Kaczynski (Jaroslaw) Archives

Activism

A Halloween Uprising and Poland’s General Strike Over Abortion

A new generation of women rises up against an unholy – and sexist – alliance of church and state

November 6, 2020 • by Elzbieta Matynia

Poland’s Halloween has always been a solemn national holiday with pagan roots called All Souls Day, known long ago as Forefathers’ Eve, and immediately followed on November 1 by All Saints Day. Normally, it’s a contemplative period of reconnecting with those who are not with us anymore, whether grandparents, veterans, or ...

A Halloween Uprising and Poland’s General Strike Over Abortion

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The Resistible Rise of Fascists Today

Trump, Erdoğan, Zizek, and All of Us?

November 22, 2016 • by Tomasz Kitlinski

This won’t be just four years; we are going to re-elect Trump. Perhaps it’s just a pessimism that has possessed me, but it seems that we -- the whole we, the global human race -- it seems to me, that we have turned servile. That we have become subservient and substandard ...

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Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

September 21, 2016 • by David Ost

Eviscerating the Constitutional Court and purging the judiciary, complete politicization of the civil service, turning public media into a government mouthpiece, restricting opposition prerogatives in parliament, unilateral wholesale change of the Constitution or plain violation of it, official tolerance and even promotion of racism and bigotry, administrative assertion of traditional ...

Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

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The Illiberal International

September 14, 2016 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he ...

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‘We, The People’ In Polish

One country’s response to a right-wing takeover

March 11, 2016 • by Leszek Budrewicz

The Committee in Defense of Democracy (Komitet Obrony Demokracji, or KOD) appeared to start suddenly out of thin air. It is now the biggest mass mobilization of Polish citizens since the days of Solidarity 25 years ago. On the one hand, this is clearly a response to the electoral victory ...

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Constitutional Crisis in Poland

How reality has surpassed fears

January 25, 2016 • by Jan Smoleński

On Saturday, January 9, 2016, people in Poland and Poles around the world once again protested the actions of the incumbent government led by Prime Minister Beata Szydło, the parliamentary majority, and President Andrzej Duda. The current situation has already earned entries in both Polish and English Wikipedia under the ...

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After the Victory of The Law and Justice Party

Envisioning a perfect right-wing religious Poland

November 9, 2015 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer and Jan Smoleński

Karl Marx famously claimed that history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. Sadly, the recent parliamentary elections in Poland seem to show that actually the opposite can happen as well. Although the 2005 parliamentary victory of the Law and Justice (PiS) party ended in a short-lived coalition ...

After the Victory of The Law and Justice Party

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Have Europeans Learned from the 20th Century for the 21st?

February 28, 2014 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This is a lightly abridged version of the keynote address to the conference of the Europe for Citizens Forum in Brussels on January 28th, 2014. Goldfarb was asked to address the question of the title. Siobhan Kattago, Irit Dekel, and Anna Lisa Tota also contributed to the ...

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