starywiarus
17.02.04, 03:19
On Governance, Reign and Breams - the Vilification of Polonia
No one with a grown-up experience of life in Poland under the Communist rule
should have the slightest difficulty in recognising propaganda techniques
used today to demonise the global Polish diaspora, collectively known as
Polonia. We had once known this surreal, Orwellian newspeak quite well, as a
so-called "propaganda of success", at its peak in the late 1970's. No
Communist apparatchik would be without it then, just as no Polish politician
would now, for this crude mixture of agitprop, stick and carrot delivers
unprecedented social control.
The political class of today's Poland has no personal experience of state
power exercised in any way, shape or form other than the pre-1989 Communist
fetish of social control. To them, social control is what prevents the sky
from falling down. Accordingly, they firmly believe it is the control that
defines the state, and not the other way round. Strong strings must be
attached to subjects, and state puppet masters must pull them as they see
fit, and there is no other way about it.
The notion of responsible exercise of power that spawned the checks and
balances of Anglo-Saxon democracies is a culturally allien invention,
incomprehensible to Polish politicians. The enjoyment of holding power in
Poland is the enjoyment of unfettered power.
Neither the politicos nor the mind managers of Poland have ever mastered the
true meaning of a difference between governance and reign. To them, it has
been obvious since the time they ruled the kindergarten yard, that governance
means giving orders and enforcing compliance; there is nothing more to it and
there is no other way.
The reign masquerading as governance of Poland involves manipulation of state
powers to compel individual behaviour of subjects for personal benefit of the
rulers. Reaching any defined goals is not the principal objective of the
reign. Its principal aim, and principal pleasure, is to repeatedly
demonstrate the extent of subordination of the ruled to the rulers, mainly by
devising and enforcing laws and regulations intricate to the point of baroque
in their micro-management of everything. Naturally, the rulers, their
friends, business partners and relatives need not comply. This results in
construction of gigantic and exquisite Potemkin villages of corruption,
presented for foreign consumption as cornerstones of democracy.
To convince the Polish electorate they are winners in ongoing transformation
from Communism, and beneficiaries of the wise and kind rule of a sage
President of All Poles, a reference standard of loser must be created. Every
last Pole in Poland must know what a loser is, before he or she can feel a
morally superior winner. An image of a miserable emigré, holed up like a rat
in faraway ghettoes of poverty, eking out a miserable existence through
backbreaking manual labour, is subtly promoted in order to create the
standard against which just about any excess of Poland's robber barons will
appear a success. To deal with professionals in the diaspora, an image of a
greedy renegade, unwilling to support the beloved Motherland, will do just as
nicely.
Casting members of the diaspora as either rats or renegade Scrooges improves
the Polish domestic electorate's self-esteem no end. Obviously, if the
diaspora outside Poland are sewer rats or traitors, then those in Poland must
necessarily be patriotic Poles and economic tigers of New Europe, must they
not? Well, if not tigers, at least smart weasels in shiny coats.
However, when the primary premise is deliberately faulty, the conclusion
derived from it must inevitably fail. In reality, the Poles in Poland are in
the same rat race as those abroad held out to them as dead end, bottom-layer
losers; except the Polish domestic version of the race is much tougher, with
more stick and less cheese. The much reviled 'rat Poles' of Greenpoint, NY,
are about as representative of the Polish diaspora as dumpster scavengers of
Warsaw are of Poland.
The secondary objective of diaspora vilification is the propaganda run-up to
a forthcoming experiment in taxation without representation. Everybody in
Poland knows by now that the rats have had it too good for too long. And
every Pole in the West can well guess that Poland's appetite for free cash,
with no strings attached, is exactly the same it has always been - unlimited.
A social mindset is being created in Poland that may eventually allow a
declaration, at an as yet undetermined point in the future, that any and all
individuals of Polish birth of origin, irrespective of their place of
residence or acquired nationality, their children, heirs and successors, all
owe their dues to the distant Motherland. A 10% global tithe would go a long
way towards provision of comforts to 600 thousand state officials, members of
the byzantine local government, Young Communists League apparatchiks struck
by the revelation of social democracy in their middle age, and jackbooted
nationalist populists, decidedly brownish going on deeper and deeper black in
their hue of shirts.
Such a development would see many dancing in the streets of Poland. The
economic tigers of New Europe (20% unemployment at the last count) truly
adore the taste of free cash, courtesy of foreign suckers. The Polish modern
slang for sucker is "leszcz", bream. Bream is a species of fat, tasty, and
exceptionally stupid freshwater fish. Honest work, just reward and personal
sacrifice do not taste nearly as sweet in Poland as a good bream does.
The prospect of turning the most or the whole of the Polish diaspora against
Poland by such a move is of no consequence to the political class. There will
be enough breams forced to pay by tugging the emotional strings tying them
to ancestral graves and ailing old parents in Poland to make the whole thing
profitable.
Altogether, my mood at all this is one of pervasive sadness.
The contours of old Communist Poland remain in plain view under a hastily
applied thin veneer of democracy. The Polish President, an enthusiastic
Communist Party apparatchik until the day his Party sank from under him,
declares his happiness with "OUR decision to fight Communism". My friends
left behind are increasingly inclined to accept I must have become a rat,
since they all know that my business skills are insufficient for a rich
renegade.
And tertium non datur.
© Stary Wiarus 2004
Unlimited copying and distribution are allowed, with attribution to the
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