Poland's post-election political scene

@TWPOscar
yes, formal education says very little about functional intelligence (and a lot of the panic about populist parties like AdF is simple hysteria).

I'm neither left nor right wing, I'm in favor of arrangements that work over arrangements that don't and multiculturalism has a terrible track record and is clearly unworkable and so I'm against it. It's like socialism - it's been tried numerous times and always fails.

Dirk though has a lot of personal baggage in that he's insecure about his status as being Polish (he's more American than Polish but alienated from some aspects of the modern US) so it's hard to resist the temptation to poke him about it here and there and watch him yelp and try to justify himself.

Right wing governments through the ages were quite happy for immigrants to come in and do their dirty work, raising GDP in the process. Jamaicans practically ran the London transport system. Left wingers are not "happy" to see a multi-cultural society, but they don't necessarily go crying to mamma when they see a black face.

Cute. But thanks for yelping and justifying yourself.

Sorry maf, as a non pole you already lost. I highly doubt you can speak fluent polish either. Im guessing pl citizenship is a no go also? If youre an expat and not a pole, not born in poland, poland isnt your first language you automatically by default have less of a tie to the overall polish community than a pole born and raised pole who speaks the language and has citizenship by birth and no amount of living in poland will change that. Youre still an american expat in a foreign country. Same with say our old friend sig. Him living in saudi arabia as an american hardly makes him an arab or connected to the society.


Thats why afd is known as the professors party.

If anything non educated people tend to have a better grasp of the real world and more street smarts. Universities have a weird way of transforming smart normal people into snowflake naive crybabies for some reason.


9 point stars on the knees means i dont bend the knee to ANYONE but God. Id rather get my teeth knocked out.

But neither are right-wingers. It's a myth that right-wingers are against migration itself. It's just that migration has become something uncontrolled in the last few decades that right-wingers have started to believe that; perhaps we're at a point the we should just quit migration. But that's only because it has become something that is uncontrolled. I too, rather have no migration than uncontrolled migration. but that doesn't mean that I'm against migration itself persé.

Also, current ruling western-european countries aren't really trying much to protect the negative cultural changes that are happening due to immigration. This has also lead to right-wingers becoming anti-migration.

Do you the difference between prawica and lewica? Well pis identifies as prawica as do most of their supporters. Seeing as prawica literally means the right, pis is therefore right wing on the right-left spectrum

They were known as the professor party because they were founded by eurosceptic professors like Lucke. Those relatively moderates have already been purged by more radical elements (who were themselves purged by more extremists after the last federal election).

There is nothing intellectual about their leadership anymore, nor their voters. They instead listen to demented old men like Gauland, or thugs like Bachmann. The fact that their entire believes are based on misconceptions and lies does not speak well of their intelligence. You could make a reasonable argument that the Euro is a flawed construct, and breaking it up would be better in the long run (though most experts disagree). But to rationally believe in the AfD is next to impossible. All the AfD has is scaremongering or lies.

Do you? Within Polish prawica means 'right wing' but that doesn't translate well across languages.

Right wing parties do not usually support entitlement programs like 500 plus or promise to increase infrastructure spending (like Jaki's hilarious subway plans in Warsaw). In any other European country PiS's economic platform would be considered center-left while socially it's kind of right wingish but has consistently failed to further traditional rightwing goals like restricting abortion rights (they are forced to periodically go through the motions but their heart is clearly not in it) or roll back gay rights or make it harder to divorce etc.

Even their refusal to go along with Germany's migrant dispersal program (one of the few things I agree with them about) was based more on traditional emnity against Germany than a principled stand in the war of civilizations. And at the same time they have overseen a very large increase in the non-western (including muslim) population in the country. A friend who was just in Warsaw at an expensive hotel said that the hotel employees who weren't Ukrainian seemed to be from the Indian sub-continent...

So right wing? Not so much. In the European context they are socially conservative Christian Democrats

Apparently you dont. Obviously your polish is rusty as prawica comes from prawo which literally means right. Prawica literally means 'the right' while lewica, coming from lewo literally means the left.

Prawica means right wing, pis, kukiz etc are part of prawica while po is lewica. Therefore pis is right wing.


Were not talking about the european context. By european context, po would be considered conservative or atleast centrist, not leftist/lewica. Were talking about poland, and pis is clearly part of the prawica.

A rightwing party that it's favor of massive tax and spend welfare programs, infrastructure boondoggles (regional airport anyone) furthers no particular social conservative goals and oversees (comparitively) large scale migration by non-westerners.... yes. So very, very right wing.

Indeed. Since they are part of prawica...

Pis is pro military, anti refugee, dont give out massive handouts to non poles and coddle migrants by giving them 1200 eu a month like germany, are socially conservative, pro catholic, invest in projects promoting polish culture and identity and are generally nationalist/patriotic, populist, anti abortion, anti gay marraige etc so yes id say theyre pretty right wing.

Next youll tell me merkel is a conservative and not a globalist leftist or that majority of poles arent socially conservative and want a flood of third world migrants and support gay marraige..m

Admit it... in high school you used to begin essays with "Webster's dictionary defines X as...."

Only thing i remember from high school is swiping a lot of v cards and selling ounces everyday. But i did get a near perfect act score thereby giving me a scholarship...

