Overcoming (or fostering) political hate speech in Poland?

Anyone folloiwng Polish politics has surely noticed that attemtps to curb politcial hate speech are being undertaken with varied success. The murder of a PiS official triggered the movmement, with PiS charging that PO types such as Palikot and Niesiołowski had whipped up such a climate of hatred around PiS that it's no wonder some unbalanced soul lost his marbles and pulled the trigger..

PiS has drafted a £ódź Declaration to stop hate pseech, but the PO people refused to sign it. President Komorowski invited polticial leaders to talks on the subject, and all but Kaczyński took part.

Some say PiS and PO feed on mutual hatred. The back and forth epithets produce colourful media copy which is eagerly watched, and it lets both parties off the hook as regards creating and implementing any concrete politcial programmes. What dio you think?

i think PiS should start cleaning up their own mess in the party first and then talk about others...

Of course they do, it's what keeps them going. People get to root for their team instead of actually thinking or holding individuals accountable for their actions. We have the same problem in the US (not nearly as personal as here), but it still has broken down into the same as cheering a sports team. Sad really. The issues get overlooked, and we all lose in the end.

BTW, that mad gunmans first target was Leszek Miller. He has some bigger issues than the PiS-PO rhetoric.

PS, JKM thinks you're all a bunch of hippie socialists :)

And this says it all - Kaczynski doesn't want to end it at all. He plays the victim card (to appeal to his core electorate), but it doesn't work - especially when he accuses Tusk and Komorowski of being murderers!

Anyone who follows the media here realizes very quickly where the most hateful rhetoric is coming from (hint, it's not PO or even Palikot, an obnoxious but mostly harmless clown).

Either PiS is formenting the really nasty rhetoric or is somehow helpless against the smoother media tactics of PO. Neither option says much good about their ability to govern.

Note that Komorowski unilaterally apologized for offenses he might have caused and all Kaczynski would answer was "He has a lot to apologize for".

Stay classy, Jarek.

P-Land should be very careful about going down this route. Free speech is likely to suffer. Such things are inevitably misused as a bully club to silence one side while benefiting the other. We've seen the same thing here with PC speech codes under the guise of curbing "hate speech" that the dirty Left then wields as a weapon to their political advantage by stifling their opponents.

We've also seen conservatives curb free speech under "obscenity" laws in the US.


You're absolutely right.

Just stop with the hollow "both sides do it just the same" crap. It's rarely true and certainly not true here. When Righties do it, it's so kids don't have to hear foul language on TV, etc. When the Filthy Left does it, it is designed to silence political dissension. Big, BIG difference.


Of course I am. And for the reasons I stated.

Or when it might "endanger national security". Which is usually what the "US right" uses to silence dissent.

...for the good of the country, not the party. Again, BIG diff.
And can cutting off treasonous Lefties' anti-America, enemy-aiding 'dissension' really even be considered censorship? Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose had nothing on our modern Lib traitors...

You don't need to know for the good of the country, man has the US lost its ways... I think a tear might have just been shed at Monticello.

Truth is, they're both attacks on free speech. Dissent is good. Like asking, hey, where are those weapons of mass destruction. I remember when people were being called traitors for questioning the war in Iraq. Surely you as a patriot see something wrong with that picture?

Over treason? Not likely.


Truth is, we're talking about enemy-aiding treason here. Hardly "good" and hardly the same as censoring domestic political speech for domestic political ends.

You're really grasping.


When in fact the dirty LibDem traitors just used that as a reason to attack our president... giving aid to our enemies... because they didn't like him... yeah. If it wasn't the war it would have been something else... Oh, wait, they did the very same thing over Hurricane Katrina... only minus the treason.

Btw, Mr. 'Both sides do it', you havne't seen the Right viciously attacking Obama over the wars.

This thread is about Poland, please keep on topic

Komorowski's apology has been called pharasaical, becase he apologised not only for himself and Palikot, but also for PiS's Kurski and Macierewicz

This is par for the course. Jaroslaw K has, and his equally dreadful brother had, a history of petulent behaviour.

Platforma, the party that the Polish people chose to govern, are doing a lot - I was out of PL for a few months and on return was pleasantly surprised to see the new roads and bridges they're building and hospitals being modernised. And the economic condition of Poland is a testament to their solid hard work.

Sure, they haven't done great show-stopping things like the PiS/LPR/Samoobrona coalition did. They haven't banned any freedom parades, condemned Teletubbies, prevented IVF treatment, removed Ferdydurke from school reading lists, announced that homosexuals should be hit with sticks, supported racist radio stations or claimed that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs.

So we must be thankful for small mercies and ignore the eccentic boobies of PiS.

Merged: Talking heads on hate speech

The hate speech issue was raised and thrashed out by the participants of Sunday’s 'talking head' public-affairs shows. The main problem was defining hate speech, and depending on their political preferences, participants provided examples of slanderous and provocative language by representatives of different parties. The discussions were kicked off by film director Grzegorz Braun’s remark that things would improve in Poland only if a dozen Gazeta Wyborcza journalists and TVN reporters were shot. In a similar development, PAP on Sunday reported the Media Ethics Council as criticising former Polish Radio president Krzysztof Czabański for what he wrote on his blog. Czabański used the expression 'bold and pushy *******' to describe a number of leading liberal and left-leaning journalists whom he named. They inlcuded Tomasz Lis and Janina Paradowska.