A number of days earlier than the Polish presidential election on Sunday, a Polish pal of mine obtained an surprising message from somebody she had not seen for 20 years. The girl had discovered my pal on Fb, seen that she was supporting the candidacy of Rafał Trzaskowski—the mayor of Warsaw, a liberal centrist—and begged her to vary her thoughts. She requested her to vote as a substitute for Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian, former boxer, and veteran of road fights that he describes as “noble battles.” She despatched my pal a duplicate of an nameless enchantment that has proven up elsewhere on social media however appears to have been considered one of many related warnings unfold extensively by e mail. It started like this:
Earlier than you set your poll within the poll field, name up your recollections. Open your eyes, clear your thoughts, attain for the reality—not the one on TV, however the one you carry in your coronary heart, the reality acquired from life, from work, from the blood spilled on this land.
As a result of I’m married to the Polish international minister, Radek Sikorski, and since he was briefly a presidential candidate up to now, I’ve learn a number of this sort of factor earlier than (and, after all, hereby make a declaration of curiosity). However, the enchantment that my pal obtained appeared to me a very placing, nearly paradigmatic invocation of the blood-and-soil nationalism that’s now a part of Polish politics, American politics, and European politics.
The message listed the entire crimes allegedly dedicated by a sequence of Polish center-right and center-left governments, twisting the document and rewriting the historical past of the previous 30 years right into a story of trauma and victimization. One assertion accused Trzaskowski and his ilk of getting “allowed foreigners to rob Poland and humiliate us, forcing younger individuals to to migrate in change for bread.” In reality, Poland has been a serious beneficiary of each international funding and European Union funds, has grown persistently for 30 years, and is now one of many fastest-expanding economies in Europe. The degree of social spending has grown too.
The enchantment didn’t go into these particulars. As a substitute, it warned towards impending treason: “Get up out of your lethargy! Look how Poland, your motherland, is being torn aside by exterior and inside forces. Don’t let her be abused, don’t let her face be as unhappy because the soil of a graveyard.”
The language utilized by Trzaskowski’s marketing campaign and his supporters was very totally different. On the day after the election, which he misplaced, the Warsaw mayor wrote that he had needed to construct a “sturdy, protected, trustworthy, empathetic Poland. A contemporary Poland through which everybody will be capable to fulfill their targets and aspirations.” It was an optimistic message—but in addition a message that, no less than amongst a big a part of the inhabitants, couldn’t compete with blood, graveyards, humiliation, and treason. The election was so shut that exit polls predicted a slender win for Trzaskowski on Sunday night. However by Monday morning, the tiny majority had swung the opposite means. Nawrocki gained with 50.89 % of the vote, to Trzaskowski’s 49.11 %.
Poland’s structure has some peculiarities, so the impression on coverage and politics isn’t easy. The Civic Platform social gathering, to which Trzaskowski belongs, now runs the federal government as a part of a three-party coalition of the middle left and heart proper. The coalition gained parliamentary elections in October 2023, following eight years of governments led by the Regulation and Justice social gathering, which nominated Nawrocki. Throughout its two phrases in workplace, Regulation and Justice politicized the Polish court docket system, in addition to the civil service and public media; it created a string of taxpayer-funded foundations designed to help the social gathering and enrich a few of its members. The present authorities has been unable to reverse all of those insurance policies as a result of President Andrzej Duda, additionally aligned with the earlier regime, has vetoed or threatened to veto the entire adjustments.
The election of Nawrocki doesn’t change Polish international coverage. The Polish prime minister, not the president, will proceed to regulate home coverage, budgets, and commerce. However as a result of the president can veto laws and pardon criminals, Nawrocki’s election most likely signifies that the courts can’t be repaired, and that those that broke the legislation or stole from the state won’t face any penalties. For individuals who spent the previous decade making an attempt to repair Poland’s judicial system and defend Polish democracy, that is dispiriting, even devastating, and the identical sorts of recriminations and anger that adopted the 2024 American presidential election are echoing round Poland this week.
However for anybody preventing creeping authoritarianism anyplace else, there’s a bigger lesson: The language of blood and soil, which has as soon as once more turn into central to public debate in lots of democracies, may be very highly effective. It helps many individuals clarify a fancy world. It can’t simply be defeated or dismissed in a single electoral cycle. The triumphant election of a centrist coalition in 2023 didn’t take away it from Polish politics, simply because the election of Joe Biden in 2020 didn’t weaken its energy within the U.S.
On the similar time, the election of Nawrocki additionally doesn’t imply, as so many will now be tempted to jot down, that nationalism in Poland or Europe is “on the rise.” In reality, this knife-edge election end in Poland is sort of precisely the identical because the knife-edge end result within the nation’s presidential election 5 years in the past.
Had Trzaskowski gained an extra 0.9 % of the votes, that may not have spelled remaining defeat for authoritarian populism. Different slender victories somewhere else don’t both. When a centrist candidate defeated an authoritarian populist in Romania a number of weeks in the past, some had been trumpeting that because the attainable begin of a development. However the identical problem will emerge in Romania in the course of the subsequent election too, and can as soon as once more be the defining argument of the marketing campaign.
And that’s how all elections will look, for a very long time to return. Though many hoped in any other case, we don’t appear to be returning to a world through which the middle left and the middle proper compete over tax charges or budgets. Financial and coverage arguments simply don’t matter as a lot to individuals proper now as these deeper cultural divides. That’s why all elections at the moment are existential: Small numbers of voters swinging a technique or the following will resolve the character of the state, the way forward for democracy, the independence of the courts.
Each time we go to the polls, politicians will say that each election issues and each vote counts. They are going to be proper.
