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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Can anybody explain the Polish perspective on the Ukraine war?

I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.

My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.

Still, Poland used to get in trouble with the EU for not wanting to take in a certain amount of them.

Moreover, Poland has also faced reprimand from the same union for their policies toward non-heterosexuals.

Why did Poland even join the EU? Did they really need the money so badly at the time?

Now it seems that Poland is going toward ever more alignment with the EU and US.

Are they really so scared of Russia that they would drink the corn syrup and give up on whatever is left of their culture/sovereignty/demographics?

Is anybody of relevance in Poland even attempting to contradict the pro-Western turn?

  • -14

Why did Poland even join the EU? Did they really need the money so badly at the time?

From what I've gathered from my Polish acquaintances and co-workers* the answer is pretty straight forward, they don't see themselves as "Eastern", they see themselves as "Western" a significant component their national myth is of Poles as the bulwark, standing strong against the tide (Polish spearmen held back the Golden Horde, Polish Hussars broke the siege of Vienna, and so on). More pointedly Poland got royally fucked over by a Russian German alliance in World-War one, and again in World War Two. Accordingly their towards both Russia and Germany today is essentially one of "Never Again". From the Polish perspective joining NATO defangs the German threat while pissing off their ancient rivals/enemies, the Muskovites, as far as they're concerned it's all win. Sure the duplicitous Germans and and effete Belgians can whinge about immigration policy but what are they actually gonna do, Poland is part of the Schengen Zone baby and they've been pulling the DeSantis trick of sending unwanted immigrants to the hometowns of politicians who promote immigration for years now.

As for the Ukraine war in particular, Kiev has long been an ally of Krakow and Moscow has long been a rival/enemy. Pieprzic Rossia, Slava Ukraini.

* Note most of those acquaintances and co-workers are in the Polish military/defense industry which probably colors things a bit.

a significant component their national myth is of Poles as the bulwark, standing strong against the tide (Polish spearmen held back the Golden Horde, Polish Hussars broke the siege of Vienna, and so on).

Sometimes to a cringe-inducing degree. See Christ of Europe

I think it's interesting that Poland sees Ukraine as a friend. Didn't Ukraine basically carve the western part of their country out of former Polish territory (killing the Poles that lived on it)? Or is this more of a conscious choice to ignore the various ethnic purification projects that formed the current map of Europe, because they know that it would be dangerous to reopen that topic?

(Online) people bringing it up since the war started are shunned. Before, it was frequently brought up.

The Soviet Union decided it was keeping what is now western Ukraine rather than giving it back to Poland after WW2, but that’s not modern day Ukraine’s fault.

There is a conscious effort to set aside the appetite for regular gestures of remorse from Ukrainian side, for practical reasons. A mix of seeing Ukraine as a weak, confused country we can siphon for valuable people, an ally we can create a power block with to rival Germans / Russians, a fear of appearing self interested, or far worse, angering our great and generous ally overseas.

Partially a conscious choice to drop all outstanding border controversies with Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus to avoid driving them into Russia’s arms - the approach was developed in the exile press during the Soviet period, and benefited from the discrediting of the interwar extreme nationalist approach by the events of WW2. They also wanted to maintain established borders to avoid reopening the question of the territories “recovered” from Germany (West Germany had earlier refused to make a final, binding agreement to respect the new borders pending a future reunification with East Germany during a period when more of the refugees from Prussia, Silesia, and Hinterpommern were both alive and unreconciled to the expulsion). Poland has already been compensated for the loss of ethnically mixed Galicia-Volhynia (main site of the Ukrainians anti-Polish massacres) and other parts of the Kresy with the newly-monoethnically-Polish German acquisitions, so it’s not like they need the area for anything.

Thank you for answering the question!

From the Polish perspective joining NATO defangs the German threat while pissing off their ancient rivals/enemies, the Muskovites, as far as they're concerned it's all win.

Seems a little bit careless. The Eternal Germ will not let them get away with it.

Sure the duplicitous Germans and and effete Belgians can whinge about immigration policy but what are they actually gonna do, Poland is part of the Schengen Zone baby and they've been pulling the DeSantis trick of sending unwanted immigrants to the hometowns of politicians who promote immigration for years now.

