All-Polish youth

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All-Polish youth

The All-Poland Youth ( Młodzież Wszechpolska ) is a youth organization in Poland that draws on the traditions of the All-Polish Youth Students' Union ( Związek Akademicki Młodzież Wszechpolska ). It calls for a unified, national and purely Catholic state and rejects the liberal, pluralistic constitutional state of western style. Until 2007 it was the youth organization of the League of Polish Families .

National Catholic radicalism

In their declaration of ideas from 1989 it says among other things: “The nation is the highest earthly value. The first love, immediately after that for God, is that for the nation. The first service, after that for God, is that for the nation. ”The same document states that one wants to oppose“ the doctrines of arbitrariness, liberalism, tolerance and relativism ”.

Large parts of Poland's younger generation openly sympathize with right-wing political positions. Since 2010, the All-Polish Youth has been organizing the Marsz Niepodległości (Independence March) on November 11th - on the occasion of Poland's regained independence . This march has become the "focal point of right-wing extremist mobilization". The political core is the Ruch Narodowy movement . The only monograph on the All-Polish Youth in the Second Republic comes from the circle of this movement, by Jacek Misztal, a former member of the All-Polish Youth. He tries to put the history of the All-Polish youth “in the right light” by interpreting their anti-Semitism during the period between the two world wars as anti-communism: “In order to prevent the communist idea from spreading in Polish society, the nationalists called for the greatest possible isolation of the Jews. "

In 2015, 35,000 people demonstrated in Warsaw under the motto “Poles for Poles”, above all the All-Polish Youth. Hungarian right-wing extremists also took part, and slogans such as “Better chops than Mohammed” could be seen. In 2014 there were riots on this occasion, with numerous injuries and arrests. This “march of independence” was organized by the All-Polish youth together with the national radical camp . There were also violent riots in 2013 when a group of demonstrators attacked a building of the Russian embassy and a rainbow installation in front of the Church of the Savior in Warsaw was set on fire.

In October 2014 there were neo-Nazi graffiti in the Karl Liebknecht Stadium in Babelsberg. Supporters of the Polish third division soccer team Polonia Przemysl committed to this action. There were indications that they were close to the All-Polish Youth.

history

The All-Polish Youth was re-established in Poznan on December 2, 1989 by the then 18-year-old Roman Giertych and was run until 1994. He had to leave her in early 2006 because of her Nazism for which he was responsible. Nevertheless, from March 2006 he was chairman of the League of Polish Families - in a right-wing coalition with the parties "Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS)" ( Law and Justice ) and Samoobrona (self-defense) - from May 5, 2006 to August 13, 2007 the government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski as Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister. During this time he renounced the ideals of the All-Polish youth, who had thugs from the hooligan scene of the Legia Warsaw football club in their ranks and traits of Nazi comradeship.

The All-Polish Youth continued the tradition of the pre-war All-Polish Youth as a national Catholic organization with an ideological and educational character that is active throughout Poland. For many years it was the youth organization of the LPR ( League of Polish Families ). The interplay between the League and the All-Polish Youth became particularly evident during the 2005 parliamentary elections, when the leader of the LPR at the last minute selected some candidates for the LPR to be elected to the Sejm (Polish Parliament) by members of the All-Polish Youth replaced.

“It is astonishing that in the 2005 elections with the League of Polish Families, former members of the right-wing extremist organization All-Polish Youth found their way into the Polish government. Both the League and the All-Polish Youth pay homage to the nationalist tradition of the interwar period in its combination of anti-Semitic, anti-German and clerical ideas and oppose all who do not correspond to the party image. "

- Magdalena Gebala : Caught in your own myth? 2012

The All-Polish Youth was assigned to the dominant actors of the xenophobic radical right and characterized as anti-Semitic, such as Radio Maryja and the National Rebirth of Poland .

The predecessor organization All Polish Youth, which belonged to the National Party, was known for numerous anti-Semitic actions between 1931 and 1934.

Both the Hitler salute and other National Socialist symbols were repeatedly used by key representatives of the organization. They also tried to spread their nationalist propaganda in school classes.

In 2005 they took a particularly offensive action under the name Parade of Normality against homosexual demonstrators of the Parada Równości ("Parade of Equality"), which was not approved by the authorities .

