ANETA DYBSKA  “ e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection is chapter draws a trajectory from the “end of history” triumphalism to a global trend of democratic backsliding, culminating with a wave of nationalist populism that has swept across Europe and the United States. Fukuyama’s evolving insights into the functioning and malfunctioning of liberal democracy are used as an analytical framework to study the Polish society’s turn towards illiberal democracy. e speci c interest is in the relationship between lack of recognition and political radicalization highlighted in Fukuyama’s latest book Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (2018). If recognition drives democratic processes, but can easily become democracy’s undoing, how can liberal democracy defend its bedrock ideals when faced with the inevitability of identities in politics? Key words: identity, liberalism, populism, Francis Fukuyama Democracies without democrats do not last. ey decay, into oligarchy, theocracy, ethnic nationalism, tribalism, authoritarian one-party rule, or some combination of these. Mark Lilla, e Once and Future Liberal When on November 15, 1989 Lech Wałęsa addressed the joint meeting of the U.S. Congress with his historic speech “We the People,” he pointed to the fact that the Polish Solidarity movement had drawn inspiration from the principle of self-determination underlying the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: e Poles have travelled a long way. It would be worthwhile for all those commenting on Poland, o en criticizing Poland, to bear in mind that, whatever Poland has achieved, she achieved through her own e ort, through her own stubbornness, her own relentlessness. Everything was achieved thanks to the un inching faith of our nation in human dignity, and in what is described as the values of Western culture and civilization. Our nation well knows the price of all this. Millions of his Polish compatriots must have identi ed with Wałęsa’s exalted message which announced the triumph of the Polish nation over communism. en a edgling democracy, Poland validated Francis Fukuyama’s “the end of history” thesis, which had entered the public discourse just a few months before Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 18         ANETA DYBSKA Wałęsa’s speech in the U.S. Congress. Yet three decades a er the free elections in Poland on June 4, 1989, a large segment of the Polish voters expresses strong support for nationalist populism, which strikes at the foundations of liberal and constitutional democracy. is chapter draws a trajectory from the “end of history” triumphalism to a global trend of democratic backsliding, culminating with a wave of nationalist populism that has swept across Europe and the United States.1 I use Fukuyama’s evolving insights into the functioning and malfunctioning of liberal democracy as an analytical framework to study the Polish society’s turn towards illiberal democracy.2 I am speci cally interested in the relationship between lack of recognition and political radicalization highlighted in Fukuyama’s latest book titled Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (2018).3 If recognition drives democratic processes, but can easily become democracy’s undoing, how can liberal democracy defend its bedrock ideals when faced with the inevitability of identities in politics? In the summer of 1989, e National Interest magazine ran an article under a provocative title “ e End of History?” written by a young American liberal political scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama. Premature as it was, this celebration of liberal democracy’s global victory as a universal template of hegemonic power in the post-Cold-War era expressed the political optimism accompanying the toppling of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, among others. Writing the “End of History?” in 1989 and then expanding the argument into a full-length book titled e End of History and the Last Man (1992),4 Fukuyama used the few then-existing democracies as instances of the Western civilization’s ideological development, holding up the American political project up as paradigm worthy of emulation and as the only viable alternative to 1 2 3 4 For a detailed discussion of contemporary populism, see Anton Pelinka’s “Identity Politics, Populism and the Far Right.” Fareed Zakaria de ned the term as referring to “democratically elected regimes, o en ones that have been re-elected or rea rmed through referenda, [which] are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms” (“ e Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign A airs, November-December 1997). e book was translated into Polish and published by Rebis in October 2019 as Współczesna polityka tożsamościowa i walka o uznanie. e Polish translation of the article appeared in 1991 as “Czy koniec historii?” (Konfrontacje Series No. 13, PoMOST 1991), whereas the book appeared in two instalments as Koniec historii (1996) and Ostatni człowiek (1997). Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski “   e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection 19 communism, a claim many found controversial. He believed that free market economies would inevitably trigger political democratization, that political and economic processes were mutually enhancing, that the incremental liberalization of the Chinese economy in the 1980s, coupled with Gorbachev’s perestroika (economic restructuring) in 1990s Soviet Union, would eventually topple totalitarian regimes, as was the case in the post-World War II Japan and South Korea (Kagan 6). Looking back on the impact of the “end of history” thesis on Eastern and Central Europeans, sociologist Marta Bucholc explains that the allure of Fukuyama’s vision lay in a puri ed, one-sided view of democracy as a unique political system which empowered individuals to control their destiny. What this tunnel- vision blocked out, however, was the system’s malleable nature and culture-speci c character (“Historia”). In his writings, Fukuyama was applying Hegel’s teleological view of history, which he read through the interpretative lens of Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968), a Russian-born French philosopher and Hegelian scholar.5 Inspired by Hegel’s idealism, Fukuyama saw “the end of history” as taking place “in the realm of consciousness” but nding its realization in “concrete forms of social organization.” Compared with Western imperialism, which had found its most radical realization in German Fascism, liberal democracy marked “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the nal form of human government” (“ e End of History?”). Writing in 1989, Fukuyama could not have predicted that e War on Terror and American military engagement in the Middle East would lay bare the system’s precarious nature when confronted with the ideology of Radical Islam (Szymański 51). Nor could Fukuyama have predicted that political authoritarianism would spread throughout small or mid-size countries, such as Hungary, Turkey, and Poland (“Against” 91). One cannot help noticing a blind streak of exceptionalism permeating Fukuyama’s praise of liberal democracy as the fairest system. A fervent and uncritical believer in individual rights and equality, he did not then see a connection between racial and economic inequality, on the one hand, and structural discrimination built into the legal system and economic processes, on the 5 Many scholars nd Kojève’s interpretations of Hegel idiosyncratic and controversial, still others critique Fukuyama for departing from Kojève’s interpretations of Hegel. For a more detailed discussion of the philosophical aspects of Fukuyama’s work see Vasil Rossman’s “Alexandre Kojève i jego trzy wieloryby” and Krzysztof Wawrzonkowski’s “Koniec historii Francisa Fukuyamy z perspektywy dwudziestu lat od ukazania się dzieła.” Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 20   ANETA DYBSKA other. Rather, he located racism in America’s slave past and pointed to African American culture as a root cause of the group’s inferior status. Nor would he recognise that in the 1980s it was the new social movements that took upon themselves the task of translating the ideals of freedom and equality into the lived experience of marginalised groups via identity politics. No longer oblivious to the contradictions inherent in liberal democracies, today Fukuyama concedes that prejudice, discrimination, and invisibility continue to re/ produce social hierarchies and unequal distribution of rights and privileges (Identity 7); that identity politics in the past successfully addressed the grievances of historically marginalised groups, such as African Americans, women, gay people, and the Native Americans; that the free market produces inequalities of outcome, downward mobility, and the shrinking of the middle class. But this insight came only in the a ermath of the 2008 economic crisis, when white working-class impoverishment and social decline became comparable in scale to that of African Americans in the 1980s (“Against” 94). In hindsight, Fukuyama admits that the “end of history” thesis appealed more to the post-communist bloc members than to established democracies (“Wciąż wierzę”), most likely because it validated the former’s struggles and aspirations. Since then liberal democracies “have lost much of their appeal a er the nancial crises in America and the Eurozone during the 2000s, and are su ering from populist uprisings that threaten the liberal pillar of their political systems,” notes Fukuyama (“Huntington’s Legacy”). On the Polish far right, the National Radical Camp (ONR) refers to Fukuyama’s vision of the “end of history” as its ideological enemy. ONR followers reject liberalism’s contractual nature and its priority on individual rights and freedoms, equality, and pluralism. In the group’s rhetorical imagery, liberalism is a “cancer” eating away Europe’s ailing body, and they embark on a mission to prepare the ground for the restoration of Europe to its Greek and Roman roots, in the hope of building a strong ethnic nation, in compliance with the principles of Catholic social teaching (Zienkiewicz). Although ONR represents a small fraction of the Polish right, their views have entered mainstream politics. Depending on the perspective, national populism can be seen either a harbinger of “real” democratic freedom or a death knell for the hegemony of liberal democracy. Alongside other conservative scholars and political commentators, such as Mark Lilla, William Kristol, and Jonah Goldberg,6 Fukuyama puts forward classical liberalism as a solution to the 6 See for example: Mark Lilla’s e Once and Future Liberalism (2017) and “ e End of Identity Liberalism;” Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski “   e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection 21 fragmentation of U.S. politics into the ever-expanding range of groups vying for the recognition (Identity 111).7 In his 2018 book Identity Fukuyama blames the le for giving up on broad social justice issues, such as workers’ rights, welfare programs or