is a crafty piece of spin by the ousted party, Civic Platform. Critics insist that Platforma, as it’s known, disgraced itself in government. Its eight-year reign was corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and slavishly pro-European. Now, they say, the party is seeking to undermine its successor with the help of Brussels.

That is a partisan narrative, too, of course — one eagerly promoted by PiS supporters. An atmosphere of disinformation and propaganda makes it difficult to determine the truth. Poland is the land of spiskologia, conspiracy theory and counter-conspiracy theory, where nothing is what it seems.