A year before Boris Johnson’s Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, a little-known rightwing populist party won power again in Poland – using all the tricks that would become so familiar. It accused its political opponents of being enemies of the people; it would make Poland great again by restoring traditional virtues; it would resist the EU even though it was a member; and it would be unremittingly hostile to migrants and gays. At the time, it seemed a one-shot idiosyncrasy, but the Law and Justice party soon emerged as one of the leaders in Europe’s apparently irresistible drive to the right.
It won a second election in 2019 and began to menace Poland’s hard-won post-communist freedoms. A stooge was already president, but now more stooges took over public television, ran the central bank but, most important of all, followed up the 2017 purge of the supreme court to take even more control of the judiciary. The party was using presidential decree, backed by puppet judges, to run Poland, not only hugely restricting abortion rights – sidestepping parliament – but trying to blacklist political opponents from public office.