redistribution at the cost of validating diverse, incompatible small self-regarding communities (98). He has little doubt that the le ’s identity liberalism (exclusionary identity politics)8 relegated the white working class to the fringes of mainstream politics and caused the 2016 right-wing populist backlash: “In the United States, identity politics has fractured the le into a series of identity groups that are home to its most energetic political activists. It has in many respects lost touch with the one identity group that used to be its largest constituency, the white working class” (167). Yet, his many critics dismiss the argument. ey disagree with his trajectory of doom, stressing that identity politics has been the organising principle of American politics since the Republic’s inception, except that in the past it furthered the interests of the dominant groups. In an exhaustive analysis of “America’s Original Identity Politics,” literary scholar Sarah Churchwell explains: ere are no pre-identity politics, just as there are no pre-identity economics, in a country in which political, economic, and legal rights were only ever granted to some identity groups and not to others. e only thing new about “the omnipresent rhetoric   7 8 Nationalism, Populism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy (2018); and Edward Luce’s e Retreat of Western Liberalism (2018). Mark Lilla’s book has been translated into Polish as “Koniec liberalizmu jaki znamy. Requiem dla polityki tożsamości.” (2018) and this may explain why he is better known to Polish audiences, commentators and intellectuals than Fukuyama’s Identity, published a year later and still waiting for its Polish translation. Fukuyama reiterates those arguments in a Foreign A airs article titled “Against Identity Politics: e New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy,” published a month or two a er Identity. Interestingly, the word “new tribalism” features only in the title and Fukuyama does not elaborate on the term in the article proper. Most likely he is referring to the e ects of multiculturalism, both as a vision of society and a mode of politics. By contrast, in Identity the word is not used at all. Amy Chua’s Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of the Nations (2018) o ers a resourceful analysis of tribalism in U.S. politics. Fukuyama juxtaposes MLK Jr.’s integrationist agenda with Black Power separatism to make his point. However, his account is rather super cial and evasive of the Black Power movement’s validation of blackness as an antidote to living in a racist and hostile society. See Identity 108. Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 22 ANETA DYBSKA of identity” is the voices that have been added to it, reshaping it in ways that alarm and a ront those who used to be its sole author.         is was the case with immigration and naturalization policies, the nativist movement, the women’s status, etc. Rather than create disunity, Fukuyama’s critics insist, identity politics brings diverse social groups closer to the enjoyment of rights and protections articulated in the American creed.9 Another crucial criticism regards Fukuyama’s teleological view of history, which fails to account for the “backlashes and reshu ing of the social deck.” If only Fukuyama accepted a dynamic, dialectical approach to history, critic Louis Menand observes, he would admit that “history is somersaults all the way to the end” and that the “identities that people embrace today are the identities their children will want to escape from tomorrow” (“Francis Fukuyama Postpones”). e insights I nd most useful for the analysis that follows concern the relationship between populism and dignity. Fukuyama links the problems ailing today’s liberal democracy with thymos (“passion”), which, next to the rational part and the desiring part, is the third part of the human psyche associated with the desire for recognition (Identity 18).10 While the satisfaction of thymos means equal recognition of one’s dignity, as predicted by the liberal democratic project’s resolution of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, the non-satisfaction of thymos generates anger, distrust, and resentment. Fukuyama draws on this theoretical framework of a ronted dignity to explain the American white working-class radicalization with identity politics. When the group su ered the consequences of social displacement and loss of status,11 populist nationalism channelled these grievances into the language of identity politics. Coming from the political right, it became an e ective panacea for the group’s perceived invisibility and lack of recognition (40–41, 88–89). is mechanism nds con rmation in the overwhelming support of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. e group’s sense of dignity, Fukuyama argues, was recuperated by rekindling the nationalist/nativist sentiments, which linked ethnic whiteness to Christianity and conservative values (“Against” 93–96; “Huntington’s Legacy”).12 9 See e.g. John Sides, et al., “Identity Can Lead to Progress.” 10 Fukuyama is referring here to Plato’s tripartite division of the human soul. See Plato’s Republic. 11 Fukuyama explains: “Identity is rooted in thymos, which is experienced emotionally through feelings of pride, shame, and anger. I’ve already noted the ways in which this can undermine rational debate and deliberation.” See Identity 131. 