EPTMostly likely there will be some pressure based on economy (budget and relief plans) which might work...
...or might not.
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1301
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Silvanel
Poland4692 Posts
Mostly likely there will be some pressure based on economy (budget and relief plans) which might work... ...or might not. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
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Silvanel
Poland4692 Posts
The advantages of PiS: -Their social programs are EXTREMELY popular - Who doesnt like free money and sticking it to the rich? (even if the rich is middle class in this case) -Control of state media -Control of state companies, which they use in order to funnel even more money towards information control -Strong alliance with church and nationalists Disadvantages of PiS: -Handling of COVID - as a result they would likely lose today, but elections are in 2023 so most people will forget -Infighting (if Kaczyński retires or dies, they will go down in flames) To sum up: in order for PiS to lose power, either something extraordinary must happen or Kaczyński needs to get sick/die. As a side notes: -I would like to point out that polish foreign policy is so terrible because PiS is sacrificing it for internal gains. They are willingly taking beating on international stage in order to get more votes domestically (and it works - because of the history we poles do not take kindly to other countries lecturing us on anything - so any time Brussels/Berlin/Paris or Washington is telling us what to do PiS is gaining few points). -Poland - like US is very divided, rural areas are pro PIS, major cities against. East of country generally pro Pis, West against. -Poland is not authoritarian state, not yet. We are democracy ruled by conservative majority which is cementing its hold on power using playbook of US Republican party. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
On June 27 2021 22:33 Silvanel wrote: I think the only way PiS is going to lose is if they mishandle the situation. Our opposition is very fragmented and incompetent, and they hate each other almost as much as PiS (or more in some cases). The advantages of PiS: -Their social programs are EXTREMELY popular - Who doesnt like free money and sticking it to the rich? (even if the rich is middle class in this case) -Control of state media -Control of state companies, which they use in order to funnel even more money towards information control -Strong alliance with church and nationalists Disadvantages of PiS: -Handling of COVID - as a result they would likely lose today, but elections are in 2023 so most people will forget -Infighting (if Kaczyński retires or dies, they will go down in flames) To sum up: in order for PiS to lose power, either something extraordinary must happen or Kaczyński needs to get sick/die. As a side notes: -I would like to point out that polish foreign policy is so terrible because PiS is sacrificing it for internal gains. They are willingly taking beating on international stage in order to get more votes domestically (and it works - because of the history we poles do not take kindly to other countries lecturing us on anything - so any time Brussels/Berlin/Paris or Washington is telling us what to do PiS is gaining few points). -Poland - like US is very divided, rural areas are pro PIS, major cities against. East of country generally pro Pis, West against. -Poland is not authoritarian state, not yet. We are democracy ruled by conservative majority which is cementing its hold on power using playbook of US Republican party. That’s really interesting thanks. From what I’ve understood, it’s the reform of the judiciary that has caused the biggest uproar. Regarding your first side note, one thing I have noticed in my discusions with polish friends is how uncompromisingly nationalists a lot of them were, and how unwilling they were to admit the not-so-glorious pages of their country’s history. The fact that it comes out so often in the country’s politics and diplomacy makes me wonder whether those unresolved historical question do not poison and weaken polish democracy. It’s very certainly the case with Turkey and Russia, but also in Hungary. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28561 Posts
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Silvanel
Poland4692 Posts
 Regarding unresolved bits of polish history - i agree, to a degree. It is true that some parts of polish society were strongly antisemitic during and before WWII and today our nationalist have hard time agreeing with that. But presenting whole country as antisemitic or even collaborating with Germany is not fair. Not only this wasnt true but also sitution in occupied Poland and Russia was tottaly different than elsewhere in occupied Europe (if You dont believe just read this book: Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich). Most Poles will agree that some people were colborating with Germans and some were antisemtic but they will also argue that it wasnt the majority. We even have a special word "szmalcownik" for people who sold Jews to Germans during war. So its not like we are not aware of this. Those people were often executed by our resistance forces. The amount of hardocore antisemitist and nationalist in our society is aptly shown by size of polish resistance forces: our main resistance force - Armia Krajowa (AK) which was center-left leaning was about 650 000 and Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ) which were nationalist, anticommunist and often antysemitist were about 70 000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II This is one of main contention points in our modern politics as PiS is prasing and electing monuments to people from NSZ who were sometimes just common bandits or antisemtists and collaborators. Some of them hated Soviets so much that they worked toghter with Germans when Eastern Front reached polish border. That earned some of them death penalty from AK forces. But the thing is parts of NSZ refused to lay arms after WWII finished and continued to fight agianst Soviets (and they ended on gallows) - for PiS that makes them heroes (cause they hate Soviets/communism so much) and thus they are treating them as such, even though like i said some of them were just commn thugs and some were antisemtists and/or collaborators. PiS is trying to rewrite history in regards to that and replace our center or socialist heroes with nationalists. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