But now they're submerged in Ukrainian immigrants. It's not the end of it either.

It seems to me that their only saving grace is their unique language, for now.

Once they have the Americans 'helping out' with the Russian threat and the Germans 'advising' and the British 'training' they'll find out that their younger generations only want to speak English.

+if/when NATO finally takes out Russia, I imagine Poland would be in the runner-up for the next 'disturbingly native-looking' country in what remains of Europe then.

If anything, Russia is a good distraction from their little DeSantis tricks, it's not in their best long-term interest to have the Ukraine wedge take out the bear.

Poland does not like taking in economic refugees, and the fact that they are taking in Ukrainian refugees so readily is a measure of how much they dislike the entire concept of "Russia invades someone."

Russia has demonstrated that if it had the capacity, it would be an existential threat to all of Eastern Europe. It’s thus in most of those nations self interest to make it damn sure that Russia cannot achieve that capacity in the future.

But now they're submerged in Ukrainian immigrants. It's not the end of it either.

We've been swamped with immigrants from Ukraine for a while now. What changed is that now we're swarmed with refugees as well, for what the distinction is worth. The crowd crossing the border fits the common image of what a refugee wave should look like - there is plenty of evidence, and I made a point of going through the central train station of Kraków a few times week during the first month or two just to see for myself.

Arrivals are not particularly controversial, though the various welfare they receive is, for example.

But now they're submerged in Ukrainian immigrants. It's not the end of it either.

"Refugees", almost entirely female and children, with a very legitimate and widely accepted claim, whose male relatives are fighting right across the border until they return. I am not very sympathetic to Ukraine personally but I can't comprehend how someone can't understand why Europeans are generally quite supportive of this refugee wave.

Also to mention one aspect which is often hushed (or unknown to Americans maybe), Ukrainian women have long been the number one source of white female prostitutes around the continent and beyond. In my native language of Turkish, the word Ukrainian is practically synonymous with prostitute. Until 10-20 years ago it was Russians who filled the same niche and the phrase "going to the Russian" was universally understood to visit a prostitute.

I am not writing this to be insulting but it is worthwhile to realize that this is one of the big reasons why the images of millions of poor Ukrainian women flocking to their countries is often not perceived as something threatening by the locals.

Your comment reminds me how in the recent Polish poll (that I can't find now), Polish women were slightly less supportive of the Ukrainian refugees compare to men. Sounds like they don't want more competition

+if/when NATO finally takes out Russia, I imagine Poland would be in the runner-up for the next 'disturbingly native-looking' country in what remains of Europe then.

Do you believe that a primary goal of the EU/NATO is to fill all European countries with non-White immigrants? Do you actually think the EU/NATO strongly object to the fact that the population of Russia is mostly ethnic Russians, and that the population of Poland is almost entirely ethnic Poles?

Well the EU/NATO are not exactly sentient entities, they are just vehicles, even technologies welded by the actual powers-that-be. While the rulers of NATO are not exactly the rulers of the EU, I believe the rulers of the EU to be vassals of the rulers of NATO.

Given that there is only dozens of extremely powerful people that are tied to all these entities, it's not surprising that the same billionaires who own the media companies that ultimately decide elections in Western countries are very close to the center of power.

I do believe that ethnically-homogeneous European countries are an obstacle to these people, and they actually let us know by transparently publishing it in the Guardian, NYT, HuffingtonPost, etc.

Also the population of Russia is a mix of ethnicities, 'ethnic Russian' would cover quite a varied array of phenotypes. It's hard to tell what exactly their issue with Russia is, but fighting a war to the last Ukrainian is definitely a good way to clean up some of these pesky homogeneous East-Europeans.

I do believe that ethnically-homogeneous European countries are an obstacle to these people, and they actually let us know by transparently publishing it in the Guardian, NYT, HuffingtonPost, etc.

Can you provide an example where they say they have a problem with the ethnic homogeneity of Poland?

Also the population of Russia is a mix of ethnicities, 'ethnic Russian' would cover quite a varied array of phenotypes.

