{"id":6136,"date":"2017-11-20T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thediplomaticenvoy.com\/?p=6136"},"modified":"2017-11-20T13:19:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T18:19:43","slug":"polands-independence-day-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2017\/11\/20\/polands-independence-day-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland\u2019s Independence Day March"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anthony Tokarz<\/strong>
\nStaff Writer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On November 11, Poland celebrated the 99th<\/sup> anniversary of its independence in the aftermath of World War I, when its wartime leaders secured historically Polish territories from the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Prussian Empires, reversing 123 years of partition. Each year, in addition to local celebrations throughout Poland\u2019s cities and villages, celebrants and patriots, along with protesters and international observers, come to the capital for the official, government-sponsored Warsaw Independence March. Afterwards, many remain in Warsaw for an unofficial march organized each year by the National Radical Camp (ONR) and the All Polish Youth (MW).<\/p>\n

The rhetoric propounded by these groups sheds light on the attitudes that drew participants to the march. According to its own website, the ONR<\/a> is a social movement that embraces young Poles devoted to the values of \u201cGod, honor, the homeland, family, tradition, and friendship.\u201d It rejects being called a political party, though, explaining it is \u201cuninterested in participating in the oligarchy\u2019s parliamentary games.\u201d On the other hand, the MW\u2019s official site<\/a> describes its organization as \u201can interesting alternative to inactivity\u201d that \u201ccombines traditional values with modern patriotism\u201d without regard for political gain. Though critics might want to link these two groups to Poland\u2019s governing conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), their rhetoric makes clear that they owe allegiance to no party, and even dismiss the political process itself as a ruse. Regardless of how these groups see themselves, Polish President Andrzej Duda condemned what many saw as displays of xenophobia, racism, and violence as \u201csick nationalism\u201d according to the Atlantic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

International observers, many of whom did not attend either march, hastened to lambaste more than the two organizing groups and decry Poland itself as a \u201cbreeding ground for fascists\u201d on the grounds that some marchers carried banners with nationalistic slogans. Most publicized, though erroneous, journalists pointed to a banner that read \u201cPray for an Islamic Holocaust\u201d as evidence that the march epitomized fascism, blaming the prominence of Polish patriotism for the banner. Just days later, however, some critics quickly apologized for propagating false information about the march and banner. The Washington Post\u2019s Avi Selk, for example, penned an article titled \u201cWhy I Wrote Fake News for the Washington Post<\/a>.,\u201d where he noted that the notorious \u201cPray for an Islamic Holocaust\u201d banner had hung for just a few hours from a bridge in the Polish city of Pozna\u0144 in 2015, and thus had no connection to Polish Independence day or this year\u2019s festivities. According to CNN<\/a>, its original reporting contained claims, since removed, that asserted the existence of the \u201cPray for Islamic Holocaust\u201d and \u201cWhite Europe, Europe must be White\u201d banners. Both the Washington Post and CNN\u2019s original articles feature paragraph-length corrections regarding the banners.<\/p>\n

Factual coverage of the event, as well as historical scrutiny, reveal a narrative subtly but crucially different from claims of neo-fascists hijacking the Warsaw Independence March to further their nativist aims. Al Jazeera<\/a> reports that the chanting celebrated Poland\u2019s national sovereignty, as well as its Roman Catholicism: \u201cGod, honor, homeland,\u201d \u201cNot red, not rainbow, but national Poland,\u201d and \u201cGreat Catholic Poland, Great National Poland.\u201d These slogans reveal something of a siege mentality, one reinforced by cultural remembrance of the three partitions of Poland, the later Napoleonic Wars, the Nazi invasion on September 1, the Soviet invasion of September 17, and 45 years of Communist subjugation. Poles maintain a sensitivity to threats to their sovereignty, such as the recent efforts by France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission to liberalize its stance on coal, migrants, and the euro. The international response to the Warsaw Independence March, similar to that of Poland\u2019s \u201cRosary to the Borders\u201d event in October, has stoked the fires of nationalism and likely pushed more Poles into the ONR and MW\u2019s embrace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 11, Poland celebrated the 99th anniversary of its independence in the aftermath of World War I reversing 123 years of partition. But afterwards, many remain in Warsaw for an unofficial march organized by the National Radical Camp and the All Polish Youth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1097,382,387],"tags":[528,697],"class_list":["post-6136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1097","category-international-news","category-europe","tag-independence","tag-poland"],"yoast_head":"\nPoland\u2019s Independence Day March - The Diplomatic Envoy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2017\/11\/20\/polands-independence-day-march\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poland\u2019s Independence Day March - The Diplomatic Envoy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 11, Poland celebrated the 99th anniversary of its independence in the aftermath of World War I reversing 123 years of partition. 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