Jacobin Radio: How the Right Won in Poland w/ David Ost

Summary

Jacobin Radio: How the Right Won in Poland w/ David Ost

Date: June 11, 2025
Host: Suzi Weissman
Guest: David Ost (Emeritus Professor, Hobart and William Smith Colleges)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Jacobin Radio dives into Poland’s razor-thin June 2025 presidential election, featuring analysis from political theorist and Poland expert David Ost. The discussion unpacks the resurgence of the far right, the failures and limitations of the liberal coalition under Donald Tusk, class and economic dynamics, and the broader significance for Europe and global politics. Ost draws parallels with trends in the US and other democracies, offering cautionary notes for the left.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Election’s Dramatic Outcome and Its Context

• Result Recap (00:07–00:50): Far-right candidate Karl Novrotsky, a historian and ex-boxer aligned with Law and Justice (PiS), defeated liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly winning 50.9% to 49.1%—a result sending “a signal across Europe and the world” amidst recent populist setbacks elsewhere.
• Ost’s Framing (04:40): The vote was “essentially a referendum” on Poland’s post-2015 trajectory under law-and-justice (PiS) rule versus the newer centrist/liberal coalition—a test of populist and liberal credibility.

2. Who Is Karl Novrotsky?

• Background (04:40–07:14): Novrotsky was “unknown to the wider electorate until about six months ago” when picked by PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, having previously headed Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance—an institution Ost labels a hub for “far right historians and cultural warriors.”
• PiS Media Strategy: The party has pushed “skewed” historical narratives elevating right-wing heroes and demonizing the left.
  • “Teaching a very skewed version of Polish history in which all right wing Poles are heroes and all leftists are traitors, that that's the obligation to teach their students.” (06:03)

3. Systemic and Coalition Constraints on Liberal Rule

• Parliamentary-Presidential System (07:21–09:51): Opposition's legislative ambitions were repeatedly vetoed by the PiS president. The current coalition, the "October 15th Coalition," has a “shallow restoration,” constrained by system rules and coalition splits.
• Unfulfilled Reform Promises: Key democratic reforms, such as legalizing civic partnerships and rolling back draconian abortion bans, stalled due to both presidential veto threats and conservatively-inclined coalition partners.
  • “One of the coalition partners is a more conservative rural party. If they defected from the coalition, then it would no longer have a majority.” (14:39)

4. The Abortion Issue and Social Policy Paralysis

• Historical Backdrop (12:24–16:07): After a long-standing, restrictive “abortion compromise,” Kaczyński’s Supreme Court imposed an almost total ban—provoking mass protests.
• Coalition Paralysis: Tusk promised liberalization (“guarantee the right to an abortion until 14 weeks”), but action was blocked by coalition partners. Instead, “ad hoc liberalizations” appeared in Warsaw, but “on legal basis, nothing’s been changed.” (16:07).
• Notable Fact: “It was the biggest mobilization since 1989.” (14:28)

5. Bread-and-Butter Issues: Housing and Economic Grievances

• Failure to Deliver: Key economic reforms—such as affordable housing—were promised but not even introduced as bills. This eroded confidence, especially among voters less moved by “post-materialist” issues:
  • “They haven't even produced this bill.” (20:47)

6. Political Strategy & Class Dynamics During the Campaign

• Focus on Novrotsky’s Persona (23:22–24:14): The opposition ran intensely on Novrotsky’s “negative personal qualities, including his tough working class background” and alleged criminal associations, but “not on the reactionary, xenophobic, racist and sexist policies he promotes.” This was seen as a strategic error and backfired.
  • “They weren't focusing on the issues where he talked about signing up, again, totally for the far right political agenda, getting support from Trump.” (25:36)

7. Comparative Populism: Poland, the US, and Social Policy

• PiS’s Working-Class Appeal (26:50–31:43): Unlike Trump, their “populist rhetoric” was matched with real benefits: a generous child-allowance that “brought [many] out of poverty,” plus labor protections against “junk contracts.”
  • “That's different in Poland. The Kaczyński government ... did nevertheless push through some very beneficial gains for workers and non elites.” (28:16)
• Critique: These are “neoliberal social welfare” policies, but politically effective.

8. Ukraine, Refugees & the Nationalist Turn

• Initial Response (34:01–38:11): Both PiS and liberals opened doors to Ukrainian refugees in 2022; most public support came first from “civil society, not the government.”
• Shift Under Novrotsky: The PiS camp, and Novrotsky in particular, began to call for stricter limits on refugee aid, appealing to resentment while cautiously avoiding full-on pro-Putin rhetoric.
  • “We don’t want minority communities establishing themselves here forever.” (35:37)
• Historical Underpinnings: Ost details the fraught history of Polish-Ukrainian relations and how the right leverages it for political gain (38:37–42:29).

9. Authoritarian Playbook and Institutional Entrenchment

• System Sabotage (43:25–48:50): PiS used its power to politicize the judiciary, capture media, and entrench allies, making it nearly impossible for successors to reverse their authority—mirroring tactics associated with Orban and (prospectively) Trump.
  • “Among the other things that peace did and that Trump is trying to do is to mine the territory with these authoritarian governing tools that make it impossible for successors to overcome.” (43:43)

10. What’s Next? New Parliamentary Calculations and the Rising Far Right

• Tusk’s Vote of Confidence (49:03–54:25): To consolidate his weak government, Tusk has called for a parliamentary vote. The prospect of far-right “Confederacy” party forming a kingmaker coalition is real; previously fringe figures like Grzegorz Braun now have a following, representing “hipster fascist” rhetoric (“taking the red pill”).
  • “What was stunning about the first round ... this guy, Braun, actually won 6% of the vote. He came in fourth place.” (51:10)

11. The Polish Left: Fragmentation and Dilemmas

• Electoral Division (55:01–58:36): Poland’s left, split between an older Social Democratic tradition and a “Bernie Sanders-like” Razem, failed to clear electoral thresholds in 2015. Since then, both have joined and split within coalitions, with some factions now in outright opposition to Tusk’s rule.

  • “It's also the question that even if the coalition is salvaged next week, it is totally unclear what it's going to do now in the next two and a half years with Novrotsky as president.” (58:49)

• Workers’ Realignment: Private sector workers have drifted to the right due to social benefits and economic nationalism, while public-sector professionals remain left/liberal. Ost credits PiS with having “moderate measures in support of unions” for industrial workers but notes neglect and hostility toward public services.

