It must have been pleasant for Kaczyński and his entourage to watch neo-Nazis hang portraits of Tusk’s MEPs from gallows. Or to see football hooligans or “patriots” vandalize a TVN van. Political cynicism is nothing new. Every party is like that and operates in that way.

However, the fact that there are Poles who celebrate Hitler’s birthdays while declaring that they love their homeland shows that we have lost our Polish identity. In this chaos that we fought for, and which has been our freedom since 1989, we cannot answer the simple question from a patriotic poem: Who are you?

We are still wavering. Are we a little Pole, a European, perhaps a Catholic, or maybe a leftist? Some of us would rather be citizens of England, Ireland, or Scandinavia, while others stayed in Poland and still complain about their beloved homeland.

In schools, patriotism is taught as it was during the partitions: at national-Catholic assemblies. God, Honour, Homeland. Blood shed, suffering, foreign invaders, martyrdom. Or a joint and proud singing of the national anthem is organized. But when you look more closely, students sing the anthem without understanding the words. Do you remember our article What does the word “taraban” mean in the national anthem? Middle-school students did not know, which we published last year?

Recently, a version of the anthem’s lyrics apparently written from hearing by a child has been causing a sensation online, probably on some test, since the sheet bears a failing grade. The child interpreted the lyrics of Dąbrowski’s Mazurka as follows:

“When the sheep took our sabre, we will take it back, march march dombrowski from Italian lands to Poland with your nation we’ll join with the nation.”(original spelling)

We cannot “join with the nation” because we do not know what this nation is.

So what should we do to be a Polish man or a Polish woman? Or how should we act to deserve being Polish? So many groups are excluded from being Polish that it is truly difficult. Do you remember PiS’s division into “real Poles” and... well, whom exactly? Polish lemmings, Polish treacherous mugs? If I am not Catholic, I cannot be a good, genuine Polish woman. If I want European, global rights for women, I will also not fit into the group of Poles. If my patriotism is not God-and-homeland patriotism, I have little chance either.

The group includes those who love their homeland and are ready to die for it. For them, even “enemies” of that homeland are manufactured. The group includes the aggrieved, victims oppressed by Tusk’s and the EU’s governments. The European Commission wants to “flood” us with Muslim refugees of conscription age who will rape our women and kill our men. The nation will once again be at risk of losing its identity as it was during the partitions, because Muslims will make everyone renounce their faith in the King of Poland, Jesus Christ. Does “the good defender of white widows and orphans,” Mr. Hitler, fit into all this? He probably does fit such a muddle of concepts. And the stunt involving “idiots in the forest eating a cake with a swastika made of wafers” is not surprising, because that is what Joachim Brudziński, PiS’s head of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, called Polish neo-Nazis.

In my opinion, however, these “idiots” are not, as some want to prove, a pure product of PiS. They are, what a paradox, an authentic national product made in Poland. Created over a long period by all parties since 1989. Parties that neglected what creates us: identity. A new, post-communist one.

All of us Poles allowed this source of identity to be littered with all the waste we found. Including a swastika and “Adolf Hitler.” And although everyone is responsible for this, the governing party now has a chance to start cleaning it up and healing it. And what does PiS do? It washes its hands and turns the matter on its head. Once again, it sweeps the rubbish under the carpet. And that is why I am truly angry with them.

Grażyna Hanaf