They also gathered as counter-demonstrators at the Manifa women's demonstration in March 2006.

“While the extremely conservative All-Poland youth had always gathered at the monument of Cardinal Wyszynski in the past and tried to provoke the Manifa demonstrators with slogans such as 'Gays into the gas, lesbians into the labor camp', they changed their strategy this year. A large banner shows your logo and the words All-Polish Youth . They hold bars of soap in their hands with the word 'Higiena' printed in relief. The soap is intended to serve as a symbol of purity and to encourage people to 'wash off the wrong ideology of feminists and lesbians', according to one of the representatives. "

- Anika Keinz : Poland's Others 2008

For the beginning of June 2006, several gay organizations had again registered a “parade of equality”. In previous years, Kaczynski in the office of the mayor of Warsaw had banned this parade several times because it "insulted religion" or, in his opinion, the associated traffic problems were unsolvable. Kaczynski repeatedly spoke out against equal rights for homosexuals.

As a result of these incidents, there was a break between the LPR and the All-Polish Youth in 2007.

Chairperson

  • Roman Giertych (1989-1994)
  • Damian Pukacki (1994–1995)
  • Dariusz Wasilewski (1995–1997)
  • Piotr Sosiński (1997–1999)
  • Wojciech Wierzejski (1999–2000)
  • Maciej Twaróg (2000-2002)
  • Piotr Ślusarczyk (2002-2004)
  • Radosław Parda (2004-2005)
  • Marcin Kubiński (2005)
  • Krzysztof Bosak (2005)

All-Polish youth today

The organization aims to educate people in the Catholic and nationalist spirit. Political activity is not one of their official goals. Members are allowed to hold political office, but not on behalf of the organization. In order to achieve its goals, the All-Polish Youth organizes among other things

  1. school camps for the purpose of training and relaxation, where the following activities are held:
    • Lectures on historical and political topics
    • Meeting with activists of the pre-war nationalist movement and other invited guests
    • Sporting competitions
    • Concerts
    • Visiting monuments
    • Holy masses and pilgrimages
    • historical and literary youth competitions.
  2. public campaigns such as the “Kocham Polskę” (I love Poland) campaign, a public project that aims to promote the so-called “new patriotism” and, above all, to appeal to young people. The campaign consisted of organizing press conferences, handing out handouts and pens bearing the campaign logo and hanging posters. It was carried out in numerous Polish cities.
  3. Educational and informative campaigns on business development in the western coastal area. The action started with a press conference. 10,000 informative leaflets and materials on programs for support and development in the region were prepared. This material was distributed in employment offices and in higher education institutions in several cities.
  4. the celebration of national holidays and other important annual and public holidays
  5. collecting donations for poor children and Poles living in the West
  6. the trusted anti-abortion phone to report information about underground abortion activities. A special mailbox was set up for the same purpose. (Since 1993 there have been restrictive abortion laws in Poland that only allow abortion for strictly medical reasons and for rape or deformity of the fetus.)
  7. the “Stop Pornography” campaign, which advocates a ban on displaying pornographic content in public.
  8. free tutoring for children from the poorest families

criticism

The All-Polish youth is accused of spreading right-wing extremist ideas. The opponents of the organization emphasize that its members often try to enforce their ideological views with (physical) violence. An example can be the action of the All-Polish Youth during the Parada Równości (Equality Parades) in Warsaw in 2005 and 2006. The peaceful demonstration was thrown with stones, bottles and eggs by members of the All-Polish Youth, whereby the arrested denied their membership of the organization. According to reports from Indymedia two people were taken to hospital with head injuries by stones. The leaders of the All-Polish Youth deny allegations that they and their political supporters initiate and support violence against sexual minorities, while Wojciech Wierzejski threatens legally active gay and lesbian organizations with their criminalization during television interviews in Poland.

Linguistic means

In public debates, the All-Polish youth uses an aggressive, provocative and hateful language against opponents of their ideology - an example is their designation for homosexuals as "fagots", "perverts", "degenerate" and "pedophiles". This terminology differs from that of other opponents of homosexuals, such as B. the ruling party “Prawo i Sprawiedliwość” ( Law and Justice ). This aggressive language of the All-Polish youth can be heard not only in interviews with its members in the media, but also on their homepage.

