Angry mutts in the air. Yesterday Lepper, present Braun

The past of Polish politics after 1989 has a bad rhythm: all erstwhile in a while there is simply a figure that does not fit in established order, does not respect the rules of the salon and does not search acceptance of opinion-making environments. Yesterday, the enemy was Andrew Lepper. Today, this function is played by Grzegorz Braun.

Lepper, before being tamed by the system, was portrayed as a primitive, brawler, criminal, threat to democracy. His social background has not been analysed, nor have millions of people considered him their representative. Instead, it was reduced to a grotesque figure—a gaudy, unimportant, discredited figure. Only erstwhile he entered into the deal, erstwhile he accepted the rules of the game and paid the political price for it, became “understandable”. Before that, he was an enemy of order.

Braun is at an earlier phase of the same trajectory today. It does not suit anyone – neither the ruling camp, nor the parliamentary opposition, nor the media mainstream. It is ideologically hard, communicatively implacable and demonstratively disregarding the language of compromise which in the III Polish Republic is considered the only acceptable. That's adequate to make him a threat.

However, something more striking is the scale and speech of the attacks. Braun is not criticized, he is fought. Politicians of rival groups do it routinely due to the fact that that's how organization logic works. However, mainstream media activities are much more interesting. News and large portals do not effort to argue with him. They're delegating him. Before the argument is put forward, the description appears: ‘scandal’, ‘extremism’, ‘shock’, ‘anti-Semitism’, ‘Russian agent’.

Grzegorz Braun. Illustration: © barma / Gazeta Trybunalska. Click to enlarge.

It's not an accident, it's a mechanism. The media-political strategy of the III Republic does not tolerate those who do not accept its axioms: unconditional integration, consensus of elites, correctness. Braun these axioms question directly, frequently provocatively, sometimes in a way that makes it easier for his opponents to attack. But it's not kind that's the problem here. The problem is content and independence.

In this sense, Braun, like Lepper, is not a threat to democracy, but to the comfort of political and media classes. It reminds us that outside the tv and parliament studios, foyer exists a real society—with distrust of the institution, with anger towards the arrogance of power, with a memory that cannot be easy annulled.

Media aggression is not due to concern for public debate, but to fear of losing control. Braun says things that cannot easy be entered into existing narratives, and even more hard to neutralize by compromise. Therefore, it must be presented as a political margin, even if the facts deny it.

The columnist has no work to agree with Braun. He is obliged to announcement that the way he is treated speaks more about the state of the Polish public debate than his most controversial statements. due to the fact that if all character outside the strategy is immediately medially lynched, it means that the problem lies not in individuals, but in a strategy that panics over an uncontrolled voice. And this strategy is supported by angry mongrels from the media, most frequently paid manipulators, ready to bark, bite and trample anyone who dares to think alone and independently.

And erstwhile a man can't be tamed, ridiculed, bought or intimidated, the decision to open an order...

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11.01.2026

• college: barma Tribunal newspaper

• current column of Baryły: > Here.

• more about Braun: > Here.