#ReclaimingPatriotism

Ana-Maria Szilagyi, Marilyn Alvarado and Kuba Belina Brzozowski

The Polish right wing, the radicals and conservatives have won the elections two years ago. But, more importantly, they won something even more fundamental: power over fundamental aspects of Polish identity.

            Every November 11, on Independence Day, ‘patriots’ march to show who they are by protesting the supposed enemies of the nation: migrants, refugees, Muslims. ‘Stop the Islamization of Poland’ is only one of the least brutal posters. The right wing has been successful in associating the march, supposedly celebrating Poland and Polish patriots, to these fictional enemies of the nation -- those who need to be left out in order for Poland to remain as it is. This association between patriotism and anti-migrant sentiments has been so successful and penetrated to such an extent the mentality of most Poles that the liberals have ceased considering themselves patriots. Liberals ceased to consider themselves patriots not because they have issues with the concept itself; indeed, if separated from the current political connotations, most Polish people would want to consider themselves patriots. But since they do welcome refugees in Poland, since they do understand the importance of integrating migrants and since they do not want religion to influence the operations of the State, liberals ceased to think that, in the current political context, they can still be ‘patriots’. This happened unconsciously: most liberals never realized that they stopped considering themselves Polish patriots and that they became victims of the rhetoric associating patriotism to anti-migrant feelings.

During the development of our social campaign, we realized that while the anti-migrant rhetoric in Poland is strong, not many migrants nor refugees live in the country. How to counteract hate speech against Muslims and refugees when there are virtually no Muslims nor refugees in Poland? We soon understood that while those protesting against the (supposed) Islamization of Poland are very loud and not willing to listen, there is a large part of the population that has been left out of the debate. We decided to address our campaign to these people; we were aware that most Poles do not care about the inclusion of migrants, nor do they care about the refugee crisis in Europe or about the dangers of a xenophobic political rhetoric. Nevertheless, we did know that Poles care about Poland and their place in it. It is at this point that we understood that if we managed to show that being a Polish patriot means fighting for a more inclusive Poland, then our campaign had the potential to achieve two important goals: first, we could detach the notion of Polish patriotism from the anti-migrant rhetoric and second, we could focus the attention on those Poles who are patriots and work for a more inclusive Polish society.

"Nationalism, and thus more chauvinism, is taken from hatred. Patriotism comes from love."

Given the previous theoretical background, our campaign has been carried out on our Facebook page that features videos and memes. The videos feature Poles working with migrants and refugees who, because of their work, consider themselves Polish patriots. In all videos, people answer two questions “What does patriotism mean to you?” and “How does it look like to be a Pole patriot in your daily life?”. The biggest challenge has come from finding people who wanted to be featured in our campaign. Indeed, while most people found our idea to be very interesting in that it touched a very sensitive aspect of Polish identity, most of them never considered giving a personal interpretation to Polish patriotism; as such, most people felt uncomfortable and did not know where to start when thinking about what Polish patriotism means to them. Most people would have wanted to consider themselves Polish patriots but they themselves did not want to reclaim patriotism - they would have preferred other people to do it for them, in a top-down process. It has been a challenge to engage people to reflect on an issue they are not used to consider; nevertheless, the reactions of people showed that we touched a very sensitive and fundamental aspect of Polish identity. While reclaiming patriotism is hard for Poles, they do care about being Polish patriots.

We learned that reclaiming patriotism is a long social and individual process. Our campaign has achieved a first victory in this long process: in all our interviews and conversations, people started realizing that while the right-wing has hijacked what patriotism means in Poland, they have the power to detach the current connotations of political patriotism from the concept itself. They started considering that their personal idea of Polish patriotism and their everyday life can be a version of what patriotism is.

We also learned that it is very difficult to produce a campaign in one week on a topic that is so sensitive to most people living in Poland. We would have needed more time to find and feature a diverse group of people who are working with refugees and who see themselves as Polish patriots because of the work they do. Because of the strength of the current xenophobic rhetoric in Poland, Poles have given up on considering themselves Polish patriots; as such, we would have needed more time to talk to people and create a space where they can reflect and reclaim Polish patriotism. Indeed while patriotism is a central aspect of Poles’ lives, it is at the same time a very complex theoretical concept. Because of the theoretical complexity, more work would have been needed to encourage people to personify patriotism, to bring it to the ground and not be scared to discuss and give patriotism any meaning they saw fit.

Even though we faced many difficulties, the potential of the campaign is shown by its initial success: our page reached 8180 people, 1119 people interacted with our publications and 1698 people viewed our videos in the first week. Even more than the numbers, our personal interactions with people showed that we need a social debate on what Poles want Polish patriotism to mean. This debate needs to start with those who are often the most silent in the public sphere but who do the real work for a more inclusive Poland.