How popular is Radio Maryja in Poland?

Can anyone identify the make of Fr Rydzyk's the bluish-grey car that Jonni posted? Can't say I ever saw a Maybach in person.

The one in the film is a Maybach, the one in the still is one of his others.

It's a two-door Citroen C4 (which means it most certainly is not one of the Father Director's).

...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Well that is Rydzyk f*cked :)

RM all but disappeared. Rydzik's geothermal swindle failed - PO saw to this -. I guess he is still persuading old bacias to hand him half of their meagre pensions. What I find susrprising is how RM did not exploit the cross madness. It would have been something they could have invented anytime.

Once RM was dominating the headlines in any media....Times are changing - for the good.

Hey people... This isn't a radio station.. It's a fricking comedy central!!! :)

My feeling is that they were warned by the Government to stay out of it. It was very very suspicious that they kept quiet and didn't attempt to provoke things - I can only assume that Rydzyk knew fine well that taking their side would result in the Government taking a close look at them.

What's the frequency of RM, Delph? Just so I know to skip it. I guess it gets a large following in villages here. Those people, like Scottish teuchters, are numbskulls.

98.4 mhz

try 66.6 FM

They should invent a radio that automatically bypasses certain stations :)

Thanks, Seanny. Warning duly noted :) Maybe, they tried for that but it was already patented by another sectish horde.

they had them in Poland. radios with restricted frequency.

I took a look at the wiki link about radio maryja and there seems to be a lot of negative things written about them:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Maryja

And about your point of skipping them, well it turns out they did the opposite and tricked your radio into thinking the traffic news was on and would switch to Radio Maryja.

If I had a radio station, I'd probably try the same.

I don't listen to Radio Maryja, although sometimes I get tricked because I like RMF classic and RM is just a half a wrist turn up and sometimes they play classical.

yep, they didn't get out of the middle ages just yet... i'm not sure if they ever will...

I haven't been around PF much lately and I could have this all arse ways but that thread about "Poland, Lacking External Enemies, Turns on Itself" is what I think Radio Maryja is part of.

The Mohair berets have been fighting all their lives (at least in post office queues;) and the Church was the 'enemy' of communism.
These babcias are hard core and Radio Maryja was created out of this vacuum.
But it does seem "Father Director" is taking the ****
What I mean in my reply to your comment is I think 'they haven't left communist suppression of the Church' and are still fighting but against who...? hence the part about "Poland, Lacking External Enemies, Turns on Itself".

FWIW when I put the above Wiki info page to people who listen to RM, they claimed the bulk of it is propaganda to discredit RM for various reasons, some of those reasons I can sort of understand/believe but some sound a tad contradictory or hard to envisage. Nevertheless, that is what people say. When I have cited the foul-mouthed women on the Youtube video saying various offensive things, the reply was that they are a fringe bunch of unsavoury characters and not truly representative of the RM listenership. I do not know if the Polish Wikipedia entry is less controversial - a quick run through via Google Translate suggests it is indeed far less critical.

Apparently there is a book in Polish out which claims there are propaganda lies against RM in the mainstream media. If I find the title, I will post.

I enquired about the geothermal thing with someone, I was told some exploratory or proof of concept drilling was completed to prove there was subterranean hot water or whatever you call it, whether that is less than what was promised I don't know, perhaps someone else can elucidate on what RM said they would do and what happened, allegedly :o)

Yes, the Council of Europe really needs to discredit RM.

I remember listening to some of their recordings from an archive. I didn't hear anything dodgy, or the person translating omitted the dodgy bits (however, knowing them I doubt it).

Anyone here please post if you actually heard bad stuff with your own ears from RM, ie from RM editorial staff, not just daft callers ringing in.

Bad stuff may mean different things to different people, but just some in my book are:-
Racism
Anti-Semitism explicitly or masked by implying alleging Masonic or Banker plots to take over the world etc etc*
Homophobia

I understand that someone "distinguished" perhaps spoke on an RM programme (to plug a book by any chance?!) and alleged that various well-known Jewish and non-Jewish organisations are mere fronts for Masonic domination plots or vehicles for various parties to "extort" money from Poland and/or other countries. If that person was allowed to come out unchallenged with that sort of paranoid, almost certainly complete nonsense, RM do deserve a very hefty amount of criticism indeed. If you must in the name of free speech give the floor to a controversial person then do so, but have the decency to give the other side the right of reply, or editorially challenge them yourself if no one turns up from xyz org. Anything else is totally amateurish and invites accusations of whatever has been said online et al.

Anyway, people who have heard some questionable broadcasts that don't just fall into the category of village peasants phoning in and making a bigoted tit of themselves, please post which programme offended and if poss a link to the archive of RM recordings which I have been told is online somewhere at their site. I really want to hear the truth on this.

*Some views or facts, depending on your own take, about mason type stuff here: masonicinfo.com/bnaibrit.htm (I am not a Mason, my trouser legs stay down)

I also believe the old Pope had no problems with another organisation some have apparently criticised online if not on RM, see link

rotaryfirst100.org/history/headings/leaders/vatican.htm

I actually slightly know both the ladies (if it's the video I think you mean) - it was apparently staged.

There are EU grants for geothermal energy - they wanted one - they didn't qualify for it. End of.


