Poland has become a bastion of European reactionary ideology for a bunch of reasons. Most of it happened deliberately by a coalition of capitalists who ran a color revolution and a fake, pro-west labor union (called solidarity of all things. And one of those capitalists who wrecked everything was George Soros of all people. Despite his reputation among right wing conspiracy idiots, he’s been throwing money at anti-communist causes his whole life. It’s a genuine tragedy.
MFW 4chan is likely more likely to be Soros funded than we are.
But that’s actually good information and might explain why has become in the public eye. If they’re going to lose some of the culture wars, it’s best that they do so on their own terms, or at least become the leaders of the resistance against themselves.
I think it’s because the crushing inequalities of capitalism are so obvious that it’s comfortable to adopt the mantle of non-threatening equalities.
Not that corporate America ever actually fights for those equalities of course. Just that it’s convenient to embrace certain equalities to obscure other inequalities.
Like, idealized gay rights and idealized racial justice don’t actually threaten capitalism so long as the answer to gay rights and racial justice is restricted to beaming some good vibes so they beam those good vibes at will, and trans rights well depending on brand identity that can be ok as well but importantly only once it’s ok for the bottom line that’s when it becomes a useful shield to be used against the crushing reality of wealth inequality.
Do you have any reading on Solidarity? I’m reading The Shock Doctrine right now and Naomi Klein speaks positively of them and negatively of the USSR in their interactions, even though Poland was obviously not in the USSR. (Which was kinda sussy to me)
There’s really not a lot of literature on this in English from a leftist perspective. But I’ve read “From Solidarity to Sellout: The Restoration of Capitalism in Poland” by Tadeusz Kowalik and it’s pretty good. Kowalik argues that Solidarity did initially begin as a worker controlled union that was acting in protest to Polish austerity measures at first, but was co-opted by foreign interests and capital by the 90s.
The funny part about reading that book is I remember thinking that what happened to Poland is what liberals accuse socialists of doing. As in, the accusation that a communist party acts as a new capitalist class and everything stays the same but gets worse. A lot of former party officials and Solidarity leaders just swapped places to become the new elite capitalist class in the new Poland.
solidarnosc was originally based on legit issues of crisis and pretty minuscule (especially compared to every period after 1989) drop in the life quality, but was also strongly rooted in all manners of reactionary sentiment - petty bourgeosise sentiment, catholic anticommunism, growing liberalism in inteligentsia circles, very successful western propaganda and outright CIA funding (it wasn’t even first colour coup attempt in PRL, there were at least 2 others before).
Problem is, that looking at what happened later, you can’t defend even the legit part of worker participation. It was never really run by workers, it was just a colour coup, and seamlessly turned into extremely antiworker organisation which actively participating in the deindustrialisation of Poland, breaking up the workers power (they are still doing that! 34 years later!) and in consequence the horrors of transformation and the 34 year descent into the deepest anus of neoliberalism and anticommunism. Workers and worker leaders were discarded like used condoms at the first sign of getting concessions from the government - which, notably, happened after perestroika started to run havoc in entire European socialist bloc.
And about the so called “solidarność left” that emerged from it? First, they were sidelined all the time, second, they were at best socialdemocratic anticommunists, and third, when they tried something their leader died in very mysterius car accident.
Pro-western propaganda has relativised the horrors of fascism and made Poles of all people believe that living in a socialist country was just as bad as living under the Nazis’ genocidal occupation regime.
This Nazi apologia was grafted unto a substrate of butthurt Polish nationalism that existed well before the Soviet Union and is rooted in Poland’s history of first being a major kingdom, then being carved up by neighbouring empires.
@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml please explain this
Poland has become a bastion of European reactionary ideology for a bunch of reasons. Most of it happened deliberately by a coalition of capitalists who ran a color revolution and a fake, pro-west labor union (called solidarity of all things. And one of those capitalists who wrecked everything was George Soros of all people. Despite his reputation among right wing conspiracy idiots, he’s been throwing money at anti-communist causes his whole life. It’s a genuine tragedy.
MFW 4chan is likely more likely to be Soros funded than we are.
But that’s actually good information and might explain why
has become 
in the public eye. If they’re going to lose some of the culture wars, it’s best that they do so on their own terms, or at least become the leaders of the resistance against themselves.
I think it’s because the crushing inequalities of capitalism are so obvious that it’s comfortable to adopt the mantle of non-threatening equalities.
Not that corporate America ever actually fights for those equalities of course. Just that it’s convenient to embrace certain equalities to obscure other inequalities.
Like, idealized gay rights and idealized racial justice don’t actually threaten capitalism so long as the answer to gay rights and racial justice is restricted to beaming some good vibes so they beam those good vibes at will, and trans rights well depending on brand identity that can be ok as well but importantly only once it’s ok for the bottom line that’s when it becomes a useful shield to be used against the crushing reality of wealth inequality.
Do you have any reading on Solidarity? I’m reading The Shock Doctrine right now and Naomi Klein speaks positively of them and negatively of the USSR in their interactions, even though Poland was obviously not in the USSR. (Which was kinda sussy to me)
There’s really not a lot of literature on this in English from a leftist perspective. But I’ve read “From Solidarity to Sellout: The Restoration of Capitalism in Poland” by Tadeusz Kowalik and it’s pretty good. Kowalik argues that Solidarity did initially begin as a worker controlled union that was acting in protest to Polish austerity measures at first, but was co-opted by foreign interests and capital by the 90s.
The funny part about reading that book is I remember thinking that what happened to Poland is what liberals accuse socialists of doing. As in, the accusation that a communist party acts as a new capitalist class and everything stays the same but gets worse. A lot of former party officials and Solidarity leaders just swapped places to become the new elite capitalist class in the new Poland.
solidarnosc was originally based on legit issues of crisis and pretty minuscule (especially compared to every period after 1989) drop in the life quality, but was also strongly rooted in all manners of reactionary sentiment - petty bourgeosise sentiment, catholic anticommunism, growing liberalism in inteligentsia circles, very successful western propaganda and outright CIA funding (it wasn’t even first colour coup attempt in PRL, there were at least 2 others before).
Problem is, that looking at what happened later, you can’t defend even the legit part of worker participation. It was never really run by workers, it was just a colour coup, and seamlessly turned into extremely antiworker organisation which actively participating in the deindustrialisation of Poland, breaking up the workers power (they are still doing that! 34 years later!) and in consequence the horrors of transformation and the 34 year descent into the deepest anus of neoliberalism and anticommunism. Workers and worker leaders were discarded like used condoms at the first sign of getting concessions from the government - which, notably, happened after perestroika started to run havoc in entire European socialist bloc.
And about the so called “solidarność left” that emerged from it? First, they were sidelined all the time, second, they were at best socialdemocratic anticommunists, and third, when they tried something their leader died in very mysterius car accident.
Pro-western propaganda has relativised the horrors of fascism and made Poles of all people believe that living in a socialist country was just as bad as living under the Nazis’ genocidal occupation regime.
This Nazi apologia was grafted unto a substrate of butthurt Polish nationalism that existed well before the Soviet Union and is rooted in Poland’s history of first being a major kingdom, then being carved up by neighbouring empires.
They want to fuck lenin
🥵
This call for volcel police.
It means Solidarnosk won and solidarity lost.