News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Salty? I am joined in one patriotic orgasm with Johnny!

I tell ya what, Iron, them Polacks are livin' right. Ban the abortion, bless the union, and pay ya to have kids like it's Christmas every month. That ain't socialism, brother... that's Jesusomics. USA! USA! Polska strong!

That's what I love about Poland. They takin' EU money with one hand and slappin' Brussels in the mouth with the other. That's patriotism. That's how we'd do it here in God's Country, if the damn RINOs didn't sell us out!

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Hell ya, Brother! You sure said it right there - stuck it right in their Jewlovin' liberal cornholes!

Poland is back! Finally a true victory for conservative values, like:

1) Government control of media

2) Full blown welfare state

3) And judges hand selected by the Deep State!

Yeeeeeehaw! Reagan is smiling from Heaven!

God Bless the Government, the Government-run Media, and God Bless the USA!

It's good to have a welfare check lovin Johnny remind these snowflakes what a real conservative is! Give em hell Nawrocki! 5,000 PLN for every Pole!

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Wow! This is the same language you used to describe Russians...

So maybe half of Poland is populated with orcs?

Poland B, some people say, was the part of Poland that was under Russian control. Coincidence? You decide!

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Tell me Johnny, what excites you most about Nawrocki's campaign pledges? Why do you think these things will be good for Poland?

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]

@amiga500

If Korvinus wants to tax second-home-owners out of existence - then he is a communist.

Not every person with a lake house is an oligarch.

But beyond that, I suspect he doesn't realize the catch-on effects on the real estate market of such a decision, or how it will wipe out the wealth of the Polish middle class.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


This is what qualifies as an Polish "Conservative".

In America they would burn you at the stake.

This is all you need to know about this "apocalyptic" battle between "right" and "left" in Poland.

They would all be Democrats in America, or traitors in Russia.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


That's not what I said though, is it. I referenced their position on NATO.


What are you talking about? Under PiS, Poland was the largest recipient of EU transfer funds in the entire Union. Furthermore, there is simply no way PiS can be in any way anti-EU, when polls show that 80%+ of Poles support continued EU membership. PiS can be Eurosceptic, but not anti-EU. Kaczynski has some weird formulation he prefers, where he says he wants a "union of sovereign states".


No, really. What is Nawrocki doing in Trump's Oval Office, if he was still just a candidate? Why is Tusk falling over himself to tout Poland as the country that did the most to fulfill Trump's demand on defense spending?


My point was that the difference was nearly always in tone and posture, and not the actual substance. I concluded by saying Poland is neither Hungary nor Sweden. The piece about abortion specifically - said "abortion on demand".

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Hahaha!

From the point of view of a person that has lived in Russia and in America - the "wild" differences between PiS and PO are truly staggering.

1) Both PiS and PO are resolutely pro-EU. There are no serious personalities discussing a Polexit, or Orban style confrontation with Brussels.

2) Both PiS and PO are among the most pro-NATO parties on the continent. Nobody is questioning Article V, but instead everyone competes with the other based on how good their relations are with Donald Trump. A shift between these two parties represents a total foreign policy nothing burger, as they are both super Atlanticist.

3) Heavy taxation and social spending are bipartisan. Despite being a supposedly "conservative" party, PiS historically spends like a drunken sailor. PO at the same time does not even bother to challenge them, and treats things like 500 and pension expansion as an electoral reality.

4) Cultural policy is more differentiated by posture and tone, rather than actual substance. Yes, PiS has taken a harder line on abortion, judicial reforms, media policy, and LGBT stuff. At the same time - neither party proposes legal abortion on demand like in Western Europe. Both parties are culturally Catholic and neither challenges the role of the Church in society. PO may frame itself as "tolerant" or "liberal," but it clearly rules out radical secularization.

5) As everybody here understands, the real story here is a decades long competition between two very flawed men. At its core, it's not about policies but personalities. Kaczynski versus Tusk. Old resentments over Smolensk, state media, the judiciary, and institutional control.

As I told Kania - nothing will change. This is intra-elite factional war. It's not a class war or ideological struggle. It's about who administers the Brussels money, and not whether to take it or not.

Poland is not turning into Hungary, and neither is it turning into Sweden. Relax Poles!

Contrast this with Russian or American elections, where you can get a guy that decides to pull out of NATO and tariff all of America's friends, or a dude that decides it's a good idea to invade Ukraine. And even in these countries... elections don't really change much!

What worries me, as I said before, is the very American 50/50 split and how people are discussing the election.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


That's not what I am saying.

I do argue for a return to a "dictatorship" of experts.

I think America was better when there were only three main channels (ABC, CBS, NBC) - and everyone listened to the same news every evening. Not like it is now, where everybody can go and read only the news which is pleasant to their ears and confirms their biases. I don't believe in any of this "well that's your opinion" and "that's just your truth" bullshit.

