What I've observed, Poland's racism has been excoriated, and rightly so. However, no one's yet counterbalanced this with many of the positive aspects of living in Poland?
First of all, xenophobia is hardly something unique to the country:-)
Furthermore, taxes in Poland are lower than in many Western European countries, Polish produce aka apples, are considered among the best tasting anywhere, and Poland is still a mecca for any one of several industries, including high tech etc..
These remarks are merely intended to counterbalance this thread which has up to now focused on racism.
I should have said they often act as if they were above criticism and readily bring out the anti-Semitic card to intimidate their critics. Someone who criticises Israel's policy towards Palestinians can also be called an anti-Semite by Jews.
Leftist/Hollywood reaction to Israel/Palestine/Gaza affairs is one of those laughable moments in American politics. They [mass media] want to bash the "violent oppressor" but they are fellow Jews. SYSTEM ERROR CRASH
As far as Poland is concerned, again, although I've not been back for many years (having only visited once, and all too briefly!), Poles are scarcely the most extreme of xenophobes!
Finkelstein is more than a black sheep; he's a vicious, self-hating Jew! His representation of a so-called "Holocaust cottage industry" is more revolting than can be imagined from one of our own. From David Irving, I would merely roll my eyes aka "There he goes again...", but from Finkelstein??
Anyway, Poland has her good and bad sides, just as with other countries:-)
Actually Poles can be best described by a term rarely encountered anywhere else: xenophile (foriegn lover). In Mickiewicz's classic national poem "Pan Tadeusz" there is a line that goes: Co Francuz wymyśli, Polak polubi. It could be updated with: Co Jankes wymyśli, Polak polubi.
That is part of the Polish inferiorty complex -- if it's foreign, it must be good. That xenophilia applies mainly to well-liked, developed nations such as those of N. America and Western Europe. The xenophilia usually does not extend to Arabs, gipsies, Turks, Russians, Africans and other Third World folk.
You guys are both correct. IMO the college educated love all things West. The lower class is xenophobe. You have some mixing ie lower class that engages in hip hop OR humanitarian types who are against Western warmongering. Both are unhealthy extremes.
If I were an author aka self-styled "historian" and contended (IN PRINT NO LESS!!) that African-Americans benefited from slavery etc.. or similar poppycock, would anyone, even you, honestly claim that I was "speaking my mind"????! Or would I be understandably roundly shouted down and taken to task for such irresponsible slander?
Finkelstein shows that either he has no mind, or, he's merely one of numerous provocateurs, seeking approbation simply for creating nothing more than pure shock value, end of statement.
You may think me wrong, which is fine on an open forum such as this, as I am open to show you where you're mixed up. That's fair, isn't it?
African Negroes did not benefit directly from slavey, when their fellow-Blacks via Arab traders shipped and sold them to America's WASP slave-owners. They benefited indirectly by landing in America. Since emancipation in the 2nd half of the 19th century and especially now they are far better off than their compatriots back in Africa.
WHY is it so tuff for you two to stay on thread after being reminded constantly ? :-/
Poles are scarcely the most extreme of xenophobes!
Have to agree with you on that one Lyzko. IMO I would have to say the Brits are the most xenophobes of all of Europe. And they have only got more hateful since the Brexit. Unfortunately that before the Brexit referendum there was less xenophobia and racism. Now, you are seeing an increase in such incidents of vocal and physical abuse of Poles in the U.K. Especially from the British youth. That incident where six British punks killed a Pole simply because he was speaking Polish is a prime example. True justice would be for all of those punks to be ordered to serve their sentences in a Polish prison.
> Lo and behond: Western Europe is following in our footsteps
Angela Merkel's CDU beaten by anti-migrant AfD party in German state election 'Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of Angela Merkel's chancellorship today,' says Local AfD leader Leif-Erik Holm
Yes, decent people have to make sure that the racists stay out of political office. Fortunately these false starts serve as a wake-up call for electoral moderation and liberal ethics in the public domain.
