Might it be worth designing a social system so that it resists the need to find those responsible for growing inequality? For example, guaranteed employee rights for everyone, regardless of the length of stay in Poland and the place of work. End the farm practices that have found fertile neoliberal soil.
Although the results of sociological research show that Poles are increasingly open to migration, politicians and public figures willingly use anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. In extreme cases and in less extreme cases, they call for national unity, unable or unwilling to notice that Poland today is not mono-ethnic and mono-national. Currently, there are about 3 million people, or almost 8 percent. Society comes from migration.
The savage anti-immigrant campaign we saw during the election campaign, the stripping of human rights and the “training ground” On the Polish-Belarusian border, the language of migration, examples of which were recently cited by “Republic” TV: Jan Pietrzak “We have barracks for immigrants in Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Shtutovo.” And Marek Krol, who suggests tattooing numbers on the bodies of migrants, and the reactions of Polish men and women show that racist, fascist, anti-Semitic scripts are ready to be applied to anyone else who – according to these scripts – needs to be marginalized. They were protected, humiliated or even killed.
In Poland, after the Holocaust, realizing what people are willing to do to other people, it is time to draw conclusions and not minimize such events and attitudes. Meanwhile, Grzegorz Braun is a member of the Sejm, although he has committed many anti-Semitic, anti-Ukrainian, anti-immigrant and pro-Russian acts, which he documents. Never again association. He earned 220,000 PLN by destroying the Hanukkah standing in the parliament hall. He was rewarded by other anti-Semites, among whom there are more anti-Semites than Jews in Poland. He responded to the free market – mugs and T-shirts came out with a fire extinguisher.
Internet platforms went crazy as the photos of Rep. Brown in the fire extinguisher became a meme, and hate, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia are perfectly illustrated. Inspired by the MP's action, minors tried to destroy Hanukkah in Wroclaw, burning the Israeli flag and taking pictures of it. This way you can promote and reach your channel. And this is just the latest, most recent example.
Who do Poles see when they see a Jew?
In 2022, the Polish Museum conducted a study on anti-Semitism in Poland. More than 3 million records (headlines, images from archives, films, book covers, online records) were analyzed to find out what the Polish image of the Jew is. The study was led by Marcin Napiorkowski. Four main groups of cultural codes were adopted: suffering/loss, exaltation/strength, strangeness/strangeness, and familiarity/similarity. Each of them has its positive or neutral obverse and anti-Semitic opposite.
The first group included images of the Holocaust, book covers and scenes from Holocaust films, and slogans about loss and lost youth. The opposite would be “jokes” that refer to the Holocaust, such as transformed advertisements (eg crisps “straight from the oven” with a Star of David).
The associations of the second group – exaltation / strength – also have a positive side: science, outstanding achievements, talents and contacts, and the reverse side with conspiracy theories about world-ruling Jews, dangerous players and big money.
Money also appears in the following code groups: Foreign/Mysterious and Familiarity. In the first, as part of a “foreign”, mysterious and unrecognized system of values and knowledge, in the second, as a popular image of the familiar, but also strongly anti-Semitic, “Jew with money” image.
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Stereotypes are so deeply ingrained that we usually forget to ask where they come from. Where does the connection with money, trade and usury come from? To find out the answer, simply refer to elementary and secondary school history textbooks. From them we learn that yes, the Jews ran hotels, yes, they traded, but it is not mentioned that they were not allowed to own land or settle where they wanted. Who remembers that the king lived on taxes paid? That such an arrangement was profitable to him and to the nobility, who paid smaller or more occasional taxes by virtue of it?
We cannot find out that a system divided into states based on separate areas of the economy was defended by the ruling classes, because their privileges were based on this. We cannot understand that it was the economic framework in which our ancestors were forced to form relationships between different social groups.
Anti-Semitism was part of this arrangement. Even the peasant, lowest in this property hierarchy, felt a greater sense of community with the ruling classes—the ethnic factor—than with the Jews, whose lot was only marginally better. The Jews, guilty of the unforgivable sin, i.e. suicide, could not feel safe in the Catholic country, and even more so, they demanded more. These are not conspiracies, these are simple mechanisms of power: divide and conquer.
Only the Polish Socialist Party has tried to bridge this divide and show that what unites us is our place in the economic system. Work is more important than being Jewish or Polish.
Poland, a country of immigrants. How to adapt the whole system?
