From PiS to Tusk: Lessons from Poland's Ongoing Conservative Purge

Last week, a coalition government under liberal Donald Tusk was installed in Poland. Concerned conservatives in the cultural sector spoke to Alexander Adams, who believes their situation holds lessons for those outside of Poland.

While the culture wars are often dismissed in the West as a “right-wing talking point” or a diversion from the progressivist technocracy’s increasing grip on daily life, Poland is currently experiencing a real, live culture war. In October, the Polish general election led to the downfall of the governing Christian Socialist Federation Party, Law and Justice (PiS). It was replaced by a coalition of centrist and leftist parties led by Donald Tusk, which came to power last week.

This has left conservatives in the arts worried about the future. This is not only a general concern about the country but also a specific fear for the future of their organisations and their jobs. During its eight years in power, the Law and Order Party pursued a policy of promoting conservative values through culture. Taking Polish culture seriously, the government doubled public spending on the culture ministry and appointed non-leftist directors to major organisations. The Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, and Lodz Museum focused on Polish rather than foreign artists. Conservatives and traditionalists in Britain might have looked on enviously at a right-wing government governing in a right-wing manner.

Now that the left has regained power, that situation is expected to be reversed. Any senior figures appointed by the PiS in the cultural sector, along with the staff those administrators hired, now face the axe.

“Fascists Need To Be Beaten, Not Argued With”

During a visit to Warsaw earlier this year, I spoke to Poles working in the arts. They commented that, as in the West, the majority of Polish intellectuals, academics, and journalists are left-leaning. They told me that this liberal elite had worked to undermine the standing of the PiS government, which relied on rural, Catholic, and working-class voters. When I was there, my contacts were hopeful about the possibility of the PiS scraping a majority in the general election, but it was not to be.

Perhaps the decisive factor in the election was the mass media. In Poland, the media is primarily dominated by liberals and much of it is owned by non-Polish shareholders. Only weeks before the October general election, a Soros-backed group acquired a Polish media house that publishes the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

Now, the liberal elite is back in power and has expressed a desire for retribution. Jan Tarnas, editor of the cultural periodical OBIEG, detailed instances of senior leftist politicians discussing sweeping changes. Tarnas tells me that actor Andrzej Seweryn exhorted the younger generation to enact revenge on conservative nationalists, saying “Dear child. Remember! Your job is to fuck them up. You are young. You don't understand what I'm saying to you yet, but you will soon understand. When you are twelve years old or even earlier, you will understand who needs to be fucked up.”

Tarnas quotes Seweryn as saying, ”All these Trumps, [former Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw] Kaczyński, fucking Orbans — You know, you have to fuck them up. No Christian dialogues, no, you know, understanding, debate, understanding. Fuck no! Fuck up. Fascists need to be beaten, not argued with.” 

A Project to “Pathologise Patriotism”

I spoke to Agnieszka Kolek, who worked at UCCCA, an arts centre in Warsaw. She is clear about her predictions:

“The new government being oriented towards European Union would [seek] to pathologize patriotism and rewrite national history to build greater loyalty towards foreign based powers by portraying own countrymen as stupid and incompetent. There would also be a move to fulfil the Western elite’s obsessions by taking part in cultural funding programs that are centred around the green deal and LGBTQ rights being weaponised.”

Tarnas hopes that “the opposition’s call for a purge will be limited to government positions that yield substantial financial gain and will not impede the creativity and independence of the artistic community.” Plurality may survive outside of the public sector, Tarnas thinks.

“I doubt there is a chance of depoliticised cultural institutions,” Ms Kolek agrees. She is pessimistic about the immediate future of those Poles under a “monoculture of the left,” which will impose liberalism and globalism regardless of Poland’s social conservatism. “The global elites have united in their efforts to limit our freedoms. We need to outsmart them and work together.” 

For now, Ms Kolek works at the cultural think-tank MCC Brussels, but she maintains contact with her Polish colleagues. It seems likely that she may be joined abroad by a trickle of conservative Poles, whose careers have been stymied by the new Polish government. 

No Neutrality

When in power, leftists exert control in a way seldom seen on the conservative right. The left treats culture as something vital that has an impact on everyday life, and they apply ideological purity tests to staff and audiences. Anyone suspected of being reactionary, racist, sexist, homophobic, or in any other way hostile towards the ideology and its client groups, is ruthlessly removed or blocked.

Yet, the right does not act like this. The right, content with tradition’s maintenance and individuals acting autonomously according to personal beliefs, sees institutions as neutral, incrementally adapting and improving without any explicit guidance. The class politics of Marxism and Foucauldian teachings on control are lessons the left learned well. Leftists act as if no institution can be neutral; each organisation is, necessarily and unconsciously, engaged in the exercise of social power, imposing the values of the dominant elite.

When in power, ostensibly right-wing politicians bend over backwards to demonstrate that they are moderate by accommodating individuals who espouse views that are hostile to the majority population. That is why (for example) leftists, feminists, and foreigners flourish at the top of cultural bodies after thirteen years of Conservative government in Great Britain. However, the right has started to notice the left's lack of reciprocity.

The question is, should the right shun the semblance of neutrality and give up the arm’s-length policy towards culture and heritage, as the PiS did in Poland? Should the right act as the left does, exerting a genuine will to power and treating their opposition as not just unsuited for power but ineligible for positions of influence?

Conservatives often pledge themselves to standards of liberalism that actual liberals do not adhere to. Liberals and leftists move the Overton Window ever leftwards, towards increasing secularisation, materialism, decolonisation, and delocalisation; conservatives tend to view such change as inevitable and treat any current position as the status quo. In this way, the ratchet moves leftwards only, with the right yielding to the frame games of the left.

Given the left’s proclivity to ingrain its beliefs into national organisations, and that this often entails the loss of traditionalist elements in public life, is it time for those on the right to abandon the impossible ideal of arm’s-length neutrality in the cultural sector? Poland’s situation poses a question to Western traditionalists: why hold power without exercising it? Your opponents assuredly will.