  • “Healthcare workers and teachers are usually a little more insisting on maintaining democratic rights and things like that. ... [Novrotsky] speaks more not to workers.” (63:00)

12. Lessons for the Left, Poland and Beyond

• Universal Lessons (64:14–69:15):
  • Ost warns that the US and European left face similar dangers: liberals prioritizing messaging/no-content campaigns, while the right “change[s] the very nature of the game and challeng[es] power of all the institutions.”
  • The only way for the left to revive: “It has to show, make clear that it's defending those who are written out of the capitalist system, marginalized by the capitalist system, marginalized by the economy. And it has to take that kind of position again.”
  • Comparison: US context is harder due to its two-party system; a new left is easier to emerge in Poland through new parties.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On PiS’s “Historical Policy”:
  “Teaching a very skewed version of Polish history in which all right wing Poles are heroes and all leftists are traitors, that that's the obligation to teach their students.” — David Ost (06:03)

• On the Failure to Push for Change:
  “The problems with this coalition is that it didn't pass the bills forcing the president to veto good things … even if these were big obstacles as they are, then we did not see Tusk fight for them.” — David Ost (17:48)

• On Economic Policy Differences:
  “That is different in Poland. The Kaczyński government … did nevertheless push through some very beneficial gains for workers and non elites.” — David Ost (28:16)

• On Campaign Missteps:
  “In those last couple of weeks, the focus was almost entirely on his past, on supposedly … his connections with these hoodlums … not on the issues [of] the far right political agenda.” — David Ost (25:09)

• On Authoritarian Entrenchment:
  “Among the other things that peace did and that Trump is trying to do is to mine the territory with these authoritarian governing tools that make it impossible for successors to overcome.” — David Ost (43:43)

• On Left Realignment:
  “The only way for a left party to revive and get traction is it has to show, make clear that it's defending those who are written out of the capitalist system, marginalized by the capitalist system, marginalized by the economy.” — David Ost (67:10)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:07 — Episode theme and stakes outlined by host
• 04:40 — Introduction to Karl Novrotsky and party dynamics
• 09:51 — Breakdown of coalition government’s failures
• 12:24 — Abortion laws and public mobilizations
• 16:07 — Inaction on social issues and economic policy paralysis
• 23:22 — Campaign strategy failings and focus on personality
• 26:50 — Comparison of right-wing economic policy (Poland vs US)
• 34:01 — Ukrainian refugee response and shifting politics
• 43:25 — Authoritarian playbook and institutional capture
• 49:03 — Prospects for the coalition and rise of the far right
• 55:01 — Analysis of the Polish left’s divisions and prospects
• 64:14 — Universal lessons for the global left

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Takeaways & Broader Implications

• Liberal Cautionary Tale: Poland’s swing to the far right after a brief liberal interlude underscores the danger of unfulfilled reform promises, coalition infighting, and anemic economic offerings.
• Populist Learning Curve: The far right gains working-class traction not just through rhetoric but by delivering material gains—a challenge for left parties everywhere.
• Strategic Lessons: Campaigns that focus on personalities and criminalization narratives can be counterproductive, especially when the right harnesses class resentment.
• Institutional Transformation: Once authoritarian-leaning forces capture state institutions, reversing their changes becomes daunting—an urgent warning for other democracies.
• The Left’s Dilemma: For meaningful revival, the left must not just oppose the right but provide concrete, class-based alternatives that win over the marginalized—something easier said than done under restrictive electoral systems elsewhere.

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Final Thought

As David Ost warns, Poland’s election is not simply a local drama but a “warning for so-called liberal democrats across Europe and the United States” (64:59), challenging the assumption that populist tides are receding and underscoring the urgent need for tangible left politics.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. Today we're going to talk to David Ost. He's an expert on Poland and we're going to be talking about the stunning results of Poland's June 1 presidential election. The race was tight, but in the end the far right candidate Karl Novsky narrowly defeated Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafa Czaskowski 50.89 to 49.1%. This wasn't just a Polish story sent a signal across Europe and the world. After recent electoral defeats for Trumpist candidates in Canada, Australia and Romania, it seemed that maybe there was an international anti Trump bump underway. But Polish voters, just two years after electing Donald Tusk, have once again swung right. Now a far right historian and former boxer defeated Chaskovsky, who was backed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Populism is shown to have staying power and center left liberal governance has failed to offer a durable counter. But is that the whole story? David Ost argues that Tusk in power promised a program of radical changes but delivered too little, dampening enthusiasm and turnout, not unlike what happened to Biden and Harris. He also argues that the liberal left campaigned on Amroth's Trotsky's negative personal qualities, including his tough working class background, but not on the reactionary, xenophobic, racist and sexist policies he promotes. We'll unpack the meaning of this election, explore its implications for Poland, Europe and for the global authoritarian populist right. All that coming up when our program returns in just a moment. This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. Political theorist David Ose is joining us today with his observations and analysis analysis of Poland's recent stunning presidential election. Just two years after liberal leader Donald Tusk came to power, Polish voters have swung back to the right, narrowly electing Carl Novrotsky, a hardline nationalist with MAGA style politics and Trump's endorsement. We'll get his take on what this election reveals about the the continuing attraction of the authoritarian nationalist populist right to working class voters and the failures of the centrist liberals to offer a convincing alternative. We'll also ask why the Tusk coalition failed to deliver on their democratic reforms, how class resentment and strategic missteps helped the far right and why Polish workers continue to vote against the left liberal parties. Is Poland a warning to democratic left centrists everywhere? And what does this mean for Ukraine, for Europe and for the world? Well, that's an awful lot to unpack and I'm really happy to have David Ose Back with us again. He is an emeritus professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He's written widely on Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, with a focus on labor, class, democracy and the new right. His books include Solidarity in the Politics of Anti Politics, Workers After Worker States, and the Defeat of Solidarity. And I think we've talked about two out of those three right here on this program. And he's also edited a collection called Class After Communism. His articles have appeared in Jacobin, the Nation, Dissent, and Telos. Recent articles include why Workers Often Oppose Democracy, Workers in the Radical Right in Poland, and the Surprising Right Wing Relevance of the Russian Revolution. He's currently completing a book titled Red Pill Politics, the Right Wing Populism from Fascism to Today. And as soon as that book comes out, I guarantee you, David, we will have you back to talk about it. And I hope that today we'll touch on some of that because it certainly has relevance to this right wing surge. So with all of that, welcome to the show.

