Targeting Ukrainians for political gain is convenient. It garners political capital for populists. The problem these populist “social engineers” don’t seem to grasp, however, is that hate isn’t a mathematical equation where every variable is known and controlled. Hate tends to spiral out of control and can devour the populist instigators who have fanned its flames.
Books, ballet, and Bucha
Pro-Russian sentiment is spreading through Poland. Ukraine would be wise to take these disturbing developments into account in its calculations. The sad fact is there are Poles who pine for the return of Russian control over Poland.
How could this be? Maybe it’s some twisted longing for the past. Part of Poland was controlled by Russia for more than a century (1795-1918). Even today, after all the atrocities, there are Polish people who think Russia is all about the books and ballet. And brutality too, of course. Alas, there are some who don’t mind that whip cracking over their heads. They welcome it.
Banderite Ukraine, not brotherly Russia, is a threat to Poland
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that deluded people who don’t see Russia as a threat are voicing their concerns about Ukraine. These people see almost all Ukrainians as having the seed of genocide in them. In their minds, almost every Ukrainian is guilty of the Volhynia massacres. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old man or a little Ukrainian girl. They both share the genocide gene, so to speak.
It’s a mentality no different from the pro-Russian mentality. Claiming that every member of a particular nation carries the genocide gene is insane, yes, and it’s also Nazi thinking. This curious contradiction escapes the minds of pro-Russian Poles.
Casually dismissing Russian propaganda is a mistake
All these episodes in Poland are a cautionary tale: Do not casually dismiss Russian propaganda as stupid and ineffective. Yes, Russian propaganda can be clownish, but that’s by design – to make us not take it seriously and keep our psychological defenses down. Russian propaganda is, in fact, multi-layered and extremely effective. Again, just look at Poland.
The clownish layer is what Russian propagandists want us to see most of the time. Meanwhile, the more sophisticated propagandizing is going on below the threshold of awareness of the smug masses and, indeed, even among intellectuals.
That’s how societies get thought-reformed into accepting pro-Russian narratives as their own.
‘No place for smallness when the world is on fire’
Petty-minded populists are going to be Poland’s undoing if they are voted into power in the 2027 Polish parliamentary elections. As the fellow Kyiv Post contributor DW Phillips wrote: ‘’No place for smallness when the world is on fire.’’
Populist governments dislike the intelligentsia because the intelligentsia sees through the populist charade and has the potential to threaten the populist government by presenting an alternative narrative. As such, the members of the “rotten intelligentsia” tend to be targeted both by the external enemy who invades and by the populist government elected by the people. The scale of these state-sponsored repressions varies – from expulsion from a country to extermination. In rare instances, the members of the intelligentsia are given a chance to cooperate with the new regime, but, even then, their fate is uncertain at best.
With Poland’s future at stake, Polish society put pragmatism and realpolitik before populism? Only time will tell.
Elections aside, the Polish government must do more about the bunkers and preparing people for worst case scenarios to avoid dilemmas along the lines of, “Should we shoot this drone down when it violates the Polish airspace or not?”
What the worst-case scenario is, only Putin and his inner circle know for certain; we can only theorize and come up with our own scenarios to prepare as best as we can.
We can all be targeted by anyone, anywhere
Anyone can be a victim of hate. Any reason is a good reason. We don’t need to be targeted by Vladimir Putin’s assassins or Russian missiles. Our executioner can very well be a local drunk who happens to have Dutch courage and fancies himself a Polish hussar on a mission to valiantly confront someone he (wrongly) believes is one of those Banderite Ukrainians.
Sometimes the greatest danger is much more mundane than the grand geopolitical calculations. The greatest danger can be the person sitting next to you on a bus.