I do believe in science, and I think it is what accounts for the tremendous leap in life expectancy and living standards that we've experienced over the past two centuries.

I don't think, as Lenin said, that "any cook could run a country". I'm a big champion of the Deep State, if any such thing exists, as I'm sure they're the only ones keeping the machine together and in one piece.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


China doesn't know how to talk to the rest of the world, because it is fundamentally uncurious about the lives of the rest. America suffers from the same, but still to a lesser extent because of its international makeup.

China doesn't know what it wants from other people - beyond buying its goods.

Contrast that with Russia, that has a long list for how it would like everyone and their mother to live.

--------------------------------

China has an imperial tributary system. If you need something from China, come to Beijing, kowtow before the emperor, enjoy your gifts and f*ck off.

It literally showers Pakistan and Africa with money, and gets squat in return (despite everyone's apocalyptic concerns).

If Russia sent somebody the type of money that China sends, it would have a military base, insist on everyone being sent to Moscow to study, and forbid any kind of interaction with America.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


We don't possess even a fraction of the resources they possess. We don't have Hollywood. We don't have Taylor Swift. Neither do we have Youtube or X.

Whatever China does is always comical. Their ability to read Western and Russian audiences is abysmal. The type of propaganda they put out makes me embarrassed on their behalf.

One of the things that will truly limit China's "superpowerdom" - their inability to speak to other people in a compelling way.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


There were no "politics" in Poland in the "late" 17-hundreds. Just annexations.

What had led Poland to that series of annexations, was precisely the kind of political gridlock which you see now.

Instead of Liberum Veto, you have a PO Prime Minister and PiS President.

One group of magnates, stopping the other group of magnates from achieving anything worth note.

As other states that neighbored Poland centralized and modernized, Poland was busy mediating internal political squabbles. Once they had become overwhelmingly stronger than Poland, the neighbors played its politicians off against each other - and they sold the country to the highest bidder.

Extreme political polarization precedes system collapse.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Someone?

Geee, I wonder who that someone might be? Hmmmmm....

Is this "someone", somebody that sent their Homeland Security Secretary to stump for Nawrocki at a rally in Jasionka?

Did this "somebody", ensure that the second ever CPAC event in Europe happened in Poland? The first one was in Hungary in 2022, in support of Orban.

Did this mysterious entity send his Vice President to a European security conference, where he read them lectures about their rotten political systems?

Does this "someone", have an ideologue named Steve Bannon, that's now going around saying that Trumpism can only really succeed when it is exported worldwide?

Very concerning things you are reporting, Jon.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]

Americans are also teaching our guys the same tricks.

Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chief that went to jail for working for Viktor Yanukovych, had also consulted a Russian party on how to win elections the "American way".

Even corrupt-to-the-core Russian and Ukrainian cynics are just amateurs next to the crooks from Washington.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


Because you are still at Stage I or II of the cancer.

In America Republicans and Democrats also used to intermarry, have barbecues together, and even pass bipartisan legislation. It was not shameful, for a Republican Congressman to attend the wedding of his Democrat colleague. Nobody tried to hide the fact that they went to the same fraternity, at the same university.

In America people used to actually have to think before providing an answer to something, rather than picking the ready-made argument from a list of party approved talking points.

The cable news channels and social media ended all that. Now if they see you shaking your Democrat colleague's hand, they'll cancel you on Twitter. If you allowed 1% of nuance into your actions - like disagreeing with Trump on some issue important to your local voters - then the national party will put $25 million dollars behind a campaign to primary you out of existence.

So yes - Americans also used to not hate each other. Now it's like two parallel countries living side by side.

Wait, and give the hate time to grow. You have things like monoethnicism which will act for some time as a break on the hate, but eventually it won't be enough to hold back the demons of American style politics.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]

Beyond just simple mimicking - Poland has itself been penetrated by the forces that made American politics into a circus.

Ownership of media - same people. AxelSpringer - whose most valuable asset was Politico. Politico.eu, is now incidentally spreading the same toxic venom it grew up on in Washington. Warner Bros owns TVN - and it's operated exactly like an American cable channel.

The way elections are covered - I could have sworn I was in America. Midnight updates with by the minute reports on demographic makeup, and millions of charts - and breathless hosts urging viewers to "stay in front of the TV as Poland goes to vote in the most important election in a generation."

All this is poison, and it leads to nowhere good.

Soon you'll be like America, where the only thing you can all agree on is that you urgently need to raise the debt ceiling to "pay for the mistakes of the previous administration". Nothing else will be possible to do, as it will be hopelessly mired in gridlock.

Most real growth will come from whatever free cash Brussels drops from the sky.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]


I mean the 50/50 nature of things.

America used to go "all out" for certain candidates. You had genuine "landslides" in American politics.

