Solidarity 2.0? Cyber and Street Protests in Poland

Angry young Poles are protesting online and on the streets  in the biggest demonstrations since 1989. The pretext is the government’s signing of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which jeopardizes Internet freedom. But there are more reasons for our fury: a transition which has strengthened economic inequalities and lack of perspectives for the younger generation. As sociologist Adam Ostolski writes, “Life in Poland is getting harder, the privatization-by-stealth of health services and education is going on, the prices of municipal services and staple foods are rising. Poland is now the leading country in Europe in terms of non-permanent job contracts.” Hence social anger today. Are the protests changing into a civil society movement, a Solidarity 2.0? We hope that this defiant and militant mobilization will not exclude migrants and minorities. An optimistic sign is that alternative collectives (Rozbrat in Poznan and Tektura in Lublin) are at the forefront of these events where ordinary people in Poland are demanding their rights – at last.

Poland has transitioned from fake Communism (the unrealized Marxist ideal) to turbo capitalism-cum-fake Christianity, as a religion has been instrumentalized into political anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-foreigner hatred. The economic transformation is sold as a success story, but, in fact, the situation of many groups of the population has worsened. Social justice, an empty concept under East European “socialism,” has become a dirty phrase. It’s a taboo to pronounce it, let alone practice it. Poles have been Foucault’s docile bodies of commercialization and corporatization. Until today’s wrath.

Still, the political class here believes in discipline and profit – and prejudices.  The ACTA treaty was signed by the Polish government without social consultations. When the protests broke out, the first reaction of the leaders was to deny them. Later, head of the National Security Bureau, General Koziej, claimed that he wouldn’t exclude introducing emergency measures if the cyber attacks continued. When the Parliamentary Committee on Innovation was meeting to discuss ACTA, a Law and Justice (the rightist opposition party) lawmaker, Michal Suski, referred to black MP John Godson as a “little Negro” in another example of ugly racism in this country. Transphobia also occurred when MP Jan Dziedziczak called transgender parliamentarian Anna Grodzka “Pan”/“Mr”, a direct insult because she is a woman after having undergone transsexual surgery.

But some leading figures of public life have supported the protests. The legend of the Helsinki Foundation, Halina Bortnowska, and Poland’s first ombudsman, Ewa Letowska, said on Tok fm Radio that the government should listen to the protests. All across the country, in fifty cities and towns, mass demonstrations have taken place. In Cracow, 15,000, and in Poznan, 5,000 people took to the streets, convening in the medieval market square where anarchists were very active – Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper ran a lead article about the demo titled: “There hasn’t been such a demonstration in Poznan for years.”

At a rally in Lublin, an anarchist drum circle was attacked by the far righters with roots in Poland’s interwar anti-Semitism. Such extremist factions want to capitalize on the protests, but they are not at the heart of the events. Rather, it is Anonymous hacktivists and various leftist organizations who have taken hold. Originally, the Social Democratic Alliance was the only political party against ACTA, but now the self-styled “moral majority” Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski has attempted to co-opt this movement for its own designs. The MPs of the progressive Palikot Movement have now supported the protests, wearing the Guy Fawkes V masks in parliament, an international sign of dissent that is finally catching on in this country.

In fact, it is a popular movement – from below. A placard designed as a tombstone, “Liberty. Died Young 1989-2012,” attests to a failure of post-communist Poland. The determination of the protesters is evidenced in the strong language that has been used online and on the streets. In a demonstration in front of the newly-opened Warsaw’s National Stadium, a banner read: “Jestesmy wkurwieni”/“We’re fucking cross”/“We’re pissed off.”

Is this more than a fit of aggression? This is an open revolt, an expansion of action which had been at the margins of public life. Until now, Polish young people have expressed their social discontent in art as activism, the feminist and LGBT movement, and the Greens’ and Krytyka Polityczna milieu. Today, it is a societal protest against ACTA, but also against joblessness, low wages and rising costs. We also demand participation in democracy when the young feel powerless. Active civil society is awakening. Journalist Jacek Zakowski may have hyperbolized, “We are dealing with a historical change on a scale similar to the United States when slavery was abolished. Access to culture requires a similar emancipation.” Free expression in the Internet is indeed the young’s participation in culture – and in politics. The lack of debate on ACTA in Poland revealed an enormous gap between leadership and populace and what we called back then under real “socialism:” the arrogance of the authorities.

After 1989, the ideals of the dissident Workers’ Defense Committee and of the oppositionist theater movement were abandoned. What we want is broad social justice, self-organization of society (as in the anarchist streak in the pre-1989 opposition, diagnosed by David Ost). The aims in the anti-establishment alternative were participatory democracy, student movement, worker self-management, mutiny against marketization. Let’s continue this post-1968 pre-1989 anti-authoritarian project, as defined by Adam Michnik. As a transfer of power and wealth was made with the fall of “communism,” we lost social protection. Privatisation and commodification have alienated students and workers. The former Solidarity unionists have betrayed the labor issues and joined the economically liberal agenda and the morally illiberal one: an abortion ban and homophobia.

Solidarity has been destroyed by ultranationalism and, all in all, a majoritaritarian spirit. It has ignored or even denigrated minorities. This is where a dangerous concept was coined: “true Poles.”  A commentator has called the current protests “the most authentic citizens’ movement.” Citizens? Are minorities and migrants excluded again? The rising far right must not be part of the movement. We’ve had enough of business-suited skinheads in the leadership when the chauvinist League of Polish Families was in government.

The protests in Poland are a call to action. We all have a responsibility now. ACTA can restrict Internet openness, endanger generic pharmaceuticals and strengthen corporations – the unfair banality of post-modernism. And today’s outrage in Eastern Europe protests the brutality of post-communism.