I'm a veteran of the independency March and I've seen almost everything on it from a reporter's duty. I remember a lion beating from a burning TVN broadcast car, attacking a squat and fighting trees. I remember setting fire to a booth in front of the Russian embassy and clashes before the National Stadium in 2020. I think of the second especially affectionately, due to the fact that by then, myself, recording the event with a camera, I tripped on the stairs of a railway station and fell right under police clubs that did not ask if I had a PRESS sign around my neck. "Oh, it's se ne vrati," I thought, looking at this year's March of Independence.
Resistance
For, as Stanislaw Grochowiak wrote, rebellion does not pass away, rebellion settles. The independency March has just turned 15, as the organizers have repeatedly told us, shouting from megaphones and pushing the thesis about the full “generation of independency March”. A generation that – in their image – would replace other, equally fictional ones: pupils of John Paul II.
This increasing fifteen-year-old rebelled in his life against many things, depending on the period and political fashion. There were protests against the Internet's "censorship" (i.e. ACTA2 – c. 2012), then the alleged threat of a wave of refugees (2016), then the Jews "wanting to collect their property", i.e. a completely fabricated dispute over Act 447, which in time drowned in the creek of another banaluks, until the restrictions of covids.
I bet that this time the subject of inflammation will be refugees from Ukraine and the situation in Palestine. But even before reaching the collection site – respective 100 meters earlier – I began to fishy that the march was turning in a completely different direction.
I noticed the stalls. In erstwhile years, they were managed by men from military stores. This year, apart from mandatory white-red flags and scarves, fresh attributes emerged: gadgets from Karol Nawrocki's campaign. Attractive due to the fact that not affected by inflation. 1 of the shoppers, the simplest cotillion tried to sale me for 30 bucks. The flag from Nawrock – on the stubborn – would get me for free.
The presence of the fresh head of state was felt everywhere: from the vigilant patrolling streets of the Military Gendarmerie, through snipers on the roofs of buildings, to the participants themselves. Clearly older and little militant than in erstwhile years. And although it is possible to talk about a tiny success (about 150 000 participants), I would at least be afraid about Krzysztof Bosak and another founding fathers. A crowd of grey heads testified about 1 thing: people at the organization came, but not necessarily to perceive to Deputy Marshal of the Sejm, but alternatively to see their president.
And anti-Russian and anti-Ukrainian
Where I stood, the president wasn't there. We must have had adequate Waldemar Bud. The MEP of PiS exchanged a fewer words with me, though it must be added that we had rather a large auditorium, which interfered powerfully in the conversation. I asked him if he was disturbed that anti-Ukrainian shouts were erected – although anemically – and there was no unusual chance about Russia. Buda's answer knocked me off my feet: "I'm not amazed at all. They are not targeted at Ukrainians who fight at the front, but at those who are here. The democratic side does not realize that 1 can be anti-Ukrainian and anti-Russian at the same time – I heard.
I should congratulate him and tell him that the boss must be arrogant of the lightness of the fresh generations of PiS politicians overturning Lech Kaczyński's legacy, but it just choked me. I think it is besides due to the fact that I first heard the politics of this party, which, speaking of the current government or liberal media, utilized the word "democratic party", by itself standing outside it.
For years, I have been asking the participants if there's anything in it that's been bothering them. Dumped bottles, burning flags of the European Union, torn pavement, and the reaction is always identical: “I don’t do it, I stand here calmly.” I've always wondered what community we're talking about and what nation we're talking about, since at the time of his yearly celebration, the crowd washes their hands and presents themselves as 100,000 free, like unconnected individuals. present I know: talking about a community of tormented, silent, wet in the rain and the day after coughing.
Nobody talks, nobody screams
Compared to the Parade of Equality, where musical platforms play, and the crowd sings or chants continuously, this year's March of independency was just a type. No 1 talks, no 1 screams, even bottles of alcohol run drowsy, as if they were utilized only to warm the body, not to turn fantasy.
A group of masked fans of Podbeskid Bielsko-Biała restored my religion in the old mischievouss: “He is coming, coming, Pod-be-ski-dzie”. We were just passing a building with a rainbow flag hanging on it, and it was clear that the guys were buried in their pants. But here came the disappointment. They cast a fewer sentences about the provokers, and then they wrote, "Let the rag hang," and went on. And in fresh years specified a pretext would have been adequate to throw torches at the building and set the flat on fire (not the 1 on which the flag was hanging).
– Polish farmer, Polish field, Polish bread on Polish table, Polish farmer, Polish field... repeats like a catarine passed by me by a pensioner. I'm talking. No, due to the fact that people don't know what's important. How our agriculture is destroyed. How the Mercosur deal is gonna starve us. Not only does Trzaskowski make us eat worms, but the prices of buying wheat are like 25 years ago, and production costs have increased – he answers. - Yeah. For example, present he sent me a text to eat my morning batch of worms – I'm joking, but she can't hear it, and she explains it again – sometimes rather sensible – the complexity of the EU's deal with Mercosur, enjoying having 1 listener.
Cats and dogs
And that was the March of independency this year. It's expected to be united, but narratorically inconsistent. It's expected to be under a white-red flag, but it's aesthetically broken up into ultracatholics and fans that divide the gap all day. The presence of Karol Nawrocki – who will undoubtedly effort to sew these sensitivities – calmed the demonstrators adequate that they were simply small-haired. The president himself, like president Kaczyński and another politicians from the front pages of the newspapers, fled even before the march reached the Prague side of the Vistula.
Not many have reached the finish line. And that's where the gap between utmost groups was the most visible. erstwhile the organizers mildly fueled the anti-Ukrainian moods, telling through the microphone how “the brave King Bolesław Chrobry conquered Kiev”, next to me marched monarchs chanting: “Atomic and cosmic – large Polish monarchy”. And since specified words cannot be shouted seriously, they laughed at themselves and fell into autoparody. After us, on the bridge of Józef Poniatowski, there was a banner with the most media slogan of the march: “Kitki and psiecki will not replace your child”. The images rapidly went viral, due to the fact that the subject of demographic collapse is present in the media from right to left and is considered 1 of the biggest challenges of the future.
This year's March of Independence, however, showed something that cannot be obscured by the attendance or atmosphere of Christmas: present there is no leader on the right hand who could shout specified a slogan and unite the crowd under it.
