"We as citizens will need to be assured that a new government would have faith in democracy, Europeanism and freedom guaranteed by law,” Olga Tokarczuk’s says two weeks before Poland goes to the polls in a potentially pivotal election on 15 October.
"We need assurances that such a government would listen to us and respond to our needs, and not, like the present one, subordinate the majority of citizens to anachronistic ‘traditional values’ adhered to only by a 30% minority,”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Polish opposition seeking to topple the country’s rightwing populist government needs to start spelling out its commitment to progressive causes, the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk has urged in a rare political interview.
“We as citizens will need to be assured that a new government would have faith in democracy, Europeanism and freedom guaranteed by law,” Tokarczuk told the Guardian two weeks before Poland goes to the polls in a potentially pivotal election on 15 October.
“We need assurances that such a government would listen to us and respond to our needs, and not, like the present one, subordinate the majority of citizens to anachronistic ‘traditional values’ adhered to only by a 30% minority,” added the novelist, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in literature with Austrian author Peter Handke in 2018.
The former prime minister, who would most likely need to enter alliances with parties to his right or left to regain power, has recently tried to assuage those fears, expressing his commitment to civil partnerships for same-sex couples and gender-recognition processes for trans people.
“[If] I refer publicly to anything to do with current Polish social or ecological policies, journalists who depend on the present government will immediately respond by stigmatising my words, and the trolls will start up their hate,” she said.
“In the context of the major problems demanding swift solutions with which the world and Poland are struggling, it is shocking that politicians find the time to make malevolent, mean-spirited comments about movies that they haven’t even seen.”
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The Guardian absolutelly is partisan, with journalists, opinion writters and editors who are almost all from a very narrow slice at the top of British society (basically those whose parents are high middle-class and above so could afford to send them to very expensive private high-schools and definitelly see the value in that kind of class segregated schooling of teens hence choose to send them there), and where opinion writters openly describe themselves as “opinion formers” (so they’re not there to inform, they’re there to make your opinion be something, an in my experience that’s far too often by selective picking of information, emotionally charged wording and deceitful presentation than by logical argumentation).
By broader European standards they’re not quite a “rag” but are certainly high on partisan propaganda and very low on independence, honesty and journalistic integrity - it’s quite instructive to read the european news coverage there and then read it in mainstream newspapers of other large Western Europe countries.
Of course in the horrible Press environment in the UK they’re very good by comparisson with pretty much all the rest, except with the Private Eye (which is not even a newspaper but a satirical weekly magazine) which is pretty much the only serious written press with a “no holes barred, no sacred cows” journalistic coverage over there (though in TV terms, Channel 4 isn’t bad).
Basically they’re “The Voice Of The Lib Dems”, which are a neoliberal party (an incredibly sane and well-balanced party by comparison with the present day Tory Party - who are Britain’s Republicans - but hardly left of center and maybe not even center, by broader European standards).
PS: This probably makes The Guardian “leftwing” by US standards, but that’s just the product of how far right from the historical average the Overtoon Window has moved in those two countries - Britain has pretty much followed the US in crazy-politics terms but overlayed it with this kind of dynastic class system which maintains segregation of wealth and power, which the US didn’t have quite as much before but in Britain is quite literally centuries old.
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The editor that published Edward Snowden’s revelations was kicked out not long after doing it and the Panama Paper revelations led to no significant prosecutions in Britain and that newspaper went really quiet really fast on that.
I lived and worked in Britain before and after living elsewhere in Europe, so I’m painfully familiar with the politics there (and have other references to compare it to) and sadly the Press is not even close to being the independent 3rd Pillar of Democracy in Britain, as it is (sometimes more, sometimes less) in other countries of Europe. This is because Britain has as First Fast The Post system where the 2 mainstream parties which alternate in government regularly have more than 50% of parliamentarians with little more than 30% of the vote, the monarch actually has some real power and there is a 2nd unelected chamber whose members are either nominated for life of inherit the position from their parents, so you could say it’s far from a proper Democracy and the Press has long been used as a tool to quell or channel away discontent from actually wanting changes to the System in place. It’s not by chance that Britain fell so easilly a very similar kind of Left-Right War In The Moral Plane (aka Identity Politics) that stays well away from things like Wealth Inequality, just like in the US - it keeps the structures of power and wealth in place and unchallenged.
One thing you must be aware about the upper classes in Britain (and than includes almost all journalists and editors at The Guardian except 2, as well as all members of Board) is that they’re all about image management (they literally are brought up to never share their true feelings or present anything but a carefully crafted positive image, and I say this from personal knowledge), so I’m not at all surprised people who haven’t lived over there long enough fall for the posh local smoke and mirrors.
I’m genuinelly shocked that you think partisanship (the cornerstone of Propaganda and the very opposite of Journalistic Integrity) is a good thing in Journalism. I guess you’re from the generation who grew up in the Post-Truth, Crumbling-Democracy Era and have always seen the various Press entities as natural tools used in Political Infighting, rather than as the independent Pillar Of Democracy that’s supposed to keep the Political and Judicial pillars as much as possible honest. Having never known anything but a Press corrupted by Politics in a post-truth environment of propaganda wars, you trully believe that’s what the Press should do (all of which has more than a passing wiff of Orwell’s “1984” to it)
One really has to have completelly lost track of (or never have really dug down enough to get it) the point of Democracy (and hence the rationalle for its architecture) to want the Press to be nothing more than a tool of Politics.
What do you read? What’s a good media?
Well, the Press in my home country is surpringly decent (really surprisingly so, given that my home country is Portugal and I’m quite critical of it, but it was painfully visible just how much the difference is when I came back from Britain), so I tend to watch some local TV channels and read a local newspaper and magazine.