None of that changes that pis, kukiz etc = prawica = literally, the right

who further no particular right wing goals and do further center-left goals.... mmmmkay.....


so engaged in pre-marital sex and drug pushing.... so very, very right wing.... if you didn't exist someone would have to make you up

They aren't. Most young people stayed away from the election (only 37% voted compared to a general turnout of 54%!), so right wing politics were supported by only 43% of 37% (of all voters aged 18-29) - what's that, about 16% of the youth electorate. It's really nothing at all to boast about, and you're massively exaggerating the influence of groups like Ruch Narodowy on young Polish people. The other key takeaway is that PiS only won narrowly over KO among people aged 18-29 - about 25% vs 21%, while Kukiz'15 was below even the PSL among young voters.

Most young people are simply apolitical in Poland and don't support anyone. Now, what *is* true is that young people have a far more diverse range of views than older people. KO+PiS were voted for by 70% of people that are 60 and over, but only by 45% of people 18-29. Those views are spread among many parties, and as I keep pointing out, the vote was split almost equally between left and right.

Pis is still 1st place, both among youth and in general. Thats what counts. Anything else is just semantics. Besides, regional elections don't matter nearly as much as the parliament and presidential elections.


Well 60k people did show up to the march in warsaw organized by them. Furthermore, most youth arent in rn nop etc but most the people in those groups are younger people. Also a very large chunk of ypung polish men and increasingly women are either involved in patriotic groups, soccer firms, or atleast support such causes. Most the people signing up to tye new volunteer militia are youth as well. I hope to join as well in the near future

1st place doesn't mean anything in Polish politics, what matters is having over 50% of the available seats. Winning here is defined as whoever gets over the line, not who won the most votes. PiS had a lead of around 13% in 2015, now they're down to 7% and even less among young people, and they lost a huge amount of cities in the first round.

As it stands, PiS are a long way away from a majority next year.


They matter a lot. Regional governments are probably the most important source of decision making at a level people understand, such as hospitals and public transport. They're also responsible for distributing a lot of EU funds, which are hugely important in smaller towns as there's no way they can afford to make big investments by themselves.


Yet they didn't win a thing in these elections.

Even those who don't support specific political parties stand by a specific values like Catholic religion, respect for "Cursed soldiers" an anti-communist Polish resistance, Patriotism and respect for Fatherland.

Those people are, and will be, a natural right wing and conservative voters.

They aren't and won't be. That's again a gross simplification and a wrong one.

Poland is a mostly a socially conservative society at the end of the day. And no matter how the eu and leftists try to undermine that, its not going to change. Poles are set in their ways ans thinking and they dont want to follow the w europe multi kulti example and end up a minority in their country who only exists to work and pay taxes to support hordes of african and arab migrants. The fact is according to cbos idris and other polls the majority of poles reject such migrations and gay marraige. Thats good enough for me.

People said the same about Spain and Ireland in the 1970's. It only took 40 years for them to collapse largely into irrelevance, and the same trends are seen in Poland since the 1990's too.

...and that upset or hurt the natives how?

I'm glad that you've mentioned that. In Poland there's a completely different trend and conservatism is on the rise.

SLD, an ex commie socialist party that was always present in Polish parliament since 1989 is there no more! For the first time they were completely voted out of parliament in 2015, the same year when PiS has gained majority in parliament. PiS is the very first party that had a majority in Polish parliament.

And let's not forget Kukiz 15 which a new, right-wing, political formation in Polish parliament and it chipped away votes from other parties. And what is even more interesting they took those votes from the other, non conservative parties, It is also worth to mention that Kukiz 15 is dominantly supported by a young voters.

The future is bRIGHT!

Except it isn't. The election results show that clearly: conservatism has fallen since the 2015 election. Why are you persisting on pushing myths when we've just had an election to prove otherwise?


Except they came 4th among voters aged 18-29 in the election held two days ago. They only gained 13.6% of the youth vote.

It amazes me that people are still pushing a narrative that simply isn't true.

But give out handouts to Poles to take away their incentive to work. Which means the rest of us have to pay for them.


Sorry Spike it isn't. Google Michael Foot. These jokers have that type of unsustainable economic policy.

They had their faults (very many) but they were considerably more right wing economically than PiS....

Left and right in Poland most refer to attitudes toward social issues (and even then often indirectly)

PiS are clearly the most left wing economically government since 1989. They even went as far as blocking up a mine rather than selling it to a foreign investor, which is left wing politics at the most insane.

In terms of economic policy, it's hard to see much difference between the 1997-2001 AWS government and the 2001-2005 SLD government.

Yes. I hated SLD and Miller when they were elected. They did a good job for a while.


It removed the presidential veto, and pre EU pOland was born. Now we are seeing the fruits of that (and PO projects - especially in Silesia). Who knows what the legacy of PIS will be, but I can take an educated guess....

I said it before and I'll say it again: those were local elections and not major elections. Local election has never in the history of post-communist Poland reflected major [parliamentary] elections.

Local elections in Poland 2014: PiS ~27% of the votes

Parliamentary elections in Poland 2015: PiS = majority in the parliament

Let's wait for the official results, should we? And then we can draw some conclusions. Patience is a virtue my friend

Kukiz'15 aren't projected to win a single seat in the Sejmiki. That's what you call a party on the rise?

The projected results right now:

PiS - 257
KO - 192
PSL - 70
SLD - 10
BS - 10
MN - 5

Or to put it into a left/right split (with the exception of BS, who rarely mention anything about social issues - any alliance with PiS will be based on economic, not social matters)

PiS: 257
KO/PSL/SLD/MN - 277

I was teaching a grade A student - parents both lawyers and doctors respectively. Activists for Kukiz. When I asked for his manifesto and they gave me a few lines, they were taken aback when I started laughing. Well I was laughing in a demented John Cleese kind of way.