Every kid learns in France that the holocaust was not just a nazi thing. It could only happen because people and institutions went along - from the neighbours, the policemen, the train drivers, the bureaucrats, and the majority that did nothing actively but turned a blind eye. My question somewhat if whether the inability to face the past is a reason or a consequence for authoritarianism. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4692 Posts
Poland is victim of holocaust not perpetrator. Six milion poles died in german deathcamps and during mass executions/repressions. | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9234 Posts
But to somehow state that without collaboration the holocaust wouldn't have been possible is almost criminally misrepresenting German violence and deliberateness during the occupations. Vichy isn't responsible for the holocaust. Neither are some collaborators in Poland. Germany is. Yes there were antisemites in France and Poland and progroms happened even before the 30s and 40s. The scale and organisation though are unprecedented and make the holocaust THE holocaust. Where I can better understand your point is when you say, everyone just turned a blind eye. It's kinda hard not to in France's position though. Occupied and beaten. Or in Poland's, haven witnessed multiple savage murders by German troops against civilians who were suspected (!) to have done something like sheltering Jews / freedom fighters / stealing or sabotaging. Not to speak of that there was resistance. The question is whether one can legitimately ask these people to do more? Aren't just the English to blame with their appeasement, wanting to be blinded by Hitler's assurances (which he broke multiple times before anyway)? | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 29 2021 20:16 Silvanel wrote: Sorry. Then what You are learning is bullshit. Poland was occupied country and occupied in staggeringly different way than every other part of Europe (minus Russia). We lost more then twenty times civilian citizens then France because of brutal repressions. More then any other country in the world by %. Trying to blame us for German crimes is despicable. I have family members executed by Germans during WWII (of which i learned recently on my grandfathers deathbed). Suggesting that we are somehow as a country to blame for holocaust in not only low, its pathethic and wrong. Especially because our country was the only occupied one which DID NOT cooperate with Germany. For which we paid terrible price. While citizens of many western countries wilingly joined SS and their governments openly cooperated with Germans. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Italy and Croatia even fought on german side. Poland is victim of holocaust not perpetrator. Six milion poles died in german deathcamps and during mass executions/repressions. To Poland's very strong credit, this is true. Despite the undeniable antisemitic tendencies within the country, Poland is one of the rare exceptions where the locals largely protected their Jewish population rather than participated as willing perpetrators of the Holocaust. They really shouldn't be lumped with the many other European populations that acted to the contrary. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23896 Posts
On June 29 2021 21:11 LegalLord wrote: To Poland's very strong credit, this is true. Despite the undeniable antisemitic tendencies within the country, Poland is one of the rare exceptions where the locals largely protected their Jewish population rather than participated as willing perpetrators of the Holocaust. They really shouldn't be lumped with the many other European populations that acted to the contrary. Largely, being the key word. But yes. I think it speaks to a general poor understanding of the Holocaust and the Europe of the time. I can’t really speak to understanding in other countries, but certainly if you were to ask random folks on the street about their understanding of the Holocaust you’ll mostly get it’s the Nazis and maybe if someone knows a little more Nazi collaborator committed genocide against the Jews. That the Nazis were operating in a context of pan-European anti-Semitism and also that they butchered political opponents, the disabled and other ethnic groups seems to be really, really poorly understood by people, even on a real surface level. Which is a borderline dangerous phenomenon, the perception of the Nazis as this crazy outlier and that other Europeans went to war to stop the Holocaust are just not correct. If that’s your understanding of history though well, recognising the pathway to fascism is kind of hard because well ‘these people aren’t doing what the Nazis did’ and ‘last time Fascism took hold sure we were the good guys and went to war’. Perhaps British historical understanding is different because unlike Germany, or France we didn’t have to do a period of national soul-searching for instigating/collaborating, or were not occupied and decimated like a Poland. I mean that’s my anecdotal impression of average Joe Brit on these topics, it’s entirely possible I’m way off base but assuming I’m not I’d be interested to see what you folks gauge average mainland Euro’s perception here. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