[A]

Well, thank you so much for the invitation and the kind introduction.

[B]

Well, let's just get started, I guess, with the basics. Who is. No, what happened? As I said in the intro, he won by, by a razor thin margin. So what really happened that you found most surprising and revealing? And what does it tell us about where Poland is headed?

[A]

Yeah, well, okay, let's see if I can begin to unpack some of these things now. Was someone who was completely unknown to the wider electorate until about six months ago when Law and Justice Party, that's the name of the right wing party that he's from, and its leader, Yaroslav Kaczynski, picked Novrotsky to run for president. He was not formally a member of the party, but he's been closely associated with the Law and Justice Party for quite a long time. He had been head of the Institute of National Remembrance. This is an institute that controls all the historical archives in Poland and has been a centerpiece, a kind of home for far right historians and, and cultural warriors who want to resuscitate the image of far right fascist from the interwar period and others. A very skewed interpretation of history because peace, I will use the word peace a lot, unlike, it doesn't mean peace like we mean it. It's the Polish initials for the Law and Justice Party. So peace has been in the forefront of pushing what it calls historical politics or historical policy, where they clearly see that teaching a very skewed version of Polish history in which all right wing Poles are heroes and all leftists are traitors, that that's the obligation to teach their students. In any case, this is the man who Kaczynski chose six months ago. But as everyone knew, this election was basically an election between, some say a referendum between the Law and Justice Party and the Liberal Party Civic Platform led by Donald Tusk. But that Liberal Party has been in coalition with some moderate Christians and also with the left, the former Communist Party, long since a liberal, pro capitalist, pro market party, but somewhat social protectionist and a more what we might call a new left party, a kind of Bernie Sanders like party really. Anyway, as us.

[B]

Wait, can you just go back for one second because is this party part of the coalition or is it just another party on.

[A]

Okay, that's it that we want to get into that because actually about six months ago it split with some of them being part of the coalition and some of them saying we won't support it at all. So in any case, when I said this is really a kind of referendum between or a vote between these two main parties, it means that the real question in these elections was still a kind of referendum about the years between 2015 and 2023, when the law and Justice Party governed Poland. I guess it's fair to say that there were two different referendums, in a sense, is what made it complicated because some people were still thinking about 2015-23, and then others were thinking about 2023 to today. So for your listeners, I have to explain that Poland has a very unusual parliamentary kind of half presidential, half parliamentary system like France, or different kind of like France, but the president does not have the same power as in France, has less power, but some power. So in other words, like in France, there are separate elections for president, separate elections for parliament. When peace was in power from 2015-23, it had both the parliament and the presidency. So anything that peace passed, the president, their president would sign. In 2023, there were parliamentary elections. That's when Donald Tusk returned at becoming prime minister as head of a large coalition.

[B]

And what is this coalition called?

[A]

Oh, they call it the coalition of October 15th because that's when they won the election. In any case, in 2023, in October, when the coalition won parliamentary elections, Tus became prime minister, but they still had a peace president. And so in many ways, the coalition in power now has not fully been able to implement its laws because they knew that the president would veto them.

[B]

That was going to be my next question. So let me just state it because you're going through it. And that is why the TUSC Government was hailed as a model for democratic recovery in some ways from the Law and Justice Party. But you're saying that this is a shallow restoration in a way. And so I guess the question that it seems you're moving into is why liberalism in this regard faltered and why the promises that they made went unfulfilled. And I think I'm hearing you, if I'm hearing you right, it's because of the obstacles in the system and in the structure of the system. Partially.

[A]

Right. Well, this is the question that many people are trying to figure out now because clearly the strategy, the hope of this coalition, that let's not do much because we can't succeed anyway, let's wait for a president who would sign our bills. And so for many people it was a question simply that the coalition couldn't realize their big dreams ambitions of changing the laws, including things like providing for legal civic partnerships, which they don't have. In Poland, of course, there's strong opposition to gay marriage. Those who were calling for some kind of equality have called for civic partnership, but there's still no law on that. There was also one of the strong issues in 2023 that brought many young people and young women into the coalition was to fight against the draconian abortion restrictions that Kaczynski and his Supreme Court, which he also took over during that time, had ruled that it really made abortion impossible in almost all circumstances.

[B]

Was that very unpopular, by the way? Just, just, you know, that one question of abortion. I didn't mean to interrupt your, you know, thread, but, but it seems like, you know, I remember this very clearly when Poland was part of the so called Soviet bloc and abortion was liberal everywhere. But Poland was different because it was so Catholic people thought it would be hard to get rid of the free and liberal abortion almost on demand everywhere. What was the case in Poland?

[A]

Well, in Poland during the communist period, you're right. Even despite the influence of the church, the right to abortion was never an issue. I remember being in Poland in my first trips there, say in the 1970s, when it had already become a big issue in the United States. And I remember thinking, gee, I'm in Poland, but I don't even hear the church especially talking about abortion issues. That's another question. The church made its own deals with the communist authorities and it didn't pick on that issue. But after the fall of state socialism, that's a term I normally use to refer to the Soviet type systems. So after the fall of state socialism, I.e. communist Party rule in 1980, 9 the liberals there wanted to do their best to make sure the church was going to be on its side. And one of the things it did was to strike a so called abortion compromise with the church. Now people supporting the right to choose, and most feminists today hate this term compromise because it really, for the most part, outlawed abortion, except in cases of incest and of harm to the fetus, because it still made it highly difficult to get an abortion. Also, the governments in the 1990s had a position where they gave doctors and even sometimes hospitals the right to say, I don't personally perform abortions or my hospital itself won't perform abortion. So it made that very difficult. In any case, with all of these restrictions in 2020, I believe it was, or early 2021, Kaczynski's Supreme Court ruled suddenly after these many years that even that was unconstitutional and there had to be a complete ban that brought hundreds of thousands, probably millions into the streets. It was the biggest mobilization since 1989. So there was a great deal of mobilization of opposition to this. During the election, Donald Tusk, who had never spoke about these issues before, said that he was going to pass legislation that would guarantee the right to an abortion until 14 weeks of pregnancy. And many voters supported him on that issue. So that also is one of the issues that the coalition government has not managed to do since it's been in place. Now. It is complicated because they had been talking about it, but one of the coalition partners is a more conservative rural party. If they defected from the coalition, then it would no longer have a majority. And so they said they would not go along with this. And the government, the Tus government didn't push it. And that was an issue that the, that the left and liberals said.