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First, second and third class workers
We can only learn from the textbooks that many minorities lived in Poland: Ukrainians (although they belonged to different classes and former states), Belarusians, Germans, Jews – and not from villages, towns, cities, states, craftsmen, farmers, service. Workers who also had different rights – although this more than nationality or religion determined their situation. We read that the number of minorities was about 10 percent, which is similar today.
And now, as then, anti-Semitic clichés are used to explain various crises, such as the pandemic or the war in Ukraine (I don't know if you know, but one theory is that the Jews started it). The crime of Imperial Russia is disappearing.
These clichés have a more universal dimension: the Jew is simply the archetype of the stranger, the visitor, the unidentified, the restless, the ungrateful (because he is accepted and, of course, still planning) and therefore uncertain and unreliable – the name “illegal” or even “legal “. ” Migrant.
As the editors of the report write Who do Poles see when they see a Jew?: The history of the “ungrateful Jew” is transferred to the history of the “ungrateful Ukrainian”. The “Jewish parasite” or “Jewish plague spreader” narratives are almost invariably told about Muslim immigrants today. We know what can happen with the popularity of such scripts. And if we do know, might it be worth designing the social system so that it resists the need to find those responsible for growing inequality?
For example, guaranteed employee rights for everyone, regardless of the length of stay in Poland and the place of work. minimization A gray area of exploitation due to originEnd the farm customs that have found fertile neoliberal soil.
The authors of the report focus on this Step out of the shadows. Support for victims of hate. They write that the Polish government's “hands-off” policy since 2015 has only reinforced pre-existing trends of abuse. Poland has become a record holder in terms of temporary immigration, while at the same time systematically hindering the availability of asylum procedures.
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Equality for all is also necessary Access to apartments and other public services, so that no one is tempted to seek excuses for inequality and discrimination in customs, national or ethnic origin or religion.
However, it seems to me that those in power, including the “new ones”, are still hostage to the image of Poland as mono-ethnic and Poles as anti-immigrants, who unabashedly believe in the free market, which is not better. to annoy them, not to speak loudly about migration, so that they do not feel threatened by “aliens”. IN coalition agreement V. did not say a single word about migration Unveiling of the new prime minister But there was a lot of border protection. Appointment as Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration Prof. Mackay Duschik It gives some hope that the development of a migration policy will begin, but also fears that this position will only be a fig leaf to cover up the brutal policy of protecting “prison Europe”.
Equality is, of course, a dream
The situation does not improve after the last vote in the European Parliament Migration Pact, announcing expedited asylum procedures, faster returns to countries of origin and large detention centers at borders. The guarantee of long-term inequality is and will be, therefore, the physical and psychological damage we inflict on migrants from the start. A lot of money goes to fences, fences that hurt them and services that abuse them away from people's eyes.
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Then we will heal them, adjust them, absorb them, take care of them, expect gratitude. And if they are ungrateful – or if their care is too expensive – we have anti-Semitic clichés ready to remind them of their care and hospitality and send them home.
Can Poland, drawing conclusions from its history and the consequences of systemic inequality, offer a different policy for Europe? To avoid repeating our mistakes and those of other European countries, we will need a Minister of Migration.
We already have the basics. The humanitarian crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border has revealed the creation of new organizations and the foundations of institutions that bring ready-made projects and solutions.
Legal Intervention Association He sent a petition to the government regarding the cancellation of the changes introduced by the ministerial regulations Vesik and Kaminski About deportations. He is calling for a ban on the detention of children, a ban on holding migrants in conditions worse than prison, detentions longer than 12 months and an extension of the deadline for filing complaints, among others. Up to 14 days after the deportation decision. Now it is happening that the deportation takes place before the trial is over. In addition, labor rights and legal changes so that the consequences of an employer's failure to notify the employment of a Ukrainian citizen resulting in illegal work are borne by employers, not employees.
Pauline Museum and Towards Dialogu Foundation have ready training for police and other services, including border guards. They are already conducting, and the state can scale up their experiments.
Prepared by SiP, Nomada Association and Homo Faber Association A report showing systemic failures in the treatment of migrants and making recommendations on how to counter the harm caused by hate and prejudice.
In addition, I would like to revise the textbooks – to make it possible to understand the mechanisms of power that allow the division and confrontation of different social groups, whose interests are to cooperate with each other. Showing ready-made divisions arbitrarily drawn up by rulers: based on religion, ethnicity, privilege or systemic discrimination.
If we don't do this, if we don't move beyond frameworks based on fueling ethnic and religious differences and acknowledge systemic violence against select groups, we risk further eruptions of inequality, hatred and bloodshed.