I used to read The Guardian a lot when living in Britain and for a while after, mainly because all others newspapers there really are rags, as well as watch Channel 4 (as the BBC is highly partisan in news terms), but The Guardian has for over a decade now been moving away from the hard-nosed journalism that published the Snowden Revelations back in the day (I would say that the kicking out of the editor that went ahead and published it was a turning point) and diving ever harder into Identity Wars and away from all else meaningfull for how society works, all the while the world is crumbling all around us (even when they talk about the Environment they’ll avoiding the elephant in the room which how Consumer Society is incompatible with it, so our Economic system too has to change) and certainly are not at all critical of The System for distributing Power and Wealth in Britain and elsewhere (as exemplified by their coverage of The Royals, which is fawning to the point of making it repugnant) plus they’ve become even more English-Exceptionalists (i.e. they believe they’re a superior nation with superior people) than before.
They also used to have a livelly comments section (which in the last few years often had more insightfull and well informed takes than the article itself) but it has become less and less open (it’s only in some articles, and nowadays none of the ones pushing a certain political line never has comments open) and more and more censored, so I stopped participating.
I actually have a tab on my browser open with The Guardian right now but last couple of times over the last few weeks I went there and had a look around, nothing really caught my attention, probably because for things like the coverage of the War In Ukraine, there are a few comentators on TV here in Portugal which are way, way ahead of that newspaper (in terms of both breath and depth of analysis) and The Guardian’s coverage on Europe is basically “Look at all those bad things over there and how we’re better than them”, plus as I said, certain takes on things have become “beyond and and all criticism” by not having comments open, so you really only get the Party Line.
(PS: it’s funny that Portugal, having had quite a revolutionary-leftwing period after the 1974 Revolution that overthrew Fascism, actually has quite a number of “intellectuals” who were once communist party youth members, so have spend long periods there, speak russian, have friends there and are reasonably familiar with both Ukraine and Russia, whilst being strongly pro-Democracy, so we have a few quite insightfull commentators on that war who don’t just fall for the Russia-Good partisan beliefs of tankies. It helps that, as my country doesn’t really have any national-exceptionalism beliefs, they tend to be open to understanding the ways of doing things abroad rather than the looking at everything from their own “superior” cultural standpoint that one so often gets in British coverage of foreign affairs)
What is a good media company in your view? What do you read?
Jebać PiS.
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@sadreality
What is a good media in your view?
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I’m actually a member of a Leftwing party in my home country and was a Greenparty member when I lived in the UK, so cheers for the laugh.
Loved your simpleton take that since I don’t agree with the neoliberal newspaper (their solution for most problems is some kind of project which is invariably to be executed by the private sector) that passes for "Left"wing in the UK (which is so far to the Right as countries go that they have an anti-immigrant nationalist far-right party in government) I must be a far-right type doing a “performance”, an extra special take because it betrays how your political “thinking” is anchored in a Two-Sides Logical Falacy, only possible with amazingly stupid people and those who never actually thought their politics through from basic Principles.
I’ve got him already tagged as a Trumpet, so take your guess.
To me, 30% of voters does not at all seem a “minority”. This is democracy, the majority decides and elects their leaders, it does not matter if not everybody feels at ease with them. Traditional values represent a country’s identity, historical legacy and in the case of Poland, it is what allowed them to survive across multiple foreign invasions and dominations.
The problem is that you can’t have a democracy if you allow antidemocratic ideas to be dominant in the political space. What you get in that case is a tyranny of the majority.
Lmao listen to yourself. 30% of a population is by definition a minority of said population.
And you can preserve cultural tradition just fine without being a reactionary asshole with your governmental policies.
Unless the system has only 2 parties like US, with three or more parties involved having a consensus of 30% makes quite a relevant share.
Yeah uh, there’s a word for that: plurality. It’s a distinct concept from “majority”.
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30% is no majority - a majority is more than half of the votes
A majority is more than half of the voters involved, and rule by such a majority is thought to be to the benefit of more than rule by less than half (a mere minority) would be.
Yes, but even if a single party -be it in Poland or anywhere else- held 90% or so of the votes, it must still comply with the basic rules of human rights, dignity and mutual respect, enabling all people in the country to lead a fullfilling life. Otherwise it’sa dictatorship.
Of course - when have I said otherwise?
@dudum666
I meant that as generic statement not specifically addressed to you.
Democracy is not a tyranny of the majority.
This is not how democracy works, what you described is just a dictatorship of majority (in this case it is literally the minority). Democracy implies that everyone, minority or majority can express opinions and vote freely in ideas that do not harm specific group liberties.
How can an opinion harm specific group liberties? It’s just an opinion against another opinion in the worst case.
yes, who doesnt remember the brave anti LGBT stance Poland took in 1944, so Stalin was like “damn bros, you really hate the gays too, lemme give your country back your independence” I think we even wrote an exam in history class about it…
As much as I agree, I think that this does not have to be exclusive with policies allowing people to live the lives they want, and guaranteeing a safe future which is difficult under my current government. You can uphold family values with abortion legalised. You can transform the energy sector into a greener one without disenfranchising coal miners. All this is being held back by populist agendas of my leading government officials, who do not wish to even uphold the status quo, but to dig in their heels deeper, while telling their voters who are hurt by this that it’s good for them.
Not that simple. Who decides that abortion can be legal and murder can not? Doesn’t murder ban “violate” the freedom of those who are inclined to commit it?
Abortion and murder are two separate and distinct acts.
i remember the Neonazi parties in Germany always claiming that abortion would be murder. Seems to be good company then.