[B]

So they didn't get any, any compromise whatsoever on this issue. They just didn't do anything.

[A]

That's correct. In the end, absolutely nothing is best except that their new prosecutor's office and local cities like Chaskovsky, who just lost the presidential election, has been and still is mayor of Warsaw. And so they've kind of promoted these ad hoc liberalizations where we're not going to pursue this. And even there are things like remarkably about two or three months ago, right near Parliament, a group of radical feminist activists, perhaps I shouldn't say radical feminist activists. They're just those who want to have absolutely free reproductive rights. They opened a storefront right near Parliament, passing out leaflets to people. If you need an abortion, come speak to us. We will help you. We will help you find something Basically, in the past, that's meant either getting you to another country or getting you a legal abortion here. And the right wing has been protesting in front of that. Some religious people pray in front of this storefront every day and they're demanding that the government penalize them or close this storefront down. But that hasn't been done. So again, on legal basis. Nothing's been changed, but in an informal way. The prosecution is not prosecuting like in the past. And in Warsaw, it's become more liberal now. Again, that's good for some people in the know, if you have the knowledge about how this thing works, but it's clearly not a solution. So to sum up your question, like, has the coalition been totally disappointing? Well, there are two problems. On the one hand, it's true that the president would be obstructing them. Second, it's also true that the coalition has some conservative elements there whose votes are important. And so they have been pushing back against the liberal government. What protesters say and what has driven a lot of the left leftish, I might say, you know, liberal and liberal left and more radical left. What's provoked their ire at the government is that Tusk and the government has not pushed the issue. It hasn't passed a lot of bills that they would then force the president to veto. These include bills like for new media law, for reviving an independent judiciary. Under Kaczynski's rule, the judiciary has been really been disciplined and they've cut their power. Well, no. Yeah, the judiciary has been disciplined and even transformed by forcing the nomination of judges who are totally loyal to peace to that political party. Whereas the Constitution says that judges must be nominated by panels of independent judges. And that's one of the things that Kaczynski changed. And so again, the problems with this coalition is that it didn't pass the bills forcing the president to veto good things. It couldn't get full agreement among itself. And even if these were big obstacles as they are, then we did not see Tusk fight for them. Right. He can fight for other positions. He can talk about them. He can say, this is unacceptable. We're going to push hard. If he had done that, probably some of these coalition votes that were hesitant on a lot of issues would have gone along. I should also add that it's not just a matter of what we might call, you know, there's a lot of discussion about this in America now. Is there too much focus on post materialist or lifestyle or cultural issues? What about economic issues? But one of the other Bills that the coalition ran on and has again, not even produced a bill on was to build housing, provide affordable housing, to use the budget to do that, and to have wide scale programs around the country. This is obviously a chief and very crucial bread and butter issue, very important in the United States too, as we know. And that's the kind of issue that a lot of people who maybe couldn't care or not so interested in those other issues says, this determines my life, my livelihood. I mean, obviously, if you have a home or can get a home, that shapes a lot of your other life chances. And so they haven't even produced this bill.

[B]

Oh, no. This is all really interesting and I was going to ask you in the beginning what kind of structural and institutional obstacles existed to prevent the liberal coalition from realizing its promises. But I think you've sort of answered it in a way, because it's really a question of, you know, a relationship of forces within these coalitions. And, you know, the task for, I guess, the liberal left is to win more people over to the liberal left with fewer objections to some of these policies that you've mentioned, that they were all that the population would then be disappointed in. It seems like that's what you're saying, right?

[A]

Yes. And Tusk himself, look, when he was prime minister, he was roundly criticized by the left, a moderate left, social democratic left to a more radical left, because he's traditionally, as his politics tend, center Right. In 2023, because there was such antipathy towards the ruling Kaczynski Peace Coalition, he became clearly moved to the center left. But his record has always been center right, pro market, don't rock the boat. Don't alienate people. Just try to get some things through. Yeah. Don't force contentious issues. So this has had very important relevance. And since I know we're speaking also to a Jacobin audience, it's very interesting to look at what has happened to the left in that coalition.

[B]

But before we go there, because that is definitely an area I want to get to, I'd like to ask you about the actual campaign, the election campaign, because you've noted this, at least in a, I think it was in a Facebook post, that part of the problem was that the opposition focused very heavily on Novrotsky's character, his ties to, like, criminal elements, his past as a boxer, his actual status as a, you know, working class guy from a very rough background, rather than on his policies, his far right policies. And that that backfired. So I guess the question then becomes, what does that reveal about liberal campaign strategies and class dynamics in Polish politics. And then maybe at the same time, you could talk about what Novrotsky's platform, especially in relation to Europe, actually was.

[A]

