European pluralism: the largest patriotic demonstration in Europe presents undesirable values

While the President of France was sending a message about the destructiveness of nationalism during the Paris ceremony commemorating the end of World War I,¹⁾²⁾ in Warsaw a quarter of a million of people held the annual Independence Day March, Europe’s largest patriotic demonstration. The contrast between the two events shows how far Europe is from the ideals that once constituted the strength of the Old Continent, i.e. faith, family, nation and homeland.

Polish citizens generally take great pride in their national identity, and that is precisely what almost all European and overseas mainstream media dislike intensely. It is in line with this feeling that reports on the Independence March are made in such a way as to fill the Western readership, listeners and viewers with disgust and cause a feeling of shame among Poles. As it is, the authors of these articles have all attributed to the Warsaw event a fascist and Nazi character, creating an equality between these ideologies and nationalism, without thinking about the history of the country they are writing about.

The Western reader is made to believe that the March is predominantly made up of skinheads and thugs who want to beat everyone and burn everything that they encounter. Such a picture has nothing to do with reality because the parade was attended by innumerable crowds of common Poles of various social standing – from the unemployed, through cleaners, pensioners, lawyers and professors, and families with children – all of whom identified with such slogans as God, honor, homeland, nation or family. The media, however, provided a distorted picture.

Wherever these ideals are upheld or clung to, there appears a threatening finger from Brussels, revealing that supposedly European values are not as universal as they are supposed to be. Eurocrats strive to suppress any national identity, heritage and faith. Exactly the same was done in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries: depending on time and place, anything that could unite society, like patriotism, especially the celebration of national holidays or remembrance days, was quelled, forbidden or ridiculed. This phenomenon did not cease with the advent and expansion of the European Union, which Gefira recently depicted with the example of endless disputes regarding the annual Independence Day March organized in Poland.³⁾

European politicians use the mainstream media as a mouthpiece through which bureaucrats in Brussels define what is acceptable and what is not. The Western recipient of this virtue signalling is clueless about the reality because mass media are still credited with being independent and reliable. The interpretation of the information becomes dogma, which should not be questioned. The mass media that do not toe the party line and which are thus forced to operate on the fringes of society are maliciously termed as populist, right-wing (with the notion of “right” invariably being accompanied by the adjective “far”), nationalist or fascist. Such are – yes, you know it all too well – the National Front in France, Law and Justice in Poland, the Northern League in Italy or Fidesz in Hungary. It was the media that created the impression that the otherwise neutral terms, such as populism or nationalism, from the notional vocabulary of political and sociological sciences are now perceived as extremely negatively charged, and it so happens that the European elites are striving to rid themselves of their opponents by calling them names using precisely these appellations.

This year’s reports on the Warsaw Independence March, which was held on 11 November, were as usual glaringly skewed, biased and tendentious. The average reader is conditioned to perceive Poland as a country full of aggressively-minded people – “fascists” and “Nazis”– and the event itself as extremely dangerous. The authors of these reports either do not know the history of Poland – because if they did, they would select words with greater care – or they are misleading the public purposely and painting a distorted picture of reality. Brussels is busy trying to suppress religious faith, national identity and national heritage, so as to uproot Europeans. Last Sunday showed that Warsaw and the European establishment couldn’t be farther from each other.

Here’s what the Independence March really looked like:

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Original article

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