Every Election Is Now Existential

3 comments

1. Anne Applebaum: “A few days before the Polish presidential election on Sunday, a Polish friend of mine received an unexpected message from someone she had not seen for 20 years. The woman had found my friend on Facebook, noticed that she was supporting the candidacy of Rafał Trzaskowski—the mayor of Warsaw, a liberal centrist—and begged her to change her mind. She asked her to vote instead for Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian, former boxer, and veteran of street fights that he describes as ‘noble battles.’ She sent my friend a copy of an anonymous appeal that has shown up elsewhere on social media but seems to have been one of many similar warnings spread widely by email.

   “… Because I am married to the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, and because he was briefly a presidential candidate in the past, I have read a lot of this kind of thing before (and, of course, hereby make a declaration of interest). Nevertheless, the appeal that my friend received seemed to me a particularly striking, almost paradigmatic invocation of the blood-and-soil nationalism that is now part of Polish politics, American politics, and European politics.

   “The message listed all of the crimes allegedly committed by a series of Polish center-right and center-left governments, twisting the record and rewriting the history of the past 30 years into a story of trauma and victimization … In truth, Poland has been a major beneficiary of both foreign investment and European Union funds, has grown consistently for 30 years, and is now one of the fastest-expanding economies in Europe. The level of social spending has grown too.

   “The appeal did not go into these details. Instead, it warned against impending treason: ‘Wake up from your lethargy! Look how Poland, your motherland, is being torn apart by external and internal forces. Don’t let her be abused, don’t let her face be as sad as the soil of a graveyard.’

   “… The election was so close that exit polls predicted a narrow win for Trzaskowski on Sunday evening. But by Monday morning, the tiny majority had swung the other way. Nawrocki won with 50.89 percent of the vote, to Trzaskowski’s 49.11 percent.

   “… The language of blood and soil, which has once again become central to public debate in many democracies, is very powerful. It helps many people explain a complex world. It cannot easily be defeated or dismissed in one electoral cycle. The triumphant election of a centrist coalition in 2023 did not remove it from Polish politics, just as the election of Joe Biden in 2020 did not weaken its power in the U.S.”

   Read more: [https://theatln.tc/OShONJdC](https://theatln.tc/OShONJdC)

2. **TL;DR:**

   • A Polish friend of mine received an unexpected message from someone she had not seen for 20 years. She asked her to vote for Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist historian, former boxer, and veteran of street fights.

   • The message listed all of the crimes allegedly committed by a series of Polish center-right and center-left governments. The election was so close that exit polls predicted a narrow win for Rafał Trzaskowski on Sunday evening.

   • But by Monday morning, the tiny majority had swung the other way, with the election going to NawRocki. The language of blood and soil is a lesson for anyone fighting authoritarianism anywhere else, writes Frida Ghitis, who is married to Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, who was briefly a presidential candidate in the past.

   • It was an optimistic message but also a message that, at least among a large part of the population, could not compete with blood, graveyards, humiliation, and treason, Ghitis says.

   —

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3. Every election has been existential for a long time

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