I suspect Merkel (rather right-wing herself but at least she did the right thing in the refugee crisis) will be around on the political scene for a long time to come.
Unfortunately as they are juveniles they're not likely to serve much of a sentence at all. Many years ago there was a terrible case of two young boys aged ten and eleven if I remember correctly who lured a toddler away from a shopping centre, tortured and murdered him. They were detained until the age of eighteen and then went free with new identities. One of them was back in prison recently on child pornography charges. What can one say Johnny.....
I'm not surprised either, nothanks! The way she's been handling the migrant crisis, I'm even surprised she didn't receive a vote of no confidence much earlier:-)
We may be looking ahead come the '17 elections to a Chancellor Petry (....or far worse).
Poland too seems ensconced in her own problems, being so geographically close to Germany, no?
See the consequences of the "Political Correctness" bull s. If people go to a foreign country to live then be prepared to acclimate. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. If not then be prepared to face racism from the host country. Poland has suffered and been abused enough as a country so they have learned to stick together to survive. Outsiders become a threat when they refuse to acclimate and try to change the culture of the host country into theirs. That is why Poland is admired so much for keeping the "Undesirables" and "Political Correctness" out. Keep Poland Polish White !
Easier said than done, Johnny! We all have such simple blueprints for what SHOULD be, yet, when you come right down to it, they're often not able to be implemented.
I never met that poor bloke who was murdered in London for being Polish, though somehow if the average Brit, the kind who killed this guy, had to pull up stakes and move, say, to Poland, or some other completely different country, learning a strange new language, customs, social behaviour etc.., I'm sure most of them would fail hands down, expect however that foreigners to THEIR country somehow perform miracles (while making no such demands on themselves).
will be around on the political scene for a long time to come
Hardly! Altready Alternative für Deutschland beat her party in Vorpommern. By next year's general election she willbe only a memroy. Merkel's folly is not the reason. Everyone can make a mistake. The cheek and arrogance was trying to make others pay for her blunder. If she's still trying ot live down Hitlerian atrocities by playing Auntie Goody, that's her prerogative, but don't force others to play the game against their will! BTW why do you Brits call her Mirkle? It's MARE-kell.
decent people have to make sure that the racists stay out of political office.
One of the best ways to do that is to actually represent what the local citizenry wants (as opposed to what elected officials think they should want).
Unless a bunch of politicians in the west change tack then you're going to see ever more extreme rightists form (and get bigger).
The resurgence of the identitarian right is almost entirely due to elected officials not doing their jobs. They're getting yellow cards all over the place and not paying attention.
Merkel (rather right-wing herself but at least she did the right thing in the refugee crisis)
Merkel's folly makes zero sense by any rational calculation. And I refuse to cede the moral high ground to her. Her actions cannot be defended on logical, humanitarian or economic grounds.
That's the formula for all successful politics. That's the reason behind the support PiS now enjoy. The politicans (PO) decided to raise retirement age, lower school-entry age, not provide child benefits like 500+ and cater to foreign corporations without asking Poles whether that was what they wanted. PiS on the contrary have their hand on the nation's pulse and know what most people want. PO knew mainly what their foreign masters wanted, acted accordingly and were rewarded with hefty kickbacks. And they got away with it for 8 years thanks to their slick propaganda. Eventually people began seeing through the thin veneer of PO's deceptive PR rhetoric. Too bad it took so long but better late than never!
Prime Minister Beata Szydł abolished Poland's Council for the Prevention of Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, it emerged on Tuesday night. The council was abolished by a Law and Justice government decree on 27 April. The body had been established in 2011 under the tenure of Prime Minister Donald Tusk (current president of the European Council), of the centrist Civic Platform party.
Among other factors, the council was tasked with ensuring coordination between government institutions and local government bodies, as well with other groups involved in preventing racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Poland has called for the British government to start an educational campaign in the UK to tell the public that Brexit does not mean foreigners will be thrown out and that they still have the right to reside in Britain.
The call, made by Witold Waszczykowski, the Polish foreign minister, follows the murder of a Polish man in Essex and fears of a rise in anti-immigrant violence and intolerance in the UK triggered by the Leave vote in the EU referendum.