The level of responsibility is not the same between an SS guard in Auschwitz and that neighbour that did nothing because he really didn’t like jews anyway, or that train driver that was just doing his job driving his locomotive to Birkenau or even the responsible of that jewish association that handed the list of people to go and send to the slaughterhouse, but it is a responsibility the whole of Europe shares nonetheless. The discourse : « oh we have no part in it, we were just victims » is just plain wrong. I remember that story of that guy who survived Auschwitz, went back to his village, got thrown out when he told the new occupier it was his house, and when they found him sleeping in the courtyard in the morning, hanged him. That was the context. It’s really hard to imagine how passionately a loooot of people hated the jews. It’s not about Poland specifically, far from that. But it’s one of the two ir three countries that basically has built upon the idea that there were no connection between its staggering level of antisemitism at the time and the destruction of its jews. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 29 2021 21:34 WombaT wrote: I mean that’s my anecdotal impression of average Joe Brit on these topics, it’s entirely possible I’m way off base but assuming I’m not I’d be interested to see what you folks gauge average mainland Euro’s perception here. My take on that is that you have at least three groups you could cluster "European" (mainland or otherwise) perception into. First you have the most disgraceful - those in nations such as Estonia or the Ukraine who to this day venerate their Nazi collaborators as national heroes and in doing so downplay their own despicable role in the Holocaust. In the second group you have your odd edge cases like Poland that acted well out of sync with other nations of their means and level of antisemitism; hard to give a universal evaluation on these because they really are each unique. And the third group is most of Europe - neither particularly culpable nor inculpable for what happened, with both notable instances of protecting those who would otherwise be Holocaust victims and also of turning a blind eye to other cases of the same. I will note that I find much of the modern-day moralizing from that latter group to be misguided and more than a little vexing, but also will note that it is the most common European mainline on the issue. I don't find it surprising that the European Jewish population continues to decline to this day in light of this. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4692 Posts
I dont know if those resources are available in english, but i google translated some parts from https://przystanekhistoria.pl/pa2/tematy/polskie-panstwo-podziem/78076,Wyroki-na-szmalcownikow.html: This is a message from official bulletin of polish underground state Original: + Show Spoiler + „Każdy Polak, który współdziała z ich [Niemców] morderczą akcją, czy to szantażując, czy denuncjując Żydów, czy to wyzyskując ich okrutne położenie lub uczestnicząc w grabieży, popełnia ciężką zbrodnię wobec praw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej i będzie niezwłocznie ukarany” Translation: + Show Spoiler + "Every Pole who cooperates with their [Germans] murderous action, whether by blackmailing or denouncing Jews, whether by exploiting their cruel position or participating in the plunder, commits a grave crime against the laws of the Republic of Poland and will be immediately punished" 3500 people were executed by polish underground state for this and similiar crimes: https://opinie.wp.pl/polska-karzaca-wyroki-podziemnych-sadow-na-zdrajcow-i-szmalcownikow-6126040316507777a so really, accusing our country of participation in holocaust is kinda insulting. As to individual people - some were bad, some were good, most were scared and indifferent. I am not denying it or crimes committed by individuals or communities. WWII was a terrible experience, especially in the east. If You dont believe me, please read the book I mentioned earlier - its by Belorussian (not polish!) Nobelist and there are no comments in it, just interviews with survivors of war (mostly in Russia), only their stories with no redaction. Sad and terrible read. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23896 Posts
On June 29 2021 22:24 LegalLord wrote: My take on that is that you have at least three groups you could cluster "European" (mainland or otherwise) perception into. First you have the most disgraceful - those in nations such as Estonia or the Ukraine who to this day venerate their Nazi collaborators as national heroes and in doing so downplay their own despicable role in the Holocaust. In the second group you have your odd edge cases like Poland that acted well out of sync with other nations of their means and level of antisemitism; hard to give a universal evaluation on these because they really are each unique. And the third group is most of Europe - neither particularly culpable nor inculpable for what happened, with both notable instances of protecting those who would otherwise be Holocaust victims and also of turning a blind eye to other cases of the same. I will note that I find much of the modern-day moralizing from that latter group to be misguided and more than a little vexing, but also will note that it is the most common European mainline on the issue. I don't find it surprising that the European Jewish population continues to decline to this day in light of this. I think my main quibble with the national myth in the U.K. is this very reductive combination of the Holocaust was bad, that it was an exclusively Jewish targeting and we went to war to stop it. 1 of which is unarguably true, one is categorically untrue and the latter is mostly untrue. Transplant that to the modern day and this has (to me) rather negative consequences. If the common conception is anti-Semitism was largely restricted to the heinous Nazi machinery, we went to bat on that basis and subsequent to World War 2 anti-Semitism dissipated because the Nazis were beaten, then recognising the beating drums behind modern Neo-Fascist movements is rather tricky for many. Methinks, for example the pearl clutching over anti-Semitism in Labour is considerably altered if you have a word view that factors in that rabid anti-Semitism was prevalent all over Europe, including the U.K. And that it didn’t bloody disappear when Hitler topped himself in his bunker. This isn’t to say such things shouldn’t be analysed and discussed of course, but I’d argue they get inordinate focus as some kind of re-injection of anti-Semitism into environments where it long ago departed, when it really never left in the first place. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5452 Posts
