In Poland, the personal is becoming political.
For the past four years, the conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), has campaigned on a platform of victimhood and portrayed Poland as a country besieged from all sides: migrants, Brussels bureaucrats, the Jewish financier George Soros.
Now, as the country gears up for an election in the fall, the party has targeted an enemy closer to home: the LGBT community.
PiS, which maintains a close relationship with Poland’s influential Catholic church, has never been a friend of LGBT equality, but the party has not typically used the issue to galvanize political support.
This spring, the emergence of a new, progressive party, Wiosna, and a shift in the main opposition party, Civic Platform, pushed LGBT rights up the political agenda. PiS latched onto the topic, unleashing a campaign of well-targeted, explosive anti-LGBT messages that have brought the debate to a boiling point.
Support for PiS is high across the country, in large part thanks to its family policies and generous social handouts, which have tangibly improved the lives of many.
In April, the country’s de facto leader, PiS chief Jarosław Kaczyński, called the gay rights movement a “threat” to Polish identity and the state. On his cue, at least 30 towns and villages passed resolutions, declaring themselves “free of LGBT ideology.”
In May, an activist designed a poster showing the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo over her head; her apartment was raided, and she was arrested by police. And in July, a pro-government newspaper distributed stickers that read “LGBT free zone,” just days after extremists attacked participants of a pride parade in Bialystok with stones and fireworks, injuring dozens.
Exploiting social anxieties and ramping up hatred against minorities is not a new phenomenon in Polish — or frankly, global — politics. Nor is fear that the politically calculated campaign could unleash real violence against vulnerable groups unfounded. Poland is still reeling over the death of the progressive mayor of Gdansk, who was stabbed on stage at a charity event.
The question is not whether PiS’ scapegoating is dangerous — it clearly is. The question is, why now?
Riot police fire tear gas to disperse people, including ultra-nationalists, who attempted to block the first gay pride march in the city of Bialystok in July 2019 | Jerzy Baliski/AFP via Getty Images
And the answer is rather simple: The party needs a fresh enemy ahead of the coming election.
Support for PiS is high across the country, in large part thanks to its family policies and generous social handouts, which have tangibly improved the lives of many. But these measures only take the party so far.
To galvanize the electorate, PiS needs a strong new idea — and messages that play off the difference between “us” and “them” are typically the most effective way to drive the party’s supporters to the ballot box.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the growing acceptance of LGBT people in the region has also made them a greater target. Poland, and several of its neighbors, are at a coming out “tipping point”: As social acceptance of sexual minorities increases, LGBT people have become more visible — but not visible enough, or powerful enough, to defend themselves from hate campaigns.
Already, fellow anti-liberals in Hungary are taking note. Hungary, which allows civil unions for same-sex couples, is less religious than Poland. Last year, Fidesz’s alt-right troll wing even protested against gay bashing, saying it was time to leave behind such 20th-century anachronisms.
But the government is testing out a new strategy: In May, the speaker of the house, László Kövér, equated same-sex adoption with pedophilia, claiming that “normal” homosexuals “don’t consider themselves equal.” In June, the party’s deputy leader in parliament called for banning pride parades.
Already there are signs that the next constitutional overhaul will focus on the rights of the “family” — presenting the government with an opportunity to drum up more support by fomenting fear of eroding “traditional” values.
In Poland, the LGBT community is fighting back. Over the past few days, the hashtag #jestemLGBT (“I am LGBT”) has taken Twitter by storm, resulting in a mass coming out. The campaign showed ordinary Poles that LGBT people aren’t ideologists but regular citizens.
The community has a growing number of allies, too. Tens of thousands marched in Central Europe’s biggest pride event in Warsaw in June, and a number of marches sprung up in response to the violence in Bialystok in July. In Budapest that same month, a pride parade went ahead without a police cordon and drew hardly any counterprotesters — a sign that people have little appetite for violence against LGBT events unless they are actively instigated to consider them a threat.
The region’s populist parties have a habit of riffling through potential enemies and discarding them as soon as they no longer serve their purpose.
But the loud, public resistance to Poland’s anti-LGBT push suggests they have misjudged their audience. Unlike previous “others,” LGBT people are not distant enemies. They are your friend’s kid, your next-door neighbor, your colleague — and as PiS will hopefully soon discover, your electorate.
Zselyke Csaky is research director for Europe and Eurasia at Freedom House.