Now, it doesn't matter who is contesting the elections. The Democrats could put forth a macaque and the Republicans a chimpanzee - and the results would still be 49/51 at best. People would begin to wear t-shirts with "I Was Macaque Before It Was Cool" and "Chimp for Life".

The same happened in the Byzantine Empire, where politics at one point largely boiled down to which team you supported at the chariot races.

Just think about it - how bizarre is it that America has so many elections decided by razor thin margins? Between Bush and Gore it went down to hundreds of votes, in a country of several hundred millions. It's statistically improbable, and logically broken. The only "good" answer is that the American system is so perfectly designed, that it yields the most optimized candidates every single time.

The "bad" answer is that Supreme Court decisions have made it so, that the American elections are just a wall-on-wall competition of tug of war. Any ammunition and any weapon is fair in this fight.

It doesn't matter that it literally splits American families in half. Americans don't realize how bizarre they look to outsiders. I have a colleague, who says that him and his wife "don't have any Republican people in their immediate family or circle of friends".

The story of someone dreading to go home for Thanksgiving, because they will see their Trumpist family is already a cliche. People think it's normal - but in reality it shows what an absolutely sick country it is.

This Americanification is what is coming your way - I think. Discussing bullshit problems all day, and being ready to kill each over it.

News / Karol Nawrocki - the New President of Poland [415]

@CMS Neuf

You said Poland has been voting the same way since 1815. I did some Googling around right now - and history does not support your claim.

Let's forget about 1815, and look at things post 1991 (since these are election results we can all trust). Over this stretch of time, these election results represent the narrowest margin of victory for the winning candidate.

To me - this 50/50 result means Poland is entering a very "American" style of politics with maximum polarization and endless culture wars. The only winner from such a set-up is media companies - these work diligently to ensure that every subsequent election result is also decided by the thinnest of margins. This keeps the electorate's eyes glued to their phone screens, as they anxiously scroll for more arguments about why the other side is made up of irredeemable idiots.

PiS is obviously the Fox News crowd - to continue my American parallels. Their bread and butter is "Nationalism" and "Catholicism".

PO people watch CNN - because they are "Cosmopolitan" and "Pluralist".

Any time the people begin to lose interest and actually start paying attention to real problems - TVP (Fox News) and TVN (CNN) will begin pouring battery acid on people's brains with the same three subjects as in America:

1) LGBT
2) Abortion
3) Migration

People will go mad, and ready to claw each others throats out debating the difference between a 4 week and a 12 week fetus (if even this applies to only 0.1% of abortions). Alternatively, whether or not a man can go into a women's bathroom.

The end result is that you will be like America - where everybody hates everybody, and every election is 50/50. A perfect 50/50 hate ratio is needed to maximize advertising revenue for media companies. Otherwise, with a 60/40 or 30/70, people may begin to tune out and watch National Geographic instead.

Everyone has to be maintained in a state of perpetual psychosis. Poland A vs Poland B. Urban dandy vs Village idiot. Noble Catholic vs Dirty Jew.

Poland shouldn't feel alone. This Americanification of politics is also happening in France. They even found themselves a candidate with the name "Jordan", and discuss the same inane drivel that Americans discuss in their politics.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

@Torq

I was watching Stonoga again earlier this evening, and when he reaches the crescendo of his monologue: "Wy, Polacy, to was trzeba jebać, jebać was trzeba, kurwy!" - I imagined you.

I'm sorry but it gave me quite a laugh.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


This guy went from extinguishing menorahs to kingmaker of Poland.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

@amiga500

Are you purposefully trying to rile Kania up?

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Well then yes, Brat Rafal is cooked! I see now 52/48.

What a wild election.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Hold your horses! It's just an exit poll.

It's good that it's Nawrocki leading with a small lead, and not the other way around - because I suspect that with such a thin margin there would have immediately been challenges in the courts by PiS if they lost... and then if it escalated you'd get potentially your own January 6th.

As a neutral observer - expect the mayor of Warsaw to concede gracefully and not test the durability of Polish democracy, as they did in Romania.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1442]


You are feeding the American antisemitic cohort.

There is no "your people".

They are Americans.

Why is it considered an ultimate injustice that Americans put Japanese in concentration camps during WW2? Why did Clinton apologize for this?

Why can Japanese, Germans, Russians - all become 100% Americans with no substitute, while Jews always have to have some kind of extra landing strip to land on?

History / Where did Poles spend summer vacations in the PRL era? [63]


Somehow, China managed to co-opt Albania, turning it into Mao's little outpost in Europe. Truly bizarre.

Muslim Communists, in the heart of Europe, supported by a patron half a world away with an agrarian economy.