It is true that many ethnic groups live in Russia, but ethnic Russians make up 81% of the country's population and they are relatively homogeneous. Chechens, Kalmyks, etc. are not ethnic Russians; they are part of the remaining 19%, which is the "mix of ethnicities" with "a varied array of phenotypes".

It's hard to tell what exactly their issue with Russia is

The obvious answer is "they're invading a neighbouring country for no reason and murdering civilians". The cynical answer is "Russia is a historical political and military rival and they're taking this opportunity to weaken them". You seem to have skipped both and gone straight to the batshit-crazy answer of "they hate Russians because they're White".

Can you provide an example where they say they have a problem with the ethnic homogeneity of Poland?

I haven't seen this, best I could find was this one where they insist on the racial homogeneity and call people that value it 'extreme nationalists'

The blood-drenched harrowing of the war, followed by post-war border shifts and ethnic cleansing, created a racially pure Poland for the first time in history — fulfilling the dreams of earlier generations of extreme nationalists.

This is the type of piece they are pushing against white people in the US, the country the Poles are making the choice of allying themselves with instead of Russians :

How whiteness poses the greatest threat to US democracy

I don't see why they would not similarly attack Poland in the future, to the tune of 'Poland took the money of multicultural democracies to defend itself from evil nationalist Russia, but they still refuse to accept multiculturalism'

The obvious answer is "they're invading a neighbouring country for no reason and murdering civilians".

The US do the same to countries they are not even neighbors of, and defend their allies engaged in the same practices, in Yemen notably.

What is so special about the borders of Ukraine that needs to be defended at all cost?

Plus Russia actually has a reason in protecting the Russian minorities

in the East shelled by the Ukrainian government since 2014.

While I understand due to historical reasons why this is not a popular sentiment in Poland, I think it would be better for the Polish people to get annexed by Russia -which I do not see as likely- than to spend another 50 years under EU/US dominion.

There is already a case study with the FRG vs GDR, with the Soviet-dominated side faring better in preserving original German culture and demographics, as demonstrated by this map of mosques

The continued existence of the Polish people is at stake, but I understand that that is not what most people are immediately concerned with.

I do find it amusing that some leaders of Poland explicitly said that they do not want to turn into Brussels (from 1st link):

Błaszczak warned that EU pressure on Poland to accept refugees “is a straight road to a social catastrophe, with the result that in a few years Warsaw could look like Brussels.”

It seems that they made the same connection as I do, regarding at least migrants and safety, but they apparently don't think leaning further into EU/NATO is compromising that position, or that position is not taking priority over the perceived Russian threat.

Can you provide an example where they say they have a problem with the ethnic homogeneity of Poland?

Here's an oldie but goodie

Huh, 20 years ago? I thought it'd be something new, looking at the title: "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Polish".

Also "By: authors", lol.

Everyone here is white. They are not ostentatiously white the way, say, Swedes are;

Most obviously, there aren’t many Africans, Arabs, or Asians. The rest of Europe seems a wonderfully Technicolor place these days—the metro in Paris, Rome, and London could almost be mistaken for the subway in New York. Heterogeneity is a tonic; it adds the energy of unexpected combinations—the woman in chador chatting with the blonde woman in jogging gear on the tube. Ah, cosmopolitanism! But alas, Poland is merely Polish, an experiment in ethnic deprivation; the unbearable whiteness of being.

Speaking of cosmopolitanism—Stalin’s favorite euphemism for Jewishness—there aren’t many Jews here, either. There used to be three million, but the Nazis took care of that. Forty percent of Warsaw was Jewish; the deficit now seems overpowering, they fill the empty spaces in the streets. And not just the Jews: Thousands upon thousands of Polish Catholics were killed at Auschwitz, thousands more were worked to death in Siberia; the officer class of the Polish army was slaughtered by the Nazis and the Soviets. Poland was the charnel house of the 20th century.

This doesn't even seem accusatory at least until this point. "Authors" seem to just really, really fetishize 'diversity'.