I've heard that on RM. One of their contributors is a guy called Stanislaw Krajski who has a thing (bordering on obsession) about Masons plotting and scheming. Despite the fact that Freemasonry doesn't engage in politics under any circumstances, and there are in any case only about 700 in PL of whom not much more than half are active (and of that half, some are very elderly and the others too busy with their lives to take over the world), he still whips up the RM audience into a frenzy about Poland being taken over by them, that every level of society is rife with masonic plots etc. And of course all Jewish (I don't know of any Jewish people within Freemasonry in Poland). Mr Krajski also trots out the same sort of stuff about Rotary, Lions, YMCA etc, none of which are Masonic or ever have been. But the core audience of RM seem to have a visceral need for enemies.

Dude you're clueless:]

So, what do you know about it that the members don't?

that sums them up nicely.


says you?;) Nice to see you posting again, but with some restrain - that must be hard:)

Jonni, many thanks.

Yes that's the chap I heard about. I have already told the RM listeners I know that such ideas [of his] are laughable claptrap as far as I can see, but they are sticking with that one as true (yes, ridiculous I know). However, they say the rest of the negatives said about RM are propaganda nonsense apart from the famous alleged witch comment which they seem to believe did happen. No idea if it did, but as listeners they admit to that as a bit of truth. Likewise the schoolboyish daft comment to the African priest.

Anyway, when you say the Youtube thing was staged, could you put some flesh on that, if you are able to on a public forum? I am a bit puzzled by what staged would mean in this context. Someone trying to make RM listeners appear in a negative light, or something else?

If it's the Youtube thing that was doing the rounds (with the old lady swearing) it was an outtake which they kept on filming. Assuming we're talking about the same video, that is. Both ladies know each other, one (the Radio Marjya listener) is a frequent flyer at the local police station.

...

Just looking back at earlier posts - the 'moherowe berety' video, which is what I assume you mean, comprises genuine footage of members of the Family of Radio Maryja (the organisation John Paul 2 refused to receive in Krakow) behaving badly. These are people who would probably flattered to be described as a fifth column, and who support a party whose members openly praise General Franco in the European Parliament.

@BritInPoland, it's somewhat tangential to focus on the editorial content of the radio station - that's primarily a cash generator(via donations) for that political camp and organisation as a whole. Their activities include political funding, operating a college, a TV station, newspapers etc.

Shot just opposite Sense unless I am much mistaken.

Yes, almost next to Piotrus, before they put the railings up. The flower seller is a friend of Raf's, and the old lady used to yell at passers by, until they stopped her.

No Jonni, that's not the one. This is the one I was thinking of:
...
When I showed this to some RM listeners, they said the people in the video were not typically representative of RM's following and were in the minority by far. So [shrugs shoulders] I still don't know for sure what's gone on, all I know is what I hear at present on RM and watch on TWRAM - so far so good.

This one's fairly well known, and genuine footage. Did you hear the guy shouting "raus"? In Poland, there exist some of the nicest people you could possibly meet, but there is also a dark side. Remember some people here have lived with extremes all their life. Some people have dealt with that well, others have built up a lot of bile and aggression. These people are basically Daily Mail readers with not quite enough to live on, and a lot of anger about the hand life has dealt them. They were attacking the cameras because they didn't like the TV station, a mainstream and fairly modern one. Some of it was footage from a documentary about The Family, who are something of a rent-a-mob.


Have you heard any of the speakers at their rallies? RM and TRWAM are basically tele-evangelism, designed to get donations, which accounts for much of the content.

Anyway - how can you understand the content enough to say "so far so good" when you don't understand Polish? Do you listen to any other Radio or watch mainstream TV? How long do you spend listening to RM or watching TRWAM? Is this the most productive way to spend your visit to Poland?

Your first paragraph there is a good summary IMHO of how I see things too from the little I know so far, good to read that I am not too far off the tracks on that.

People I know here are natives, I trust them, they translate, the odd occasion the word "Jew" was mentioned they translated it and anyway I know the Polish for Jew very well. No, the only other channels I watch sometimes all I seem to get are the gameshows! Family Fortunes, Name That Tune etc!

Is it the most productive way? Well, let's just say that taking an interest in the psychological impact of religion and broadcast evangelism is a little hobby of mine when I'm not enjoying a variety of gorgeous Polish beers and cheesecakes. I'm particularly keen to see that religion is not used to stir up hatreds, I am not anti-religion nor pro-religion, am keen to see fair play and truth. Naive though that must sound.

Have a look at TV Puls (co-owned by the RCC, though I heard that was changing). As bland as TRWAM, but a different kettle of fish. In PL, religion (denomination as much as or even more than faith) has traditionally been a greater part of how people define themselves in relation to those around them than in most of Europe. There are mixed Orthodox/Catholic towns in the east, there were mixed Catholic/Protestant towns in the west (and remember the role Catholicism played in the independence movement, and that the C19 activists were mostly Catholics). Of course there were also 3 million Jewish people, plus a handful of Polish Muslims. People even have the local priest chalk on their door once a year to show, among other things, that they are Catholics Then, during the largest part of the lifetimes of RM listeners, Poland was monocultural but with tension (to say the least) between Church and state. Not to mention the centuries' old tradition of urban liberal intellectualism in Poland, among a class of people of who typical RM listeners are aware, but are socially and economically very far from.

All this conflict, so many hotheads (vide Rydzyk, the Giertychs, JK and JKM etc) to whip it up, the fact that organised activities have had a bigger role in post-war PL than they would have in freer countries, plus the usual right-wing paranoia of the underdog, and it all becomes very noticeable. The Family of Radio Maryja, and the station itself are but different facets of the last gasp of all this.