12 During the 2016 presidential election Donald Trump attracted the overwhelming support of white Evangelical voters (81 %), with white Catholics as the second largest group Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski “   e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection 23 Fukuyama seems to be suggesting that as much as the aggrieved self and resentment over lost dignity explain the emergence of multiple political tribes in the U.S., their emotional opposites could be used to restore national unity without compromising America’s liberal foundations: “democracies will not survive if citizens are not in some measure irrationally attached to the ideas of constitutional government and human equality through feelings of pride and patriotism. ese attachments will see societies through their low points, when reason alone may counsel despair at the working of institutions.” Fukuyama recommends creating positive public sentiment for the national community. is will be possible with a more integrative nation state, whose embrace of diversity and equal recognition of individuals would unify into a multicultural society (158). In other words, he wants to move identity politics to the level of the nation-state so that individuals would reembrace creedal identity and form loyalties above and beyond their narrow group identities. Fukuyama’s idealism unfolds into a vision of a responsible and informed citizenry who will partake in politics and display republican virtue through their concern for common good and “a culture of tolerance and mutual sympathy [that] must override partisan passions” (Identity 131).13 Polish liberal intellectuals and commentators have also been investigating anti-democratic tendencies in their home country, yet, unlike Fukuyama, they locate their source in a di erent sort of (identity) politics, namely, the ruling party’s investment in tribal loyalties in the name of paternalistic nationalism. For example, Jacek Bartyzel, a contributor to Liberte!, a Polish opinion-making online liberal monthly magazine, exhorts the readers to ght Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS, the right-wing ruling party in Poland) value system, its irrationality, xenophobia, and religious bias. Unlike Fukuyama, who nds fringe identity groups to be a disunifying in U.S. politics today, Bartyzel attacks Law and Justice for “collectivism and tribalism,” the support of conservative values, the Catholic Church, a protective state, and strong leadership – all of which are contrary to the bedrock tenets of liberalism: individual freedom, limited government, and a rational, non-interfering state (“Dlaczego PiS wygrał”). (60 %). See Pew Research Center, “Presidential Vote by Religious A liation and Race,” 9 November 2016. 13 Fukuyama puts forward the following solutions: e ective immigration policies, assimilation of immigrants and introduction of universal national service to shape civic loyalty and commitment to the country. See “Against” 108. Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 24   ANETA DYBSKA In a manner reminiscent of Fukuyama’s policy recommendations, Leszek Jażdżewski, Liberte!’s editor-in-chief, admits that during the liberal rule in post-communist Poland, intellectual and political elites neglected the democratic education of citizens, enticed by the “end of history” thesis. Yet, it turned out that capitalism is more ingrained in our culture than democracy, that democracy is merely a derivative of capitalist transformation in Poland. Legal scholar Martin Krygier o ers a similar explanation: the liberal reformers in post-communist Poland imposed democratic principles and installed the rule of law in an instrumental, technocratic, and formalist manner, which failed to infuse the new political processes and procedures with “values beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand” so that they would become meaningful and useful institutions, “bound into the fabric of social life” (Selznick qtd. in Krygier). Further, Jażdżewski has no doubt that liberal governments in the 1990s and 2000s underestimated Poles’ need for a sense of community and belonging that would boost their national pride. He contends that liberalism’s emancipatory ideas can pose an attractive political alternative only when they enter the bloodstream of Polishness (“Demokrację”). Recently, American historian Timothy Snyder invoked Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis in his notion of the politics of inevitability, which he de nes as “a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done” (10).14 But free market liberalism creates inequalities and impedes social mobility, paving the way for undemocratic impulses and legitimising the rule of oligarchs like Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, who act as protectors of the nation. Snyder notes that such leaders mobilise their electorate around a “cyclical story of victimhood,” whereby “[t]ime is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past” (18). e politics of inevitability exhausts its social viability and becomes supplanted by the politics of eternity, ushering in a new set of moral coordinates and management strategies: “In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present,” writes Snyder (12). 14 Snyder further explains: “In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought the nation, which learned from war that peace was good, and hence chose integration and prosperity” (10). Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski “   e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection 25 I nd Snyder’s politics of eternity a valid expansion of Fukuyama’s recent argument about the politics of recognition as the driving force behind nationalist populism today. Both help understand support for illiberal tendencies among some segments of the Polish electorate today, which are pulling Poland in an authoritarian direction. In 2017 Polish sociologist Maciej Gdula et al. carried out a research project in a small Polish town in the Mazowsze region, whose population cast an overwhelming majority of votes for the conservative nationalist Law and Justice in the 2015 parliamentary elections. e researchers wanted to understand the motivations behind the voters’ political choices and their rationalizations. Published in a report titled “Good Change in Miastko. Neoauthoritarianism in Polish Politics from the Perspective of a Small Town,”15 the ndings challenged the widespread view on the political le that Law and Justice was attracting only the “le behind” or marginalised groups who su ered losses during the capitalist transition and were neglected by the neoliberal rule of Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO, a centre-right political party that was in power in 2007–15; 31–33). As Gdula et al. show, Law and Justice appeased di erent segments of the electorate and addressed diverse needs. and expectations. e researchers distinguished two main groups of voters: the aspiring middle class and the lower class (plebeian class). e rst group derided the “corrupt elites” (a liated with Civic Platform) for losing their moral compass when in power (Gdula et al. 37) and were convinced of their self-righteousness. eir grudges against Civic Platform stemmed from the experience of material deprivation, such as job loss, irregular or stagnant income, growing income disparities (5). By identifying with Law and Justice, they felt they had regained control over their own lives (34–35). e second group of voters embraced the party’s nationalist agenda since it gave them a sense of belonging by granting them membership in a community of “normal” people. No longer would they be alienated or con ned into invisible existence on the social margins of Civic Platform’s middle-class utopia, but they would gain dignity as average citizens. Both groups held a view of social solidarity that was limited to the national community. ey expressed anti-refugee sentiments, by invoking the clash of civilization argument, Islam, terrorism, economic factors, and a fear that European identity and culture would be endangered (Gdula et al. 25). 15 e report’s original title is “Dobra zmiana w Miastku. Neoautorytaryzm w polskiej polityce z perspektywy małego miasta.” Translation by the author of this chapter. Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 26 ANETA DYBSKA ese commonalities make the two groups equal participants in the political drama orchestrated by Jarosław Kaczyński, the Law and Justice leader. Charismatic and uncompromising, he has appealed to their national pride and gives them a sense of empowerment vis-a-vis the more powerful (elites) and the weaker ones (immigrants, refugees) (Gdula et al. 37). While in this respect Polish right-wing populism is similar to U.S. right-wing populism, “Good Change in Miastko” highlights the former’s neoauthoritarian tendencies. Kaczyński operates within the democratic paradigm and validates the sovereign’s rights to determine their national destiny; yet, rather than adjusting the agenda to grassroots demands and expectations, he sets the tone for public debate. He seeks legitimization of his actions through mobilising diverse segments of voters around an issue and then acts as the executive of the sovereign’s will, even if his solutions entail using the democratic instruments to seize unlimited control of democratic institutions. A gradual dismantling of the system of checks and balances in Poland is just one such example (18). ough Gdula et al.’s diagnostic report does not foreground the concept of dignity as having explanatory potential, in fact their ndings show the entanglement of populism and nationalism in the politics of recognition: Kaczyński appeals to a diverse public. He o ers the plebeian class, which exists on the fringes of the middle-class society, membership in the national community. He aptly incites their “victim” status and engages their emotions with a promise of punishing the culprits. And empowers those aspiring to middle-class status with a sense of moral superiority vis-a vis the political opponents. All his supporters partake in a con ict with the elites and gain a sense of dignity and strength though stigmatizing the weaker groups as inferior. (38)16  If we accept Gdula et al.’s ndings that the voting decisions of Law and Justice supporters are not guided by economic redistribution programs (e.g. a universal child bene t policy 500+,) or the party’s complete ideological control over state media, but more by symbolic/ psychological gains such as a sense of agency, personal respect, national pride, and recognition, then we should focus on those aspects of the campaign that mobilised the right-wing, conservative electorate,  16 e original passage reads as follows: “Kaczyński obsługuje różnorodną publiczność. Klasie ludowej, dla której nie ma miejsca w społeczeństwie klasy średniej, oferuje udział we wspólnocie narodowej. Umiejętnie podsyca podmiotowość o ary i angażuje ludzi obietnicą rozliczenia sprawców. Aspirującym daje poczucie moralnej wyższości. Dla wszystkich rozgrywa kon ikt z elitami i buduje poczucie godności przez wyznaczanie słabych grup, wobec których można poczuć się silnym.” Translation by the author of this chapter. Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski “         e End of History” esis and the Polish Connection 27 even though the image of the party’s moral superiority had been harmed by allegations of political corruption. In the May 2019 elections to the European Parliament, Law and Justice won a staggering 45.38 % of the votes against the pro-European parties.17 In a populist manner, the opposing camps kept on discrediting each other. But Law and Justice did so by arousing strong emotions with their virulent attacks on European Coalition parties (the economically liberal Civic Platform, the probusiness Modern Party–Nowoczesna, the post-communist le – SLD and the Polish People’s Party–PSL) for their support of LGBT+ rights, namely, the antidiscrimination sex-education policy as part of the school curriculum (LGBT+ charter). Kaczyński framed those attempts as an unacceptable “sexualization of children” leading to their deprivation – an imminent danger to traditional values and Polish culture.18 In this narrative of victimhood, the LGBT+ community’s incremental steps at achieving equality and respect feed an ongoing moral panic over what right-wing commentators call derisively “homoterrorism” which is supposedly bombarding “normal” Poles with a “deviant”/alien ideology likened to a new form of fascism that thwarts all di erently thinking individuals (Terlikowski; Ziemkiewicz). Law and Justice activates strong public emotions with threats that, at a particular moment, can yield them the biggest gains in voter support; these may be external, coming from the European Union, gender ideology, or disease-spreading refugees; or internal, coming from “Poles of the worst sort”19 who are traitors of the Polish nation, or such democratic institutions as the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.20 All these examples show Poland’s 17 A few days before the European elections, CBOS, a Polish opinion polling institute, published the results of an opinion poll carried out in April 2019 on Poles’ views of the condition of democracy. 47 percent of respondents were positive about the functioning of democracy in Poland. e respondents were PiS supporters, holders of right-wing views, and regular church attendees. ey had primary, secondary or vocational education, and their income was below 1800 zł (around 420 euros) per month. By contrast, among the 45 percent of respondents critical of Polish democracy’s functioning were urban dwellers who either supported Civic Platform or were le leaning in their political views, university graduates, highly paid professionals as well as those of modest means. For more see “Czy demokracja w Polsce działa? Opinie są bardzo podzielone.” 18 For more see Kyle Knight, “Sex education under re again in Poland.” 19 On December 11, 2015, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński spoke about “Poles of the worst sort” in a Telewizja Republika interview. “It runs in the genes of some people, Poles of the worst sort. At this very moment the worst sort is exceptionally active because they feel threatened.” Translation by the author of this chapter. 20 e Constitutional Tribunal is Poland’s highest judicial authority. Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski 28 ANETA DYBSKA victimhood is cyclically reiterated with new enemies unmasked and their true intentions exposed. How to temper partisan passions and a ective polarization that the politics of eternity in ames among voters on two sides of the political spectrum? If we adopt a radical view of democracy, put forward by philosopher Chantal Mou e, we will have to accept antagonism and confrontation as its inherent, inevitable components. Yet, since today antagonism is “played out in the moral register” and adversaries of the past turn into enemies in the populist politics of present, Mou e insists, “democratic politics needs. to have a real purchase on people’s desires and fantasies” and “instead of opposing interests to sentiments and reason to passions, it should o er forms of identi cations which represent a real challenge to the ones promoted by the right” (14). Even if we pursue Fukuyama’s vision of an integrative national identity to counter divisive populism and take the path towards a broad social consensus, neither solution will be viable without a shared commitment to constitutional liberalism, individual rights, and equality for all.         Works Cited: Bartyzel, Jacek. “Dlaczego PiS wygrał wybory? Obalam niebezpieczny mit!” Liberte!, 14 August 2016, https://liberte.pl/dlaczego-pis-wygral-wyboryobalam-niebezpieczny-mit/. Accessed 28 June 2019. 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Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski Paweł Rutkowski / Justyna Wierzchowska (eds.) Texts, Images, Practices Contemporary Perspectives on American, British and Polish Cultures Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress This publication was financially supported by the University of Warsaw. ISSN 2191-4060 ISBN 978-3-631-80987-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-84281-2 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-84631-5 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-84632-2 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b17993 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2021 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com Pawe Rutkowski and Justyna Wierzchowska - 978-3-631-84631-5 Downloaded from PubFactory at 05/17/2021 11:35:42AM by A.Gorlikowski@peterlang.com via Peter Lang Group AG, Victoria University of Wellington and Adam Gorlikowski