My grandma also travelled with my grandpa to Saddam's Iraq, shortly after he seized power in a coup. My grandpa was one of the men involved in setting up a factory, ostensibly for putting together tractors from kits shipped from the Soviet Union, but in reality to make an Iraqi copy of the T-72 tank using Polish and Czech parts. I believe this tank was called the Babylon tank.

She told me, that she saw Saddam's political enemies hanging from lampposts. But also that it was the freest she had ever felt in her life, up until that point. A level of glamor which she had never seen before. Hotels with swimming pools, and smart waiters. Exotic fish and fruits. Lots and lots of Americans and Brits (Saddam was fighting Iran at the time, or getting ready to, and as such was friend of both the USSR and USA).

But that's not tourism, but work.

This was my "tractor" grandpa. The other, maternal, grandpa was a lifelong trade unionist. He went on lots of trips, like Italy and Japan, where he met with local communists and trade unionist leaders. He brought back one of the first VCR's in our neighborhood, from a trip to Tokyo. Then my mom sold it, and it helped finance the purchase of an apartment for the young family (yes this is how expensive VCRs were in the USSR).

History / Where did Poles spend summer vacations in the PRL era? [63]


Not exactly true. My grandparents and parents generation travelled - not much, but on several occasions.

It was considered a prestigious thing to do. Also, an opportunity to make lots of money buying Czech/German/Polish goods and then reselling them back home.

You first had to come up with a reason for why you were going. Most often, these trips were linked to party exchanges, student delegations, scientific cooperation, or some kinda heavily chaperoned group tours. Through bribery and favors, you could get yourself "written into" some delegation.

After some Googling now, I found a blog article with numbers for internal and external Soviet tourism.

Internal Soviet Tourism: 100 million people annually. Main destinations: Sochi, Crimea, Lake Baikal, the Caucasus, and the Baltic States.
Purpose: Most trips organized through work, by the Trade Union.

External Soviet Tourism: 500-700k annually (1980s).
Main Destinations: Bulgaria (the lion's share), GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania.

What's curious is that Poland was low in the ranking, second from the bottom from Romania. Apparently, this was due to Solidarity and the overall complicated political climate. The Soviet government did not want citizens exposed to this.

Romania - surprisingly - simply had a bad reputation as an uninteresting and deeply unfriendly country. Caecescu's government did not particularly welcome Soviet tourists, and there was a huge language barrier. In addition, the author writes that Romanians came across as "aloof" and "deeply nationalistic" to Soviet tourists raised on the idea of Internationalism.

Albania left the Warsaw Pact in 1968 and was off limits to Soviets.

Yugoslavia was semi-accessible, but trips there were tightly controlled. The favorite destinations there were along the Adriatic coast.

The real Soviet "elite" could of course travel to places like New York and Geneva, as "members" of various UN delegations.

If you were some kind of untouchable star like Vysotsky, you could even live in Paris with your girlfriend.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1442]


No, Mississippi! I was writing about it above.

My friend was getting a history degree at Ole' Miss and I visited him a couple times there.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Yes this!

Also, to Paulina - regarding drug trafficking. A lot of skinheads/punks were/are famously straight edge. They take zero drugs, and zero alcohol - and it's all about physical fitness. Personally, these guys scare me. A former one of these married one of my cousins recently, and he is a partner now at White & Case - a white shoe law firm. As respectable as can be.

Personally I don't understand how you can go to a concert, and stay totally sober for hours, while doing somersaults off the mezzanine. Weird people.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


Skinheads are not Nazis. Some are, but most aren't. In fact, most of the OG skinheads were Leftists. Some skinheads are antifascist, some are instead fascist. Many are completely apolitical - which was kind of the point of being a skinhead originally.


I'm not defending anything, just explaining the truth as I see it. Hooligans (as in, organized fans of a sporting team, that travel around with the team, and frequently get into fights with the other side) are not usually stupid people. They have a good memory for dates and names. Usually a pretty historical bent of mind. Use complex structures to argue the validity of their points of view.

Nearly always, its a phase that people grow out of and then carry on to be responsible adults.

They get exploited by organized crime, in the same way that boxing clubs or judo gyms do. You have a bunch of impressionable young guys that are physically fit and full of testosterone - an easy force to direct. But an absolute minimum of hooligans actually get involved with organized crime. I would say, only those, that were headed that way anyway - either through family problems or some other misfortune.

It's just people trying to have some fun - 99% of cases.

There's always some idiot that takes things very seriously, and will go chop someone's arm off with a machete and make everybody else look like an idiot. Like in your story.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


First of all - you don't have to be smart to get a PhD in history. You have to be very good at sucking your professor's penis. You have to find some obscure subject nobody has ever cared to write about. And you have to be able to live on a very small budget, and not care about it. That's it.

Second - I never said Trump is stupid, or that Nawrocki's similarities with Trump indicate he is some kind of idiot.

No man that has more than a billion dollars and is President of the United States can be called stupid.