- Sun Feb 11, 2018 11:52 pm
#533401
As some of you might be aware, the current nationalist government of Poland (Law & Justice Party / PiS) have passed a law which "criminalizes public statements that falsely ascribe, to the Polish nation, collective complicity in Holocaust-related or other war crimes or which "grossly reduce the responsibility of the actual German perpetrators". They've specifically banned use of the phrase "Polish Death Camps" and a few permutations thereof.
To back this up, they're now running a social media campaign in English:
This obviously raises a few issues. Firstly, as far as I'm aware even the nuttiest holocaust denier isn't saying there was a holocaust perpetrated by the Poles, so this seems like a demented over-reaction to geographically accurate-yet-vague use of English (in one notable instance, by Barack Obama). Second, Polish society is in enormous collective denial over quite how fascist the country was in the 30s before being invaded. I've tried discussing this with some Poles, and the minute you talk about Jozef Beck's plan to forcibly expel their Jewish population (who were already banned from many professions, and held limited citizenship), they go into meltdown and say that anyone who mentions this is lapping up Hermann Göring's propaganda.
Worrying stuff, and I get the strong impression this is the beginning of a Putinesque slide for our Polish friends.
To back this up, they're now running a social media campaign in English:
This obviously raises a few issues. Firstly, as far as I'm aware even the nuttiest holocaust denier isn't saying there was a holocaust perpetrated by the Poles, so this seems like a demented over-reaction to geographically accurate-yet-vague use of English (in one notable instance, by Barack Obama). Second, Polish society is in enormous collective denial over quite how fascist the country was in the 30s before being invaded. I've tried discussing this with some Poles, and the minute you talk about Jozef Beck's plan to forcibly expel their Jewish population (who were already banned from many professions, and held limited citizenship), they go into meltdown and say that anyone who mentions this is lapping up Hermann Göring's propaganda.
Worrying stuff, and I get the strong impression this is the beginning of a Putinesque slide for our Polish friends.
Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity