Imagine a country where You are fearing to openly admit that You are liberal because so many of hate speech was directed against people supporting liberal thought. I do it in this letter openly, fearing intimidation, so please do not reveal my name if anyone inquires.
Herewith I would like to describe what in fact had happened in Poland. I cannot wait any more, because I have unfortunately do continue my work and looking into Polish politics devoured too much of my private time. Before dropping the subject, I would like to leave some comments for those who would like to trace what in fact happened there. Unfortunately we have to work partially in disguise and we fear of revealing our names, because the probability of being a victim of hatred and hate-speech is so high, and there is unfortunately no one to defend us, to stand for us, if some accusations happen to arise.
Imagine a country where the appeals to intimidate, to not to tolerate, to discriminate some people becouse of their creed or ethnic backgound are coming from an institution, which You are not allowed to criticise, as it was formerly the case with the Communist Party. Besides, if this institution will find You, they posses their own media and they can publicly make You infamous and You can do very little about it. This is what happened even to Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, that was publicly accused in this media of being a traitor and secret agent of foreign country. He could do very little about it, and still in the eyes of many people is seen as a traitor. If You happen to openly stand up against them, You can become the enemy number one of millions of people that listen to their nationwide media. And very few people will try to defend You.
In Poland no one is free to say that the whole rise to the power of these groups was caused by outrageous hate speech, that was without any obstacles performed by nationwide media belonging to this institution, and was only to a very limited degree opposed by other media that could not openly observe that the point of view presented there is the point of view and the political interest of the powerful owner, because they also feared that hate speech could turn against them. Because of some reasons that I will name later, other media could not criticise the whole institution in whose name the hate speech was performed, but only criticised a small and insignificant media part that did it. Many still keep repeating that this radio station that performed the hate speech, is not owned by this institution. Of course, it is, and that is the problem.
Imagine a country where the rise to the power of the ruling party was possible thanks to continuously repeated alleged anti-Polish conspiracy. Imagine a country where according to my estimations based on daily audience of this media [3] at least 10- 15 % of the population, that is at least 4 million people believes that Jews and Free-masons are conspiring against Poland. Imagine a country where You are all the time not allowed to openly state that all these conspiracy theories were in fact a political paranoia. Imagine a country where the rise to the power of the ruling party was possible thanks to the undisturbed spread of hatred against all those who are of different religious background (such as non-catholic charity foundation owner, Jurek Owsiak who supported Hare Krishna movement and was accused by them of promoting satatnism) or are atheists (those are the worst ones)! Imagine a country where such state of religious hatred is in minds of many millions of people! Imagine a country where to openly criticise one media group is enough to call the people wh critical report with the name of some hated religious minority so that the people will nearly persecute them. Have a look an a piece of it:
http://www.youtube.com/player.swf?video_id=WyxEdbyswKA&l=90 (the media atacked there, and named as “free-masons”, “Raus” (infact a German word), and “Jews, Jews, Jews”, “stinking Jews”, the word “Żydzi” (Jews) meaning actually also a traitor for these people, is the TVN station, that prepared a critical reportage about this media station)
Yes, I know that this is hardly believable. Many of my friends coming from other countries were deeply astonished hearing my relation of what actually happened. I suppose that Polish catholicism differs a lot from faiths in other countries, because so many people simply refuse to believe in these facts. Some historical background might be useful: Polish catholicism is a product of counterreformation, that invested in school system run by Jesuits and produced its main output- unbelievable religious hatred to people of different faiths, aimed at putting end to non-Catholics in Poland.
Once Poland, at its apogeum of wealth and spatial size in 16. century, was predominantly a protestant country. The position of Catholic Church could be regained only with unbelievable effort and spread of religious hatred. Polish protestants ended up harassed economically and socially already in the 17th and even more drastically in the 18th century. At the time of Polands’ decline, the change of confession from Catholicism to other was punished by death, and the Jesuits, a part of Catholic Church were, acording to some sources [5] informally rulling the country shortly before the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Official reason for the division of Poland among 3 neighbouring countries was the protection of people of faith different than the Catholic one. Interestingly, no one protested. Such a mighty empire was divided without any significant acts of resistance. Now the same story reappeared, with the same type of violent religious hatred.
