Authors

Anna Stanisz-Lubowiecka²; Jan Kubik¹;  ¹ UCL SSEES, UK;  ² SSEES, University College London, UK

Discussion

Populism is an incomplete (“thin”) ideology based primarily on the opposition between “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite” (Mudde 2004). In contemporary Poland it tends to be “thickened” by nationalism, where the nation is defined as “the pure (native) people” and juxtaposed with “the evil and dangerous alien” (Müller 2016). One of the key strategies to achieve it is the mythologization of the “true Pole”. Myth can be defined as a fundamental “cultural system” (Geertz 1973) or “deep story” (Hochschild 2016). Its opposition is pragmatism, rationality, and thinking funded on science (Flood 2002). We assume that in the times of crises and anxieties (even if they are fabricated), myths diffuse into common sense much more easily than science. In this paper, we are looking at numerous examples of official statements of PiS MPs and the national TV channel (TVP) it controls, where the “Polish nation” and its “enemies” are constructed. There are two such “enemies”: internal (the opposition, who do not subscribe to the same values of “patriotism” and “Catholicism”, and more recently LGBTQ people), and external (particularly Germans and the European Union, which is argued to enforce “foreign” and “destructive” values onto the “Polish nation”, but also immigrants, refugees and, more broadly, “the West”). Poland is thus represented as an eternally suffering victim. We argue that PiS uses a few linguistic strategies to fabricate “threats” to the nation and thus “thicken” populism.