The economy stopped growing, as market economies will sometimes do. Unemployment stands at more than 18 percent. In the parliamentary election of 2000, the center did not hold. The former Communists, who had gained power posing as social democrats, remained in control, but the center-right opposition—largely composed of Solidarity remnants—collapsed. Two rather unique populist parties suddenly materialized as significant forces. One was the League of Polish Families, a party of Catholic nationalist extremists (which received 9 percent of the vote); the other was called Self-Defense, a frightening mixture of nationalism and socialism led by a bully named Andrzej Lepper (it received 10 percent, but its strength has nearly doubled in recent public opinion polls). By contrast, Freedom Union—the party of the former Solidarity intellectuals—received only 3 percent and has disappeared from the Polish parliament, the Sejm.

And so, the Polish jitters. Pessimists abound in Warsaw and around the country. There is a war between the government and the still-strict central bank over monetary policy. Lepper is making news every day, usually involving scuffles with the police (last Thursday, he tried to stop imported grain from entering Poland by rail) or with his fellow parliamentarians (he was removed from the hall after a scuffle last Friday). It is likely that the former Communists, led now by prime minister Leszek Miller, will attempt to move left, sloppily, in an attempt to ease the pain, outflank the populists, and keep their apparatchiks prosperous.

“Poland is becoming more and more like Latin America,” says Jaroslaw Kaczynski , leader of the Law and Justice party, a reformist center-right political remnant of Solidarity. “People succeed here not because they’re talented, but because they know the right people. There is a Polish saying: Thousands gain, millions lose. This is an oversimplification, but we do pay an enormous corruption tax, and no one seems interested in reform. So we have an economic crisis that threatens to become a political crisis—my fear is that unless the economy improves, the populist parties will become very strong.”

And now he rules, thanks to blatant populism.

Huh, 20 years ago? I thought it'd be something new

You looked at something explicitly described as an "oldie", and thought it was new? Why?

This doesn't even seem accusatory at least until this point. "Authors" seem to just really, really fetishize 'diversity'.

I don't think having a problem with homogeneity requires for the tone to be accusatory.

And now he rules, thanks to blatant populism.

I'm sorry, I'm physically incapable of pretending media's boogeymen are uniquely bad, or that there is something wrong with populism.

What's a primary goal and what's a secondary goal? A primary goal of the EU is, charitably, to keep Europeans in the manner to which they have grown accustomed, i.e. to maintain their welfare states in an age of falling fertility rates and dwindling tax bases. They have decided that the optimal way to do this to usher in an endless number of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and have repeatedly made statements to that effect. To the extent that any European country - Hungary, say, or Poland - objects that they do not want to take in large African populations, the EU has indicated that it will cajole, threaten and twist arms until it gets what it wants. After all, such objections are an obstacle to the goal of maintaining a particular economic state, and thus an undermining of the EU project at large. Given these facts, is it fair to say that the EU is at odds with the continued existence of European countries as majority-European states, as they want migrants in numbers large enough to affect demographic pyramids?

EU is not taking in an "endless number of migrants from Africa and the Middle East". The total number of migrants to EU in 2020 was 1,9 million, a small trickle compared to the total EU population. Out of this, ca 600 00 are asylum seekers. If EU was actually intent on ushering in an "endless number of migrants", this would be an incredibly weak effort, considering how many Africans and Middle Easterns are actually willing to move; it would also be strange for EU to run a whole agency (and keep giving it more and more funds, and turn a blind eye to its migrant pushbacks) to coordinate ways to keep unauthorized migrants, mainly from these areas, out.

EU countries do, indeed, wish to utilize migration to save the welfare state, but when it comes to first residence permits EU issues for employment/education purposes, far and away the biggest group, already in 2021, were the Ukrainians. That indicates who EU wants to work, currently, and it's not hard to imagine that there's a number of Eurocrats currently seeing the Ukrainian refugee flows to Europe as a major boon, presenting an employable and uncontroversial constituency for further work. EU does, at times, weakly try to get Eastern European countries to take in more refugees, mainly as a form of "burden sharing" to take the load off the Western countries, but as one can see from their demographics, these efforts are not really an example of "cajoling, threatening and twisting arms", since that sort of a thing would presumably actually get results.