No one, and never could say loudly and openly in the main mass media, that it is the Catholic Church in Poland that promotes and promoted anti-Semitism in its media and even in its churches, where racist books have been sold, as in the ‘Antyk’ bookshop in the cellar of the Catholic Church at the Grzybowski Square in Warsaw. You cannot openly say that the Church is currently the only institution being openly anti-Semitic, and was even more so in the past. No one is allowed to say that the same powerful institution is spreading the message of hatred against sexual minorities and is indicateded by most of the organisations who spread racial or homophobic hatred as their source and main inspiration for their activity.
The rise to the power of this ideology and the lack of criticism was possible by the media engagement of the Catholic Church, what blocked all the possibilities of criticism. Most of the main media are openly catholic, even the Gazeta Wyborcza, Polish first independent daily newspaper (the second main one, Rzeczpospolita, is owned in 49 % by government). Gazeta Wyborcza appeared on the market after the 1989 revolution and fiercely supports modern Catholicism trend (every day an issue of GW newspaper has a special 2-paged section on Catholic Church only), which is in fact a marginal trend within Polish part of this ogranisation. The dominant trend in Polish Church is the hate-speech and conspiracy theory. This is supported even by some of the academic lecturers [2].
According to the media owned by this institution, liberalism, that is the type of policy that I am partially supporting being a graduate of economics, was made by Jews and Freemasons and is a criminal ideology. Unfortunatelly Poland is a country with free media and freedom of press limited only to Internet. Mainstream media work with different rules. Today, the TV station Polsat, that broadcasted a talk-show with Kazimiera Szczuka, Polish literature critic and feminist, who made silly and parodic comments on Magdalena Buczek, one of the key person in the nationwide catholic media, was fined PLN 1 million by media authority KRRiTv, this being the highest fine in the history of Polish media market ever.
I completely oppose criticising any religion, knowing what harm it makes to believing people. I think that the comments made by Miss Kazimiera Szczuka were a bit sarcastic (she recited a piece of prayer while trying to tune in into the childish voice of Magdalena Buczek, a handicapped leader of the nationwide Children Rosary Group, a person that runs prayer auditons in the antisemitic and nationalist catholic radio station), but I oppose to such drastic means of cutting the freedom of speech using these unbelievably high fines as a mean to threat media.
To sum it up, I would ask: what can You do if the freedom of speech is limited to not to allow You to criticise openly the institution that so quickly took the priviledged role former given to the Communist Party only? What, if the hate speech and incitement to intolerance comes from an institution that is said to be inerroneus and holy, and therefore exempted from criticism? What can You do if the nationwide catholic media was many times praised by the Polish Pope John Paul II [1], a person completely exempted from any form of criticism in Poland? What can You do if the dead pope left an order to his collaborator cardinal Andrzej Deskur to defend this media after his death? I must admit I do not know what to do any more. I suppose I cannot do more, the problems I mentioned being to difficult to solve from my position. This whole subject had consumed a lot of my free time, and I am sorry to say that I cannot do anything more in this matter without causing harm to my personal and profesional life.
Yours faithfully,
Polish Liberal
[1] Quotes of Pope on this Radio and samples of controversial quotes from this radio:
http://pl.wikiquote.org/wiki/Radio_Maryja [2]
http://www.filmweb.pl/Radio,Maryja,kontra,TVN,2005-10-13,news,News,id=24552 [3] Graphs of daily audience available here:
http://www.radiomaryja.pl.eu.org [4] Some of the controversial recordings collected into archives are available here:
http://www.radiomaryja.pl.eu.org/nagrania/ [5] A. Wacyk, "Zasługi" Kościoła w Polsce,
http://www.toporzel.gower.pl/teksty/wacyk3.html TV programmes on the controversial issue:
• Jerzy Morawski, "Empite of Father Rydzyk, Imperium ojca Rydzyka"
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/private/rzm/ryj/imperium_ojca_rydzyka.avi.bz2 • TVN, "Uwaga", "Phenomenon of Father Rydzyk, Fenomen o. T. Rydzyka"
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/incoming/Rydzyk_w_TVN.ga-odcinek.specjalny.fenomen.ojca.tadeusza.rydzyka.pl.tvrip.xvid-bf.www.OSIOLEK.com.avi