Yeah, so in the campaign we saw, I think, some of the key mistakes that we also saw during Kamala Harris's campaign. And in fact, several Polish articles in the last week since the election have pointed this out, have said also that we fell into that kind of trap about talking about the person only. So that really became the focus from the very first day when Novrotsky's candidacy was revealed. The first articles entailed stories about his close contacts with open gangsters who had been to jail with so called or not so called, but soccer hooligans who have often been very closely aligned with hardline right wing politics and with right wing thugs. He has said that, yes, he knew them and he's friends with them. He said at first, yes, I knew them because I trust and I'm a Christian and I value all people. And I tried to help put them on the correct line. There's no evidence of him doing that. But again, these were these character issues then in the crucial last weeks of the campaign, because Poland, like France, like other countries, has two votes. Yeah, one time where all the different candidates vote, run, and then the last two weeks where the top two but duke it out. And so in those last couple of weeks, the focus was almost entirely on his past, on supposedly, I mean, we knew that he worked as a watch guard in a hotel, in security in a hotel. Yes, he had been an amateur boxer. We knew of his connections with these hoodlums. And he himself said that he had, as a young man had taken part in these kind of fights as well. And then there was this supposedly very damning report that when he was working in the hotel, he helped find prostitutes for guests. And so then this became all the talk. The Polish press, the critics, were using two different slang terms for pimps, both with that same derogatory aspect or meaning, that intonation that it has in English. And again saying, how is it possible, like someone like this can become president? And they weren't focusing on the issues where he talked about signing up, again, totally for the far right political agenda, getting support from Trump, because while for many reasons in Polish history, including the high numbers of immigrants from Poland to the United States, there's been pro American feelings in Poland. But that has changed in recent months, particularly as Trump has thrown Zelensky under the bus. And Poland for the most part, and Poles for the most part have been strong defenders of Ukraine. Even the connection with Trump was no longer so popular. Now it has to be mentioned though, that on the economic issues, here's where politics doesn't quite match that of the United States. That is, we know in the United States that Trump in 2016, starting then and up till now, he always talks like he will be a friend of the working class. I will save jobs against corporate raiders. As he talked about in 2016. I don't have to listen to corporations because I'm rich myself. Right? He's had a strong anti elitist rhetoric. But in the United States, Trump has never followed through on any of that. There have been no concrete benefits for workers, for working class people. That is different in Poland. So the Kaczynski government during those years when it was far right on virtually all issues, including about a democratic form of government, including about cultural policies and all that, it did nevertheless push through some very beneficial gains for workers and non elites. Most specifically, it gave a very handsome monthly stipend to parents for each child under 18 years old. At first it was for the first child only, and then after five years or so, we'll give the same amount for each child. There's no question that this helped a lot of the poorest families there, and particularly poor single women. All kinds of reports. It brought them out of poverty. It gave them a chance that they could feed their kids and have some bit of a life on their own. Now, of course, leftists often criticize these policies because they say this is neoliberal social welfare. You give directly to an individual, that individual will buy privatized services. So there's nothing social about it. That is true, but it's been happening in a lot of countries lately. We know that the social democratic state run social welfare model appears to be in crisis everywhere. Also, a lot of people are no longer trusting it as much. So the point is that the Kaczynski government, while not following leftist social policy, nevertheless provided some real concrete benefits to the poor. And for trade unionists and workers, it even took some action to make sure that there were better contracts for workers under the liberal government. Before Kaczynski, I should say. Donald Tusk was in power before Kaczynski as well, and now he's come back. So under the liberal government, before Kaczynski, before 2015, Poland was the leader in what was being called junk contracts, in which there were all kinds of ways for employers to skimp on pay, to skimp on social benefits, and to really not give strong contracts to workers under peace rule, that changed as well. So I know even leftist trade unionists who still oppose Kaczynski for all kinds of reasons, but shrugging and telling me nevertheless that yes, the fact is it's been better economically with their policies than with the liberals.

[B]

It's really interesting that you say that as you were beginning to talk. David Ost I thought, okay, well this again is modeled on France, which has very, very generous family benefits and stipend or subsidy for each child. And it's something that if we talk about a parallel here, that it's never been promised by the right. The only thing that the Democrats weekly talk about childcare policy, we don't need to go into the US Situation, but the coalition in the United States, in the Republican Party, you know, sees this as anathema, except for like the new more far right populist elements like Pauli and a couple of the others who think, okay, maybe we should promote a family policy. But it seems really interesting to me that in the that in Poland this was delivered and of course there's a history in Poland too, because I remember very much that this was a strong plank in solidarnishes platform that there should be, you know, family leave for three years, not just for like a couple of months after a baby is born and all the rest of it. So but I did want to ask you because you're talking about the economic policies versus the character issues that were stressed by the liberals, which seems like a gigantic failure, also repeated here where they just ran on Trump and Trump's personality and thinking they didn't have to mention anything else, with a sort of condescending attitude to the working class for the most part. But I wonder, because you mentioned the support for Trump until he threw Zelensky under the bus. And we know about, you know, the long history of Polish nationalism and their antipathy to Russia, of course. But I just wonder for Novrotsky, what were his policies on his platform if he got a chance to actually talk about them much on the issue of say Ukrainian refugees and let's say also climate change and energy policies, what were those? And did the Tusk platform have any counter?

[A]

Yeah. So on the question, Ukraine is very important. If the legacy of peace and of Tusk's party when the invasion took place, the full throtted invasion in February 2022, immediately before any policy could be determined, Ukrainians started massively coming to the border and trying to leave and entering Poland. And for the first few days, the government didn't take a position. It seemed a little surprised. And it was really what we could call independent civil society. That is, people, some organizations, people just began showing up at the border personally helping, yes, you can come to my house. People old enough to have grown up during the communist system who thus knew Russian, often came to the border to help Ukrainians, since most of them, virtually all of them, spoke Russian as well. And so there was this massive effort of support because Peace and Kaczynski, they weren't anti Ukrainian, but they were less pro Ukrainian than the liberals, and most of the left had been as well. But seeing this tremendous wave of public support, then the government joined in. It supported that. And then it did, in fact, include Ukrainian refugees in the very generous. In, for example, that childcare program I mentioned. Right. Because many women and children, men couldn't. They still can't leave Ukraine. Women and children came, right. Schools were opened up to them. They got free bus passes, train travel, and were then included in the generous childcare benefits and healthcare. What happened, though, is that there was mostly general support for that in the first months, in the first year. Now, of course, it seems to be about almost two and a half years since that started. So in the last year or so, and particularly when the campaign started, then you started to see these differences. So peace, and particularly Novrotsky said, of course, we want to do our best to help, but no, we cannot afford this. And we don't want minority communities establishing themselves here forever. And so we're going to restrict the rights to accessing Polish social welfare. Restrict those two Ukrainians. There were no specifics because he didn't propose an exact bill on what would be cut or what wouldn't be cut. But he was clearly playing to dissatisfaction, as often happens over time with groups who are not ethnically Polish or. I mean, we know this happens around the world a lot, right? So there might be sympathy at first, and then it turns to, well, you know, don't settle here forever, and we need to push back. So he also took a position not like Trump. Again, who knows what Trump's position is? I mean, we know he adores Putin, and he said he would stop the war in a day, and now he seems to not care about the war whatsoever. None of those positions have a match in Poland. But nevertheless, there's been some in the peace, right, who are not pro Putin, but who also say, well, this resistance can't last forever.

