“We want God”, “Great Independent Poland,” “Death to the Enemies of the Fatherland!” “Christ is Poland’s King”, “Deus vult” (Latin for God wills, a battle cry of the Crusaders)these are the principal banners carried in the annual Independence March that is held in Warsaw and also in other cities on 11 November, Independence Day. Also in the one two days ago. At the head of the marching column you could see a few white flags sporting the red Jerusalem cross. Tens of thousands of people, waving tens of thousands of white-and-red national flags young and old, of all walks of life, with whole families take to the streets. The people participating in the march think of themselves as patriots (the word which in Poland still has positive overtones) paying tribute to the fallen heroes. To the western media these are Nazis, racists, anti-semites and islamophobes. An abomination for the European Union.

What has positive overtones in Poland (patriotism, faith, family), has negative ones in Western Europe and the other way round. Migrants, LGTBQ and gender mainstreaming is not welcome in the area between the Oder and Bug Rivers. The EU values cannot be farther from Poland’s values and vice versa. The Independence March denigrated by the Western media was favourably covered by the Polish government and other national media, except for those which are far to the left and very much pro-European. The former shored up the positive aspects of the event, the latter only looked for incidents to blow them out of any proportion and join the chorus of their western counterparts in condemning “fascists” and “white supremacists”. Continue reading →