By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 10th, 2013 
Tomek Kitlinski informed me yesterday about a new round in the continuing story of the escalating cultural war in Poland. This one hits close to home for me. I have a tragic sense of déjà vu. The greatest of the student theaters I studied in the 1970s, Teatr Osmego Dnia (Translated as Theater of the Eighth Day, or The Eighth Day Theater), continues to face official repression. A theater that combined the theatrical insights of Jerzy Grotowski with deep exploration of the existential problems of “socialist youth” continues its critical journey in the post-Communist order, revealing that some things haven’t changed: their challenging artistic excellence, the intolerance of authorities to alternative sensibility, opinion and judgment, and remarkably, the political monitoring of the private life of artists, the theme of their powerful play, “The Files,” which juxtaposes their dairies with their security files of the Ministry of the Interior from the 70s (think “The Lives of Others” with more dramatic and documentary power, expressed through superb fully embodied acting). The invasion of privacy in this case involved Ewa Wójciak Facebook page, as reported in the letter below. I reproduce the letter of protest here, which points to the unfolding events and comments by Kitlinski, illuminating the meaning of the events. Readers wishing to support this letter of protest should send their names and comments to teatr@osmego.art.pl
On the day of the elections for a new pope, shortly after the official announcement was made, Ewa Wójciak took to her private Facebook profile and wrote: “…and so they elected a prick, who denounced left-wing priests during the military dictatorship in Argentina.”
To Wójciak’s astonishment, her status almost instantly became the cause for a massive media outrage.
She was invited onto a show for the local TV channel, where she defended the private character of her Facebook status, while retaining her conviction that the choice made by the Vatican was of scandalous nature. She explained that, regardless of . . .
Read more: Political Repression in Poland: Ewa Wójciak and the Eighth Day Theater
By Tomasz Kitlinski, February 26th, 2013 
Late Saturday night, I received an urgent email from Tomek Kitlinski “Bad, disturbing, but important news again,” followed by a brief description of a recent event in Poland and his extended thoughts about its meaning. Here, his report and reflections. -Jeff
February 23, 2013, a lecture by Adam Michnik, the foremost dissident against Communism, author, editor-in-chief of Poland’s leading broadsheet Gazeta Wyborcza and regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, was disrupted by a group of Polish ultranationalists. Michnik is Eastern Europe’s most outstanding public intellectual whose books, articles, and, before 1989, writings from prison have shaped the thinking and acting for freedom in our region. Esprit, erudition and engagement in pro-democracy struggle make him an exceptional social philosopher and activist. As Gazeta reported, on Saturday in the city of Radom a group of young people in balaclavas and masks attempted to disrupt Michnik’s talk and chanted “National Radom! National Radom!” A scuffle erupted. The far-right All Polish Youth militiamen were shouting during the lecture.
The disruption of the Michnik lecture follows a pattern of aggression in Poland and among its neighbors. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia are gripped by culture wars, as I have explored here. The Polish cultural war is ongoing.
Recently at the University of Warsaw, neo-Nazis threatened a lecture by the feminist philosopher Magdalena Sroda. Ten years ago in Lublin, while Professor Maria Szyszkowska and I were giving speeches about the lesbian and gay visibility campaign Let Us Be Seen, a pack of skinheads marched in and out of the hall, stamping their boots loudly in an effort to distract us. This pattern of disturbing university events could not be more dangerous. Michnik this week is, once again, a focal point of repressive anger.
While ultranationalists hate Adam Michnik for his message of inclusive democracy and they also loathe feminists, LGBT and poetry, Michnik often goes back to his inspiration and friend, the Nobel Prize winning poet, Czeslaw Milosz, who was the object of nationalist outrage over . . .
Read more: Michnik Attacked: The Polish Culture War Escalates
By Tomasz Kitlinski, January 15th, 2013 
Grassroots Political, Intellectual and Art Activism versus Censorship, Soccer Hooliganism and Far-Right Threats in the City of Lublin
1. Art representing Roma, gays and Jews has been banned and destroyed in Lublin, Poland, twice host to Transeuropa Festival. Stop Toleration for Toleration, a far-right soccer hooligan march, with hate speech chants, has lashed back against the social-artistic campaign Lublin for All, led by Szymon Pietrasiewicz. The campaign included bus tickets with the images of national and sexual minorities who have shaped this city for centuries as a hub of Jewish, Romany, Protestant and queer cultures. City Hall, under pressure from the soccer hooligans, censored and shredded this art. As the municipal authorities have caved in to the extreme right, Lublin — it appears — is not welcoming at all.
The destruction of art crushes the human geography of Lublin: this is a blow to the heritage of this intercultural city and to the current art activism working to make Lublin hospitable.
We need to reclaim Lublin from the far-right soccer hooligans. That’s why the ground breaking Holocaust scholars Jan T. Gross and Irena Grudzinska-Gross of Princeton, Poland’s leading feminist Kazimiera Szczuka, and this country’s only out gay MP Robert Biedron have all signed an open letter “Let’s not give Lublin up to intolerance, aggression and social exclusion,” authored by Agnieszka Zietek, a political activist and lecturer at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin.
2. “Lublin free of fags!” “Run Pietrasiewicz out of Lublin!” “F … Gazeta Wyborcza [Poland’s progressive newspaper]!” “A boy and a girl are a normal family!” “Lublin, a city without deviations!” These were the chants of the soccer hooligan marchers. As editor-in-chief of the local branch of the Gazeta Wyborcza broadsheet Malgorzata Bielecka-Holda writes, the catcalls were received with sympathy by City Hall. This is just one element of the rise of the far right in Lublin. Other ominous developments: the mobilization of the National Radical Camp (ONR) and the hosting . . .
Read more: 21 Notes on Poland’s Culture Wars, Part 1 (1- 11)
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|