Web links

Commons : All-Polish Youth  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

source

This article is based on a translation from the Polish Wikipedia (source: Młodzież Wszechpolska ) and has been edited and supplemented.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Spanka, Andreas Kahrs: The movement marches. (PDF) In: Eastern Europe, Volume 64, pp. 129–140. P. 137 f , accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Winterbauer: “Poland is a place of German expansion. Terrible. ” Die Welt, November 13, 2015, accessed November 19, 2015 .
  3. ^ Paul Flückiger: Poland in a nationalistic frenzy. Der Tagesspiegel, November 11, 2015, accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  4. ^ Riots with dozens of injured people: Interior Minister praises the police operation in Warsaw. Spiegel Online, November 12, 2014, accessed November 19, 2015 .
  5. ^ René Garzke: Neo-Nazi graffiti in the Karl Liebknecht Stadium. Potsdam Latest News, October 26, 2014, accessed November 19, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Klaus Ziemer: The Polish Political System: An Introduction . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-13595-3 , p. 214 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-978-3-531-94028-1 .
  7. ^ Olaf Sundermeyer: Poland: Party under a burning swastika. Spiegel Online, December 6, 2006, accessed November 19, 2015 .
  8. ^ Rainer Mende: The Polish Youth. (PDF) In: Country analyzes. Deutsches Poleninstitut, Research Center for Eastern Europe and the German Society for Eastern European Studies, February 19, 2008, p. 6 , accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Matthias Guttke: Strategies of Persuasion in the schriftkonstituierten political communication . Depicted on party programs of the New Right in Poland. Ed .: Peter Kosta, Gerda Haßler, Lilia Schürcks, Nadine Thielemann. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60457-1 , p. 5 f . (also dissertation at the University of Potsdam, 2009).
  10. ↑ Magdalena Gebala: Trapped in your own myth? (PDF) In: Series of publications by the Interdisciplinary Center for Education and Communication in Migration Processes (IBKM) at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg No. 61. Rudolf Leiprecht, Inger Petersen, Winfried Schulz-Kaempf, 2012, p. 82 , accessed on 19. November 2015 (see footnote on page 82).
  11. ↑ Right-wing extremism in Europe - country analyzes, counter-strategies and labor market-oriented exit work. (PDF) Ralf Melzer, Sebastian Serafin, p. 15 , accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Rafal Jerzy Skarbek-Kozietulski: Populism as a legacy of real socialism? Social and political aspects of the “populist moment” in Poland after 1989. (PDF) In: Diploma thesis at the University of Vienna. January 2012, p. 71 , accessed November 19, 2015 .
  13. ^ Karl-Heinz Gräfe: The ghosts of the past have also returned to Poland. (PDF) Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, September 2001, p. 811 f , accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  14. ^ Nationalist propaganda in Polish schools. Der Standard, October 20, 2005, accessed November 19, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Katarzyna Stoklosa: The danger Germany. Sächsische Zeitung, July 4, 2005, archived from the original on November 20, 2015 ; Retrieved November 19, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Lucyna Kopciewicz: Manifa and March 8th in Poland - media coverage and experiences of different generations. (PDF) In: Gender: Journal for Gender, Culture and Society 4 2012. 2012, pp. 130–137 , accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Anika Keinz: Poland's Others . Negotiations of gender and sexuality in Poland after 1989. transcript, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-8376-1011-6 , p. 160 f . (At the same time dissertation 2007 at the Humboldt University Berlin).
  18. ↑ Beck also wants to stand up for rights of homosexuals in Warsaw. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 30, 2006, accessed on November 19, 2015 .
  19. ↑ Claudia Globisch, Agnieszka Pufelska, Voker Weiss (ed.): The dynamics of the European right . History, continuities and change. 1st edition. VS, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17191-3 , pp. 82 f .
  20. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung : The right to hold hands. The Polish right: "narrow-minded farmers" , May 19, 2010
  21. ↑ a b [indymedia.org] June 10 Parada Rownosci in Warsaw
  22. ↑ independ media center: Kaczynski becomes premier. Right-wing extremist power growth in Poland ( memento from February 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), July 19, 2006