Perception and politics the case of Poland: coping with political apparitions – Open Democracy

Particularly symptomatic was the attitude of the Polish liberals towards Jrg Haider, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FP) who in the year 2000 won significant electoral support on a nationalist, anti-immigration, and anti-EU platform. One of the prominent Polish liberal politicians said that Haider was neither left- nor right-wing; he was entirely outside the political spectrum, and propagated views running entirely counter to the European heritage. It was indeed a novel contribution to the history of Nazism. Did not the Nazi ideology, to which Jrg Haider subscribed, originate on the European continent after all? Another Polish champion of freedom appealed to the Europeans not to go to the Austrian skiing resorts; he reasoned that if Europeans refused en masse to go to Austria, its economy would collapse which would have a salutary effect on Austrian society. So much for the liberal faith in philosophical rationalism and a sense of political responsibility, not to mention the curious liberal dogma of the need to separate the economy from politics. Populism continues to spread across Europe unabated and most likely will do so for the foreseeable future

Although in the first decade of the twenty-first century Haider and other European populists suffered electoral defeats, nationalism and populism has not been wiped out from European politics, on the contrary. The star of Gerhard Frey in Germany was soon overshadowed by the successes of the previously excluded PDS and subsequently by the Alternative fr Deutschland; the Belgian Vlaams Blok, after an order to disband, underwent reorganization and consistently gains increasing political support. After the assassination of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands on 6 May 2002, his nationalist party received an additional boost. Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Russia and Andrzej Lepper in Poland were soon joined by Istvan Csurka in Hungary, Jan Slota and Vladimir Meciar in Slovakia, and Miroslav Sladek in the Czech Republic.

Current European politics is now coping with xenophobic movements not only in those countries, but also in Germany, Hungary which is in the grip of the Victor Orbans illiberal democracy, and Italy which is being dragged to the right by Matteo Salvini. It is impossible to overestimate the role played by Michnik himself and his newspaper in the struggle for democracy. But some of his opinions aptly illustrate a dangerous liberal complacency in dealing with the early stages of populism which paved the way in Poland to the rise of the radically anti-liberal forms of government. These have succeeded in driving liberalism onto the periphery of public life, branding it with an ugly label, and transforming the formerly honourable term liberalism into an insulting epithet. At that time an irresponsible populism throughout Central Europe was only beginning its slow but systematic work of undermining the position of moderate and liberal parties.

In the elections of 2005, the nominally leftist post-communist Democratic Left Alliance suffered a defeat. In the run-up to the elections, the Alliance was relentlessly presented by nationalist and conservative groupings not only as a descendant of traitors from the past but also as greedy and corrupt. The liberal party was only happy to join in this propaganda. It soon turned out that in its arrogance, the right-wing government turned out not only greedier and more corrupt than the post-communists, but also much less competent in running the state.

In the aftermath of the defeat of the Democratic Left Alliance, a liberal commentator dared to voice a timid opinion that some sort of political equilibrium is salutary for democracy and for this reason Polish politics did need a leftist party. In response to this innocuous remark his right-wing opponent responded: But whatever for!? The conservative and nationalist movements, having arrogated for themselves the image of the true victor of the strife against communism, are driven by a belief that the glory of the communism slayers gives them complete immunity from any public scrutiny and criticism. The Polish nationalist conservative movement does not need any leftist parties indeed; having eliminated them from the public sphere, they had both hands free to destroy what is left of the liberal party and to snatch the entire public space for itself. It found it all the easier to achieve this because in its doctrinal fundamentalism and political doggedness it arrogantly ignores and disregards any critical opinions. In fact, any unfavourable opinion about itself, especially voiced from the liberal standpoint, it regards as additional confirmation that it had rightly chosen its anti-liberal way, which only strengthens its relentlessness.

Many bad things might be said of the post-communist party members of that period, but at least their political arrogance was moderated by the awareness of the sin of their illegitimate communist ancestry. The arrogance of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance was also moderated by its desire to be recognised as a legitimate political actor not only in the country, but also by the international community of established democracies. It desperately failed on both counts. It is true that the post-communist leader Leszek Miller promised that he could make pigs fly with his decree, this was not so much an expression of his faith in the power of his post-communist party as an act of impudence for the benefits of the media and his electorate. Although he led the Democratic Left Alliance to take over thousands of state jobs for his party members, he at least never talked about it openly as his right-wing opponent shamelessly did. Although a supporter of the leftist party indeed attempted to extort from Michnik a multimillion bribe, he was immediately put in prison even though no money passed any hands. However, when large sums of the public money were actually appropriated by the right-wing party leadership, no one was sent to prison or even charged. Petty corrupt social democratic politicians meekly went to prison to serve long terms, in marked contrast to the right-wing party offenders who successfully ran away from justice. Memorably, one of them escaped from the country on the last day of his parliamentary immunity like a thief, which he allegedly was, and found shelter in a Catholic cloister in Slovakia. He sought impunity under the cover of the priestly robe which in Poland all too often serves as an inviolable immunity for many dishonest and dissolute people.

Ivan Krastev has listed several characteristics of contemporary populist movements: genuine anger; dislike of elites; vagueness of proposed politico-economic solutions; economic egalitarianism; cultural conservatism; nationalism; xenophobia, Euroscepticism; anti-capitalism; and anti-corruption rhetoric.[11] Populism, in Poland and elsewhere, broke away from its roots in the leftist ideologies and movements which was its traditional hotbed, and moved entirely to the nationalist and conservative parties. Although some movements in Poland were regarded as specimen of leftist populism, they never won any substantial leverage. Populism in Krastevs sense has become a major problem for Polish, European and indeed global politics, but it is overwhelmingly a nationalist-conservative phenomenon.