EU migration policy can mostly be understood through three mandates: getting a modicum of labor-based migration (often from other, non-EU European countries, though that's a diminishing category) and then trying to balance the quest to maintain some sort of a de jure refugee/asylum system, since that is an important part of EU's self-image/external image as the bulwark of the international system and its underlying human rights treaties, and the quest to de facto ensure there's not too many asylum seekers and refugees, let alone illegal immigrants, since that would be destabilizing. The push/pull created by the conflict of the last two mandates then makes the whole immigration policy rather an unwieldy contraption, not really something that most mainstream EU forces are willing to discuss.

I'd also like to add the huge amounts of money, plus various political concessions, given to Turkey in exchange for keeping the migrants at bay.

Yes, and the general way how many seem to believe that EU's migration policies are basically those few confused months in 2015 (or rather a certain interpretation of those months) essentially representing the entire EU migration policy until then and since then, instead of looking at all the things EU has done, both diplomatically and legislatively, to try to make sure that those months aren't repeated again.

You're leaving out the most culture war relevant part of the story, how this policy came to be. The turkey deal only happened after the crisis.

On one side, you have the blank statists, who thought it would be a good idea (they weren't confused) to import millions of MENA people . On the other, the far right and eastern europeans, who warned that they were unassimilable . As the evidence poured in, and the blank statists started losing elections, they changed course, and the state of affairs you describe is the result. Sadly yet predictably, Pol(and) was right again.

But now they're submerged in Ukrainian immigrants.

Sheltering the women and children of your ally while the men fight your hated enemy is the least one can do as a good ally.

But now they're submerged in Ukrainian immigrants. It's not the end of it either.

Not immigrants; refugees. There is a difference, and the Ukrainian new-arrivals to Poland are legitimately refugees.

The context is comprehensively different from Merkel's third-world invasion. From my reading, the biggest difference is that support for Ukrainian refugees is massively popular in Poland--not just right-to-left along a generic political axis, but importantly, top-to-bottom from the Polish elite to the grassroots.

The new arrivals are, indeed, refugees, but even before the war, Poland was actually swamped by “temporary” workers from Ukraine. But that’s not the point: the difference between Ukrainians in Poland vs Africans in Germany or Sweden is not so much based on legal status, but rather cultural similarity. If US today got mass immigration from English Canadians, who just happened to speak as incomprehensibly as rural Scottsmen, but quickly learn local dialect, it wouldn’t be seen as that big of a deal, compared to mass immigration from Latin America. This is closer to the today’s relationship between Poles and Ukrainians, despite recent history of genocide of Poles perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists (unlike with Blacks in US, in Europe grudges are not so persistently held, especially if they happen to become very inconvenient due to changing political realities).

The issue I see with it is that they're building an infrastructure and customs to welcome and accommodate refugees. This attracts a certain type of people that will not leave once the current Ukraine crisis is over.

It's a slippery slope.

What if Turkey has a civil war, or even Germany, which is starting to look a lot like Turkey, demographically-speaking, aren't they too 'neighbors' etc?

The current wave of refugees is women with children, which is much different than single young males from Africa. If they end up staying, then given cultural similarity, that’s a win too, considering the dire state of demographics in developed world. Germany will not have civil war, and if Turkey has one, Poland simply will not admit any of them, as it did not admit the big wave of Middle East refugees a few years ago, or the ones trying to illegally crossing through Belarus.

What you seem to be missing is that the current government of Poland, as much as they screw around with the rule of law and principles of republican government, they are not hostile to their average constituents, in a way that, say, US government often is. This reduces the downside risk.

They are not hostile to their constituents but deepening the ties to governments that are.

The power imbalance between Poland and US is not in Poland's favor, they will not be able to keep protecting their people.

I think the Polish people is underestimating the risk of staying in the same failing boat as the EU / US.

in Europe grudges are not so persistently held, especially if they happen to become very inconvenient due to changing political realities

Not least because a typical European country has historical reason to have a grudge against most of their neighbours. Acting on all of those would obviously be a huge negative when it comes to economic and other prosperity.

I agree--I think that cultural similarity is one of the big factors that contributes to the widespread popularity of welcoming the Ukrainian refugees. A shared concern over an expansionist Russia and simple human compassion for a neighbor's plight are the others that occur to me offhand.

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