Tens of thousands of demonstrators from many cities took part in the so-called “March of Independence” in Warsaw on Thursday. The event, which each year mainly mobilizes young people from the right-wing spectrum, commemorates November 11, 1918, when Poland regained its independence after the partition. In addition to a sea of white and red national flags, some Hungarian flags and Bengali fire, symbols assigned to the extreme right such as Celtic crosses could also be seen. “Autonomous nationalists” demanded on a banner to “stay white” and to fight capitalism. A participant is said to have lit a German flag on the way. The march, escorted by hundreds of police officers, pulled over a Vistula bridge to an open area at the national stadium,where a final rally should take place.
Gerhard Gnauck
Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.
Follow I follow
This was preceded by a legal dispute over the admission of the march.
The liberal mayor of the Polish capital, Rafał Trzaskowski, opposed the event and was right on two counts.
Similar to last year, when riots were feared and actually took place, on Tuesday a government institution took over the custody of the event at short notice, which was and could take place.
This time it was the office that deals with the concerns of veterans and persecuted people from the time of the dictatorship.
Controversial organizer is subsidized by the state
Unlike in 2020, however, this time there were hardly any politicians from the national-conservative ruling party PiS. The march has radicalized over the years. This time a member of the conservative small party “Understanding” around the former minister Jarosław Gowin, which had left the government camp that year, said that he would no longer take part in the march. “The face of this event is unacceptable to me.” He referred to Robert Bąkiewicz, the main character of this year's march.
Bąkiewicz, who had been active in small right-wing extremist groups for a long time, gained new attention a year ago. At that time there were massive demonstrations against the tightening of abortion law and the disruption of Catholic services by demonstrators. PiS boss Jarosław Kaczyński called for the churches to be defended; Bąkiewicz founded new organizations, including the “National Guard”, a kind of vigilante group.
His organizations also mobilized against allegedly threatened compensation claims by Jewish organizations because of the abandoned and later nationalized property of Polish Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. His "Unification March of Independence" was formally the organizer of the march on Wednesday. The government is now trying to involve him, thereby enhancing him. For the first time this year, it has given its organizations funding.
At the event on Thursday, Bąkiewicz said that Poland would be attacked today from the East, Belarus and Russia, but also “by Germany, which is using the EU institutions to take our sovereignty away from us”.
The “national, cultural, even sexual identity” of the country is in danger in this “war of civilizations”.
In August, Bąkiewicz announced that he wanted to “help” the border guards on the border with Belarus.
However, no actual activity of this type has been reported recently.
Before the right-wing march, President Andrzej Duda and political leaders attended the official celebrations to commemorate 1918 on Thursday.