In todays Poland the populist ideology is indeed anti-elitist, aiming to overturn the table at which politicians, businessmen, former secret service members, and corrupt journalists are playing their game. It promotes socialist policies, but only as a means of winning popular support for their most fundamentalist religious and nationalist agenda. The anarchism, the inseparable element of the former, left-wing populism, has been replaced by the right-wing repressive ideology of law and order, accompanied by grotesque attempts to militarize the public space, justified by the appeal to the alleged eternal enmity of Polish neighbours Germany and Russia.

The only serious alternative to the contemporary nationalist populist rhetoric is something which already deserves the name of neoliberal populism. It appeals to neoliberal values, invariably substantiated with compelling, logical and irrefutably rational arguments. These values include the idea of sanctity of private property, economic freedom and especially freedom from state intervention: in other words, a trimmed down version of social neo-Darwinism, free-market populism pure and simple, ornamented for populist purposes with the ideas of inalienable human rights, inviolability of individual autonomy and the rule of law protected by the minimal state. This ideology appeals predominantly to the young enterprising employees of western corporations and to freshers in political science departments, both prone to this simplistic conglomerate of libertarian ideas. They usually give up on it as soon as they face the challenge of finding a secure and well-paid job. The ideology is also known in its more elegant form from the economic journalism propagated, among others, by the journalists writing for Michniks Gazeta Wyborcza. The problem is that even if the ideology seems logical, rational and thus irrefutable, it does not appeal to those who cannot afford to buy this paper every day. When I told that to Michnik, he admitted that sometimes he also has an argument with his neoliberal writers. But he also added, rather disingenuously: But you must admit: they are superb columnists!

There cannot be any room for agreement between these two kinds of populisms: they talk at cross-purposes. The present-day clash of these two forms of politics, supported by well-defined political ideas, appears to be a modern form of class struggle. In other words, what we are dealing with is an instance of the return of the repressed. The present fundamentalism, populism, irrationalism, and the religion-cum-nation-based tribal instincts, the phenomena liberals once regarded as incompatible with liberal values, having been driven out from the public space, reappear with a vengeance. Unable to find its place in the present regime of the political discourse dominated by the liberal rhetoric, which describes them exclusively in terms of an outright denial, patronizing condescension or utter condemnation, they return with redoubled force, marginalizing and repressing liberalism itself in revenge.

The return of the repressed is also the return of the political. In this confrontation, however, liberals who understand politics as a procedural, strictly regulated law-making activity, are losing their political steam. Trying to curb the awoken and now raging force by means of a powerless web of laws, they present a spectacle of powerlessness.

Liberalism is a diverse doctrine, or rather a vast family of doctrines and values, linked by a common reference to the variously understood idea of freedom. The variety of liberalisms has its origin in the fact that its emancipatory potential was informed through social struggles against various forms of iniquities, mainly in the economic sphere, but also in the moral, private and intimate spheres. Thus, despite its variety, liberalism was and is being perceived as a comprehensive vision of a free and just society that offers the widest range of opportunities for implementing individual life projects open to all members of a society, though guaranteeing no success in the process.

Despite the above, John Rawls devoted some space to the discussion of the idea of the comprehensiveness of a political doctrine. He insisted that his own theory of justice as fairness[12] was not such a comprehensive doctrine and argued against transforming it into an overall Weltanschauung. He presented his theory of justice not as an all-embracing worldview, capable of offering answers to all possible questions to its followers but as an independent, free-standing module, containing a specific political solution. In this respect, his political liberalism differs from moral and religious conceptions striving towards such a generality. It differs also, significantly, from the ideology of Marxism which was designed as a comprehensive doctrine in the above sense. Yet Rawlss shunning of comprehensiveness, understandable in the case of his theory, may be read as a symptom of a more general liberal attitude. The problem is that in its political practice it tends to degenerate into an exclusive elite liberalism, belying its universalist message.

In this way it tends to become the ideology of the well-to-do middle and uppers classes who all too often pursue their noble aims only to the point when their interests are secured, resting their case as soon they are satisfied. Despite the universalism of their doctrine, they have no qualms in leaving the plight of other classes outside the scope of their interest. This degenerative tendency, however, has its consequences. Since, as a rule, only the upper social strata benefit from the implementation of liberal policies, the partial realization of liberal postulates in the past has often provoked other social groups to undertake emancipatory ideas which liberalism formulated but has not pursued in a comprehensive manner. Several examples will illustrate the point.

First of all, by elevating the concept of property to the status of liberal dogma, liberals have been unable properly to understand and appreciate the role of the working classes in the process of the creation of wealth, and, even less so, to recognise their property rights to created wealth. Thus, the working classes, far from being amongst the beneficiaries of liberal political aspirations and transformations have become their chief victims. That is why nineteenth century socialists demanded that all people are to be emancipated from their material misery, believing that this would bring about their emancipation in other spheres, superstructured on the economic base. Most versions of liberalism focus on the economy; for Karl Marx, similarly, human emancipation was achievable through a focus on the economic sphere. In this sense Marxist social philosophy closely resembles the liberal one: Marxism was, just like liberalism, an emancipatory doctrine, and had a similar structure; the difference being that is was far more ambitious, because egalitarian. In other words, socialist and communist movements were the unwanted children of liberalism which did not pursue its agenda far enough. Leftist thought took over the emancipatory potential disregarded by liberalism and radicalized it by attempting to restore it to its originally declared universality.

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Perception and politics the case of Poland: coping with political apparitions - Open Democracy