Hundreds of thousands of Poles now live and work in the UK and their security and legal status is a prime concern of the Polish government.
The British government has not given a cast-iron assurance that Poles and other EU citizens will be allowed to remain in the UK after Brexit, but Theresa May came very close to that position last July when she said Poles would "continue to be welcome" while on a visit to Warsaw.
Theresa May: Polish are welcome in the UK Play! 00:52
Mr Waszczykowski said the British public needed to understand that Poles and other EU citizens who work and live legally in the UK have the right to stay, and that people will not be expelled.
"We can't guard every foreigner," said the minister. "But we would like to see a great educational campaign to show that Brexit does not mean people will be thrown out or made to leave.
Has cut-throat capitalism worked well, equitably shared a nation's wealth and not created groups of indecently wealthy oligarchs nor subjected the economy to the control of powerful foreign interest groups? If so, then one wouldn't repeatedly be hearing about the need for "capitlaism with a human face". Tuskite capitalism was a vilolation of the constitution which states that Poland has "a SOCIAL market economy".
Has cut-throat capitalism worked well, equitably shared a nation's wealth and not created groups of indecently wealthy oligarchs
When has Poland had cutthroat capitalism? Answer, never.
powerful foreign interest groups
PRL talk.
Tuskite capitalism
Made people feel secure enough that they could flirt with a government devoted to handing out free ice cream. They'll regret it soon enough.
Basically Poland reached the point of development where productivity is high but wages are frustratingly low, that gets corrected eventually, but instead Polish voters chose to regress to the 1990s rather than stick out the current century.
PiS won't stay popular because a government devoted to handing out freebies finds that the more free stuff they give away the more the recipients want. The question is whether people will wise up before Poland becomes the next Greece or Venezuela....
Putin and Orban etc are very popular. With the proper propaganda propelled ruthlessly, anything is possible. Blame the foreign media etc(straight out of Animal Farm) Make fake documentaries that heighten the hatred towards an old enemy. Feed your supporters.
Putin and Orban etc are very popular. With the proper propaganda propelled ruthlessly, anything is possible
Well Hungary seems to be doing a little better economically (the NYT was recently complaining that a supposed labor shortage meant that employers had to pay people better). I was just on vacation and for the first time IME there were a lot of Hungarians there too.
Putin is simply reconstructing the USSR which a great majority of ethnic Russians liked just fine and so they like him.
Poland didn't like the PRL that PiS wants to create and they don't respond well to propaganda either.
disclosure: I think that Orban isn't that bad (not great but nb, during the refugee crisis he was pilloried for saying that EU laws should be followed). Putin is pretty terrible and PiS would be a lot better off if they could divest themselves of the toxic elder generation. But tha'ts not gonna happen soon so they're pretty terrible too.
(the NYT was recently complaining that a supposed labor shortage meant that employers had to pay people better
OK, so what % of Poland's large retail chains, major manufacturing plants and banks are Polish owned. The owners fo the above are amongst the foreign-interest groups the Tuskites and their post-commie predecessors
had catered to with tax breaks, tender fixing and otehr prefernetial tresatemtn in exhcnage for kickbacks.No wonder that crowd (PO, KOD, Petru) want to rettian the pre-2016 status quo.
The govt is working to balance things off by finding new sources of revenues (eg retail tax on big retail chains and eliminating loopholes facilitating tax evasion) to fianance welfare programmes. The World Bank has praised 500+ for stimulating consumption which generates demand, news jobs and overall GDP growth. Aside from the purely economic aspects, to me more important is the fact that many kids went on holiday with their families, attended a summer camp or actually saw the sea or mountains for the first time in their lives. Of coruse, that wouldn't interest a hard-noser like yourself. Maximum yield, investment returns, dividends and profits are all that counts, innit?
PiS passing round sweets and ice-cream to ordinary Poles is still far better than PO handing out goodies and privileges to the already indecently and usually dishonestly wealthy and overprivilegded!