[B]

I gotta stop you right there and ask one question, because that's surprising, I think, at least to me, because of the traditional Polish nationalism. Poland was disappeared as a country twice and has been very, very strong. So any sort of concession, even in attitude toward Putin's imperial push and what it's doing in Ukraine doesn't seem like. Well, it's surprising to me.

[A]

Yeah. Actually the background to this is not only the relation to Putin, but also Polish Ukrainian relations. Now this is something almost nobody knows in the west because what happened around 1943 was the peak time, very slight turn to that moment. This was the time that the Nazis controlled all of current Ukraine and Poland as well. But they had just, in early 1943, got defeated at Stalingrad and the Red army was marching and the Nazis were being pushed back. By mid to late 1943, it was becoming clear to almost everybody that the Nazis are going to lose. And so then the question among Polish nationalists and Ukrainian nationalists is who's going to control that territory? Because Poland in the pre war period, the interwar period from 1918 to 1939, Poland included much of today's western Ukraine, including most famously the city of Lviv Lvow, as they say in Polish. It was populated at the time mostly by ethnic Poles and by Jews. And the surrounding areas were Ukrainian peasants. And the other areas nearby in the mid-1940s had again Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian residents. So in 1943, there were whole series of horrific massacres of some Ukrainian nationalists going into a community, killing every man, woman and child and they didn't even have guns to do the killing. And then soon after Poles would retaliate. And so there's all this history of that during the communist period. Of course, they're both part of the Soviet bloc. That issue didn't come up in the post communist period. All sides basically agreed that let's not pursue this issue. But in recent times, especially has Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees have come over and saying we want help, then that gives a basis for that right wing nationalist tendency in Poland, which now he doesn't fully represent them, but he represents them too right now. Doesn't declare himself as an outright right wing fascist, but he has many friends among those who declare themselves right wing, open fascist. And he doesn't push down against that. In that sense, he embraces them even more than Trump embraces the proud boys. And so that's why for that clientele and those issues, they say, well, we have to pursue that issue. And in fact, I just read something today as people are speculating, well, what will President Elect Novrotsky, what will he do? What might be different? What might be different in relation to Ukraine, they're saying, well, one of the first things he might ask for is an exhumation of bodies in this area that's now currently Ukraine, that used to be Poland, to see how many Poles were killed in what kind of fashion and to bring that issue back up.

[B]

Look, this is huge because that also brings up the role of Germany in all of that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. I have to say, because, you know, this is where my family's from too. Western Ukraine, Galicia.

[A]

Oh, is that right? My family's from Galicia, but all in present day Poland.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, no, the one. Well, Ivana Frankenstein, that area, that was Stanislava. Between the wars it was Poland, but now it's back that it became the heart of Ukraine. Because I find this so fascinating. I'm really glad, David Os, that you're able to, you know, inject a lot of the history here for us to understand. I just want to throw this out there. Chatham House, in analyzing that's a, you know, British liberal, sort of liberal institution said about this election that voters were presented with the stark choice of either a rules based liberal democracy or a magaesque ethno nationalist one. Is that how you see it?

[A]

Well, that's part of it, clearly. I mean, one thing that. Look, one key issue besides all these laws and things we have been talking about is that what peace does is what Orban has done and what Trump has done is trying to do now every day. In fact, was it today? I think I saw that piece in the New York Times about how what we had heard was going to happen, that basically for the federal civil service, they're now directly asking questions of potential applicants, basically. Do you support Trump? What can you say about the president's policies? How will you try to execute the executive orders that President Trump has made? And if you are a neutral public servant, has been the rule in America since the early 20th century. That was the role of the progressive movement, most liberal democracies of the last 70 years or so, of having a neutral civil service. This is something that peace violated and that Trump is violating. And among the other things that peace did and that Trump is trying to do is to mine the territory with these authoritarian governing tools that make it impossible for successors to overcome. What do I mean by that? It means that, for example, the judiciary, they changed these laws and they appointed all of these people who were totally subservient to peace in the highest judicial positions. I remember once a woman who was basically like, we could say Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House, who was a peace watchdog or whatever term we might use, who would make sure to always shout in the most vocal and humiliating terms against the opposition. Peace turned her into a judge on the Supreme Court. And they just nominated their candidates. They let the opposition ask questions, but the candidates did not have to answer the questions. They just. Okay, thank you for asking your questions. Now we can take a vote. And everyone voted along party lines. So the judiciary was fully trapped that way. They also took over the public TV stations and the public radio, and they passed laws that for all independent lawyers was a clear violation of the constitution. But nevertheless, their constitutional Court, with people like the Marjorie Taylor Greene, said, no, this is constitutional. And their president, the peace president, signed on to all these. So the liberal opposition was saying, all these things are clearly against the Constitution. Moreover, the European Union has voted and decided because Poland is part of the European Union, and formally the European Court of Justice is the highest legal authority. And the European Union legal authority also said that this was against the Polish constitution and must be reversed. They did not do that. So then when Tus comes into office, he's dealing with all of these institutions whose very existence is a violation of the constitution. Nevertheless, they formally exist, they get paid, they go to their offices. And so what do you do about that? Same thing with public tv. You had the bizarre spectacle that when Tusk won the elections in 2023, for the next week or so or the next few days, the government, the national television, is slandering Tusk as a German agent, telling them that everything they've said is a matter of lies. Right. So the government presents its program, and then on the government news program, they're told that it's all lies. And these are done by foreign agents. So the government, within a few days went in and took control of the media and put it back to a more liberal. Of course, like good liberals, they didn't go in the opposite way. They became more fair with a tilt towards their side. So in the media and in the courts, the government has tried to marginalize all these institutions. Nevertheless, they legally still exist, and they couldn't get them overthrown because the president kept vetoing those laws as well. This is the kind of thing we're going to face in the United States.

[B]

I was just going to say that, David, that in fact, you know, in this case, it's not Poland borrowing from Maga, but showing the, I guess, the authoritarian playbook and how it can be done.

[A]

Yes, and much of that does come from Hungary. I mean, just as Kaczynski, one of his slogans when he came to power in 2015, let's turn Poland into Hungary, something like that. It sounded a little better in Polish.

