Modern Poland is going the nationalist populism way. The article is very much called for, and it is needed.

We have a government that builds its ideology on the notion that Poland was always innocent and heroic, Poles were always the victims, we should be proud of our country, anybody who says otherwise is a traitor, leftist, marxist, or other kind of undesirable.

They build their support on historic resentment towards Germans (because WW2 but also because now they are leftists and want to put terrorists in our country), EU in general (because they are leftist and lie to us, they only give us money to abuse us, we would be better off outside), Jews (because they are lying that Poles were killing them and helping Germans in WW2, because they want our money from reperations, because they are behind every leftist conspiracy ever). Among the enemies of the people are also private media, NGOs, ecologists, liberal and socialist governments anywhere, liberal media. Whoever criticizes any particular thing government did becomes a part of conspiracy, and then it suffices to show that this guy is in any way connected to any previously ostracized group - and you can safely ignore whatever (s)he says.

There's this paranoia that people abroad say "polish death camps" and think that death camps were created by Poles. So they post every single mention in foreign media of the term, and there's public outrage.

There was a stupid law recently introduced that was punishing "blaming Polish nation or state for Holocaust or other crimes against humanity". It was unconstutitional obviously, but constutitional tribunal isn't working anymore. It was also stupid, because there were crimes against humanity done by Poles (although on small scale).

It was introduced, predictably Israel, USA, and others protested - government used it as a way to portrait everybody opposing this law as a traitor paid by Jews. That was the rhethoric. And USA obviously is only protesting because Israel forces them to (because government at once tries to show USA as an alternative to EU which is the big devil according to them, and to show that USA when it criticizes Poland is the enemy too). It's funny how they contradict themselves sometimes.

For like half a year the law was suspended, and government blamed everything evil on Jews for opposing it. There was a huge antisemitic campaign in the media, both traditional (public TV, radio, etc), and social media. People were posting every single story from WW2 where a Jew did something bad (because that makes Poles collaborating with Germans ok somehow :) ).

There was a 50 anniversary of 1968 expulsion of Jews from Poland by communist regime. Somehow, despite current government dislike of communists - they managed to make it look like 1968 was bad, but Jews had it coming.

USA blocked all high-level meetings between our governments, and that was the end of that. Government backpedaled, law was canceled. But the propaganda remains.

It sometimes feels like I'm in 1930s. Have you ever listened to Michałkiewicz or Grzegorz Braun? People like that always were there, but they were marginalized. Nowaydays their rethoric is repeated by prime minister and public TV.

It's terrifying to see my own parents buying into this crap. People who were always teaching me to be tolerant, not to believe government when it shows "these people are your enemy". Now they are repeating the same shit that is in TVP. Every few months there's new public enemy - from ecologists, through "homolobby", european courts, NGOs, private media, Jews, France, Israel, USA, Germany, Ireland. Everybody out there is just waiting to destroy our pure, innocent Poland.

That is bullshit, and the fact that people are buying into this is scary as hell. I will manage, I'm working in IT. I can go abroad and live well. But I'm also a patriot, and I don't want to move. And I'm very pessimistic about the general direction Poland took recently. It ends with isolated, marginalized Poland outside of EU. And that in turn ends with Poland going the Belarus way - as a "proudly independent" vassal state of Russia. I would very much want to be mistaken, but we're so far hitting every point on the checklist.