What is the difference between the Law and Justice party and the Confederation political alliance?

5 comments

1. In theory? Konfederacja is a party pretending to be anti establishment and your otherwise typical contrarians. The usual set of altright nutjobs comes along, from libertarian state to ultraconservative social doctrine. In practice… they’re the PiS for younger people.

   PiS also adopted and built their perceived identity on a whole lot of altright nutjobs narratives, namely a broad antiwoke stance (whether this woke existed in Poland or not lol). At a surface Konfederacja was mildly attacking PiS in public, buuuut… their leaders were “not ruling out” to be part of PiS coalition when interviewed, while leaked emails were showing an image of an actually willing partnership. Their ultraconservative electorates are different by age basically, but that’s about it – when PiS lost elections it was the Konfederacja supporters who cried most loudly in the internet.

2. PiS are socialists, meanwhile Konf are liberterians.

3. Biggest difference is fact that one party ruled and other didn’t.

   PiS says they are ideologically right wing, but they increased social spending a lot.

   Confederation says that they are ideologically and economically right, but they would need to have sole majority to implement most of their reforms, so it won’t happen anyway.

   Opposition parties didn’t did well – PiS still get most votes. But opposition can make coalition for the same reason as why so many people voted for them. PiS angered too much people with their abrupt changes of law (abortion biggest hindspot there).

   But whole narrative of opposition was “we are not PiS and we will uphold absurd social spendings introduced by PiS, so why you should even vote for PiS?” – many opposition parties were against 500+ and 13th/14th pensions, but now they are ok with this apparently.

4. If you are in Law and Justice, you shal think and talk what Kaczyński says. If you are in Konfederacja, you can talk whatever you want (with exception of left things), even that Earth is flat.

5. These parties actually have very little in common.

   PiS: socially conservative populism. Strong state with strong police and army. Big social transfers (justified in a right wing language, so it’s ‘support for Polish famuilies’ rather than ‘equity’ or ‘social justice’). Support for big, state controlled companies. Support for big public infrastructure investment and generally big public spending. Attempts to introduce a more progressive income tax (abandoned bc of outcry of free market liberals, who dominate public discourse on economy).

   Konfederacja: public image dominated by Korwin/Mentzen right wing libertarian fraction. Advocates almost no taxes and almost no state spending. Social darwinist world with very little rules. No public education, no public healthcare, no state pensions, easy access to guns for everyone. Plus a peculiar climate of mysogyny. Unsuprisingly a party appealing mostly to adolescent boys and young men. (think Ayn Rand fans in the USA, with mysogyny added)

   Despite these differences IMO it is not impossible that PiS would attempt to form a coalition governement with Konfederacja, had they had enough votes to rule together – however only to cannibalise them the way it attempted with LPR and Samoobrona during the 2005-2007 era. That is to peel off enough deputies to rule alone, and destroy the remains.