[B]

Yeah, I was going to ask though, like I guess because we don't have tons of time left, but what, what happens now? I think you Tusk has called for a vote of no confidence, as you said, or a vote of confidence that you mentioned in your Facebook post that could lead to new parliamentary elections. Do we know what the possible outcome of that would be? And would peace return to power in a coalition with the, I think you said the far right Confederacy Party. Can you explain this for our listeners?

[A]

Yes. First of all, you mentioned the Facebook post. It's being published in an online journal called Democracy Seminar. So you can it'll be available on Monday. That that's short account of what's going on now. So yes, after the election, Tusk has called for a vote of confidence which is supposed to take place I think June 11th. It'll probably win it, but we're not 100% sure because one of the things that's happened is that for most of the time that peace was in power, it had a policy of like no opposition from the right. We will take a far right position and we don't want to have opposition from the right. Slowly but surely you did get opposition from the right, some of which were attacking the European Union in stronger terms than peace had done. Also that further right they've been attacking Ukraine. Ukraine. They try to take up that issue like they've been pushing that agenda about Ukraine. This is the party called the Confederacy. Confederacy. It's had people, including someone who is a complete and open anti Semite, of course having nothing to do with Israel or Gaza. But just to give an example of one of his, a couple of his policies or stunts. So when the Polish parliament last year had in a nook and cranny of the parliamentary building, had a small celebration of Hanukkah with the Poland's chief rabbi. Of course, there are not many Jews in Poland, but there are some and they lit a menorah. And so this guy, his name is Dzegosh Brown, comes in with a fire extinguisher, blows out the menorah and of course creating all kinds of havoc in the room. Parliament would not completely denounce him. And so he's been someone who's been in the Confederacy. He recently the Confederacy had this person. Then it tries to win over some moderates and says this guy is a little too far to the right. Nevertheless, what was stunning about the first round of elections is that this guy Brown actually won 6% of the vote. He came in fourth place after peace, after. No, Traskovsky won the first round. Traskovsky, Novrotsky, Menzen, who is the formal head of the Confederacy, who presents himself as a right winger, but, you know, pro small business and again, anti Ukraine and right wing on social issues. In their campaign, you know, they, they always talk about taking the red pill. Again, that's a term that the alt right began using. It's a code word to those people who are strong, anti feminist or really, you know, it's a kind of hipster fascist term. So, yeah, what happened now is that Confederacy Party has gotten support of more right wingers who are also tired of Kaczynski and Tusk in office. Look, we can understand that. As we know, Trump is the first president since whenever it was right to come back to office. So usually you're in office and you retire and you're out of politics. Obama is like a senior statesman, even though he's just in his early 60s now. But in Poland, Tusk and Kaczynski have been active on the political scene since the early 1990s. If not Kaczynski a little bit more. So this is before Bill Clinton's in office. And young people see that we've had it's like the same fight, Tusk and Kaczynski, since way before we were born. So for that reason, some people also say, well, let's go for mensing. We just got to shake. Get these guys out of our hair. Right. And perhaps get these parties out of our hair. We should talk about the left.

[B]

Well, that's my next question about bringing it. Let's bring in the Polish left into the picture. We what is the role of the left today in Poland? How has it positioned itself within the liberal and, let's say, nationalist camps? How strong is it? Why have Polish workers, who historically central to resistance movements like Solidarnus or Solidarity, tended to move to the right or vote for the right, if they have, in recent years? And what does it tell us about class politics and what we all like to call here or what we hear so much about realignment, dealignment, you know, in polls.

[A]

Right. Well, in the first round of elections, there were actually two left candidates who formerly, I'm sorry, formerly, a little bit before, had belonged to the same New Left party, the one that's like a Bernie Sanders type party. So that's the party known as Razem, or Together. So what happened is this, is that first, in 2015, this new left party called Razem for the first time emerged and ran for office. In the last days. It got about 3 or 4% of the vote, which was spectacular coming from nothing right away. But what it did do is that it meant that that party was under 5% and the official left party, the Social Democrats, who were the successors of the old Communist Party, but of course, this is already 30 years later, so it has nothing really in common with that and been a kind of pro market, but pro social protection party. What happened in 2015 is that none of those parties on the left got into Parliament. They were under the 5% threshold. That is why Kaczynski's party got a parliamentary majority, because the left divided among itself. None of its votes translated into seats in Parliament. So in 2015, those two parties again joined together in a coalition just known as the Left Levitsa. And in 2023, they won. They're part of the government. But then there was a kind of split within that new left party because they had about 5, 6, I think they got about 9% votes in 2023. So what happened is that they had to decide are they going to work in government or stay on the outside. So at first they decided to work in the government and their people were in the government. They said, okay, we have to show that we're ready to take some responsibility. We're not always on the outs. About a year ago, given the fact that, as I said at the beginning of our conversation, the TUS coalition did not even propose or force through many of the good changes it proposed, then you add a split within the parliamentary deputies from that Razem party, with some of them saying, no, we still have to ally with the government. We have to try our best to push it in that direction. And another side which said that no, we have to be in opposition. And so you actually had, in the first round of elections, two candidates who both belonged to that party, and they're still friendly among themselves for the most part, but they divided between the two of them. They got about 10% of the vote, 9%. It wasn't bad. But they had split so completely the

[B]

opposite of what the left and the center, let's say, did in fact France to defeat.

[A]

That's right. Interesting. That's right. That's right. This is relevant now for the vote of confidence on Wednesday, because the anti participation wing of Razem, actually, now that's the only Razem party, the ones who said, we're going to stay in the government had to leave Razem Party because Razem's voters, Razem's supporters, demanded that they leave the coalition. And so those who decided to stay in it formally left the party and have stayed with the government. So now the Razem Party, led by a kind of charismatic figure, Adrian Zandberg, who's a very good speaker and mobilizes people when he speaks. Just two days ago, he gave a speech in the parliament very critical of the Liberals and saying, I will vote. Our deputies, I think there are four or five of them, will vote against the government. We will not support them in this vote of confidence. Look, it was clear that he had to do that because again, the Rosam Party had not been supporting the coalition. It's also the question that even if the coalition is salvaged next week, it is totally unclear what it's going to do now in the next two and a half years with Novrotsky as president. As I wrote in that piece, the best option would be if it wins the vote of confidence and then goes ahead and passes all these bills, forces it through in its own coalition and presents it to President Novrotsky to veto, because some of these things would be popular. But since that coalition has not done that until now, it's not at all clear it's going to do that now. Plus you have the fact that that moderate Christian party, Conservative Christian Party, which is small but is part of the coalition. There's already some speculation that Peace and Confederatia may try to get this small conservative party to force it away from the liberal coalition and join us in a coalition so that small party again could be the kingmaker. So it's not clear if anything good could come out of that in that context. I know left friends of mine are divided in Poland. Some are angry at Zandberg. How can he say that he won't vote for this? That might bring Kaczynski and Manson back into power. But then he's also feeling that we're not going to be able to do anything anyway. And since Kaczynski has won over a lot of workers in the past. You asked earlier just now, what's the role of workers because of Peace has generally had these kinds of measures, moderate measures in support of unions, particularly private sector unions, not public sector, against teachers and healthcare workers. He's harsher. That's a whole other discussion we can have that's a kind of similar thing we see around the world that those more skilled, the trade unionists, usually lean liberal and left, while it's the private sector working class that is being pushed to the right because they're the ones that these new right parties in their populist version, they speak like we're going to do some things for you and we don't really care that much about all this democracy that doesn't concern you anyway. Healthcare workers and teachers are usually a little more insisting on maintaining democratic rights and things like that. So Zonderberg in this version is perhaps doing something that can help build up the left in the future, namely that right now he's stating that I cannot go along with this government because it takes an anti worker position and that if and when a coalition between peace and confederacy comes into play, then he might be able to position himself as a true defender of workers rights. Because I know this is getting terribly complicated, but because men Sen. He's also on the far right politically, but he speaks more not to workers. He has said in the past that, oh, all these social benefits for workers and this childcare pension, all this stuff is a waste of hardworking people's money. So he has a kind of neoliberal economic position that would kind of force Kaczynski to back off from his pro working class populism, perhaps enabling in the future. That's, I guess, our only hope that this more consistently left wing group around Zanberg and the Razem Party might become a player in the future at least if these new right regimes everywhere allow elections again.

[B]

Well, that's a perfect way to sum it up in a sense, David and I really did just have one more question. I know we've spent a lot of time on this, but I guess it's what can we learn here that has universal application? Because in the US we see the Democrats doubling down on failed direction and they're really just arguing over messaging, while the Trump administration and the Trump Republican Party are radical reactionaries, changing the very nature of the game and challenging power of all the institutions. And I was going to ask you if that has an analog in Poland and whether we can see Poland as a kind of warning for so called liberal democrats across Europe and the United States.

[A]

Yes, I think very much it is. I had a book published in 2005 called the Defeat of Solidarity, but that was written right before peace came to power for the first time, right before it became a strong movement. But that book anticipated that. It basically said this is probably forthcoming because I saw I've been going to Poland since the mid-1970s, I'm that old already, or already in the Aftermath of the communist period, many of the. Well, the left basically ceased to exist for a while. The liberals were saying, we have to move in a pro market policy very fast. Yes, we want social welfare, but that's down the line. We'll do that much later. And so as workers were getting screwed, has happened everywhere in the post communist world. Then these right wing nationalist parties started appealing to them. At first they said, oh, you're getting screwed because the capitalists are not real Poles, they're someone else. Often it meant like they're Jews or they're foreigners, you know, so they don't represent us. So we need a real capitalism run by real Poles. But after Polish people got familiar with capitalism and realized that it was an exploitative system that didn't give them much of a chance at all, then a new left began to revive. But also this right wing party, Kaczynski, like Orban, they became more populist and pro worker. And so the left has had a hard time winning over being seen as the party of workers. This is why, a key reason why the Polish left has not been, or this new left especially has not been able to get much traction, because the former communists, they switched on a dime and became quite Pro market after 1989 in Poland, then in Hungary, right? So the only people for a while defending workers on nationalist grounds, not class grounds, was the right, the political right. And so look, yes, I think that the only way for a left party to revive and get traction is it has to show, make clear that it's defending those who are written out of the capitalist system, marginalized by the capitalist system, marginalized by the economy. And it has to take that kind of position again in Poland. That sphere of politics so far has gone with peace ever since the 1990s. The right started recruiting them. But that may shake up now. How does this relate to America? Well, I do agree basically with Bernie. The left has to take that position, the Democrats have to take that position. I have to say though that I understand the problems. It's not so clear cut in a place like America. I mean, we only have a two party system, right? In Poland, these new parties emerge and you can get a group and they don't have to just vote for the other guy. I mean, vote against the other guy. Right. That's what allows ROSM to grow. That's what has allowed confederacy suddenly to emerge. It's possible to have a strong left emerge in the United States. That's not possible. And we know that all of the business elite would do its best, and not even elite, but even small, moderate sized business owners who might be convinced and might be wary of Trump. They'll also be wary of Bernie Sanders of a stronger left position. I think it's more complicated and more difficult in the United States, and I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that. There's a lot of questions I don't have the answer to. We just try. And if we keep trying, we'll come up with answers and we've got to keep trying.

[B]

Well, with all of that, I want to thank you so much, David. It was a little illuminating and I hope the listeners agree. And we'll certainly be watching what happens in Poland next, especially with the vote of confidence. I want to thank you so much. Thank you. And David Ost is emeritus professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Look around for his books. He's been writing on Poland, labor, class, democracy and the new right. We've interviewed him before on this show with his book on Solid Solidarity and the Politics of Anti Politics and also the Defeat of Solidarity. But you can find some of his latest articles including Workers Often Oppose Democracy and Workers in the Radical Right in Poland and the Surprising Right Wing Relevance of the Russian Revolution if you Google him. And David, we're going to invite you back when your book is finished and published and that's going to be called Red Pill Politics, Right Wing Populism from Fascism Today. Thanks so much for joining us.

[A]

Thank you very much.

[B]

Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Susie Wiseman. This is Jacobin Radio. Thanks to producer and director Alan Minsky and to Jacobin Radio's Micah Utrecht. Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder and editor of Jacobin magazine. And special thanks to Robert Brenner. And thanks to you for listening. I'm Susie Wiseman.