cascade free zone

This is an interesting interview (in French, with English sub-titles). I think the speaker, who is a Polish Member of the European Parliament, does a good job of explaining the trends in Central Europe. Basically Poland is continuing the work of de-Communizaiton of their country. Part of this involves frank admission that the first phase (the forced privatization phase) didn’t go as well as it could have.

What is most interesting for Americans about the interview is the contrast with our situation here in the USA.

The speaker, Marek Jurek, sees the Trump Presidency as a parallel movement in the USA. I disagree on two counts. Poland seems quite united in their thinking as a country. The ruling party won an outright majority, most of the other parties are also right-wing. There is not much Left political power remaining in Poland, unlike here.

Poland, with this government, set about to undo the cultural hegemony of the institutional Left, which as he points out had carried directly over from the Communist (occupation) government. We are no where near achieving “de-Communization” of America, nor even articulating that it’s needed and explaining where it’s coming from.

Our political situation, that is the Trump win combined with the GOP sweep of Congress and State Legislatures, was driven by a relatively incoherent rebellion. It’s like Marlon Brando’s famous line in The Wild One:

Dancer: “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”
Johnny: “What have you got?”

Neither Trump nor the GOP know what they are rebelling against.  A lot of different groups projected their own rebellions onto both, particularly onto Trump.   His campaign followed the recent American tradition of being generically aspirational without being specific or prescriptiive.  “It’s gonna be great!”  And neither Trump nor the GOP elite has shown any real willingness to pick up the torch of rebellion, any rebellion, with real enthusiasm.

Polish MEP: We contest this societal model which negates the identity of Western European people.

Note on the illustration:  The unity of the Polish people behind the Right was demonstrated by this march of over 100,000 Poles, self identified Nationalists, on Polish Independence Day, 2016.