Gay kielce, poland

A Spanish philosopher once said something along the lines of those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Writing in the Independent and The Washington Post last month, Rick Noack reported a highly disturbing incident in Kielce in Poland. Others made threatening gestures, he wrote. This was the place where, in July , 42 Jews were murdered in a pogrom.

Dressed in a perfectly pressed white shirt that almost glows under the neon lights, year-old Slawomir Mentzen, the most popular of the two young leaders of the far-right Confederation Konfederacja alliance, is pacing up and down at the side of the stage rehearsing his upcoming speech. As multiple speakers take their turn on stage, the audience keeps an eye on the pacing Mentzen — he is without doubt the star of the night. His speech can be better described as stand-up comedy, with self-deprecating images or memes about his political rivals projected on a large screen behind him as he cracks joke after joke. The audience, made up primarily of young and middle-aged men though there are some women in the hall , is visibly excited, laughing out loud with each snarky remark.

Poland, however, has fallen drastically behind. The emphasis is put on ideology , both by the Law and Justice party, and the powerful Catholic Church , in an attempt to amplify a sense of fear in society, painting a picture of Polish culture under threat. However, it is precisely through ascription of ideology to a people that it becomes easier to demonize them. It was the attribution of mysterious powers and abilities of the Jewish people that had sown the seeds of what would become the state-sponsored mass extermination of 6 million people, the vast of them majority Jews.

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