Polish opposition leader likens Tusk to Hitler at PiS rally

The leader of the main opposition Law and Justice (PiS, ECR) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, compared the actions of Donald Tusk’s new government to those of Hitler at a party rally in the central Polish city of Lublin.

Kaczyński came to Lublin for the unveiling of the monument honouring Lech Kaczyński, Jarosław’s twin brother, who as Polish president died in a plane crash near Smolensk, Russia, in 2010. He used the occasion to criticise the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk for its latest controversial actions, including its push for public media reform and the arrest of two PiS politicians who were sentenced to two years in prison.

According to Kaczyński, Tusk’s new cabinet has been breaking the law since its first day in office.

“Tusk wants his will to be the law because that’s what it boils down to: Tusk’s will is the law. There have already been those for whom their will was the law. The Führer’s will was the law,” the PiS leader told his party’s supporters.

He also referred to the idea known as ‘Führerprinzip’ used in Nazi Germany, which meant that Hitler’s word was more important than written law and could not be questioned.

Tusk’s broad coalition of centrist and leftist parties replaced PiS after October’s national elections as PiS, which ruled between 2015 and 2023, won the elections but failed to secure a majority.

Kaczyński’s criticism was aimed at the government’s media reform, which already began last month with the replacement of media management and the liquidation of media companies. Since the legal basis was the Commercial Companies Code and not a regular law, PiS says it was an illegal media takeover.

The ruling camp, on the other hand, argues that the changes were legal and aimed at depoliticising the public media, which under PiS rule had become a propaganda tool for the government.

Addressing the rally in Lublin, Kaczyński also said that Tusk was leading a “pacification operation” aimed at destroying Poland’s sovereignty and “turning us into farmhands for people from Western Europe, especially Germany.” PiS regularly accuses Tusk and his Civic Platform (PO, EPP) of being Berlin’s agents in Poland.

PiS politicians also often use historical narratives and play on German resentment to attack Tusk and his camp. Commenting on last year’s election results, PiS MP Marek Suski said in December that “even Hitler came to power in a democratic way”.

Meanwhile, former regional Chief Education Officer Barbara Nowak, who is a staunch PiS supporter, compared children who volunteer by collecting money in the country’s largest charity campaign, The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP), which is backed by the Tusk government but disliked by PiS, to the Hitler Youth.

“Argumentum ad Hitlerum” is not the only historical trick PiS uses to attack its biggest political rivals. The party often digs deeper into Polish history, for instance by comparing Tusk and his camp to the Teutonic Order, the German crusading Catholic order against which Poland fought numerous wars in the late Middle Ages and which still has a bad reputation in the country.

In the last election campaign, PiS accused EPP and German MEP Manfred Weber of trying to influence the election’s results by securing the victory of Tusk’s PO, a member of the EPP.

Then-PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki even said it was Weber who “sent Tusk to Poland” from Brussels, where he served as European Council president between 2014 and 2019.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)