On June 29 2021 21:37 Biff The Understudy wrote: I think what’s missing in the whole debate is that you can be both victim and, at various level, complicite. I think one thing that comes up from the litterature written on the holocaust is that it is not just a crime of some hardcore nazis at the top or fanaticized SS. It was a gigantic machine, operating in a context of hatred that made it possible. And I think you're looking at this through the lens of the French complicity, which was on an institutional level, and the level of terror instituted by the Nazis, which was relatively low. Poland, on the other hand, did not collaborate with the Nazis on an institutional level, quite the contrary. Polish resistance routinely assassinated people aiding in the Holocaust (or Nazi collaborators in general). The government in exile informed the Allies about the Holocaust. And the level of terror Poland was subjected to is unimaginable. For comparison, the Nazis committed 19 massacres in France. Whereas in Poland, they committed almost 800 such massacres. Over 150 towns were bombed to the ground by the Luftwaffe. They rounded up and killed some 100,000 people from the intelligentsia. For every German officer killed by the resistance, they rounded up ten (IIRC) random people and publicly executed them. They also executed people suspected of aiding the Jews, along with their families. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_France#Second_World_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_actions_in_German-occupied_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_the_Polish_nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion If Poles were such rabid antisemites that made the Holocaust possible, why were they not allowed to work as concentration camp guards? People from the Baltics were, so were Ukrainians. The level of responsibility is not the same between an SS guard in Auschwitz and that neighbour that did nothing because he really didn’t like jews anyway, or that train driver that was just doing his job driving his locomotive to Birkenau or even the responsible of that jewish association that handed the list of people to go and send to the slaughterhouse, but it is a responsibility the whole of Europe shares nonetheless. And what do you propose they should've done? Attacked the camps with their bare hands? This is what resistance looked like in practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising The Nazis massacred some 60,000 people in Wola (a suburb of Warsaw) alone as a reprisal for the uprising, raping and torturing many of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wola_massacre It's easy for you to say that Poles should've done more. The discourse : « oh we have no part in it, we were just victims » is just plain wrong. Except that it's true. The percentage of people who were complicit in the Holocaust was low in Poland, a fraction of a percent. Collaboration was actually more widespread among the Jewish population (per capita). Are you also going to blame the Jews for the Holocaust? After all, you can be both a victim and complicit, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#Jewish_collaborators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Government#Demographics Roughly 15,000 Jewish Gestapo collaborators in the General Government (part of occupied Poland). Typically, those people were doing this for personal gain (blackmail, racketeering etc.). The number doesn't include people who were forced to collaborate to save their lives/families (such as Ghetto Police etc.). The population of the General Government was 11.4M, with 11.2% being Jews, which means a bit more than 1% of the Jews were Gestapo collaborators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland#The_Holocaust That number is actually higher than the one for the Polish collaborators. E.g. in Warsaw, with a population of 1.3M, with roughly 900k Poles, the number of Poles complicit in the Holocaust is at 4,000 (high estimate), which gives less than 0.5% of the Polish population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Poles_during_the_Holocaust The estimates of Poles aiding Jews, on the other hand, range from hundreds of thousands to a few million. For the number of Polish collaborators complicit in the Holocaust the estimates are tens of thousands to a hundred thousand. That's roughly an order of magnitude more than those complicit in the Holocaust. I remember that story of that guy who survived Auschwitz, went back to his village, got thrown out when he told the new occupier it was his house, and when they found him sleeping in the courtyard in the morning, hanged him. That was the context. It’s really hard to imagine how passionately a loooot of people hated the jews. Those are just anecdotes. I can counter that with anecdotes of Jews saved from the Holocaust who later helped institute Stalinism in Poland. It’s not about Poland specifically, far from that. But it’s one of the two ir three countries that basically has built upon the idea that there were no connection between its staggering level of antisemitism at the time and the destruction of its jews. Because, on the whole, there wasn't. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
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maybenexttime
Poland5452 Posts
On June 30 2021 22:32 Dangermousecatdog wrote: It's been pretty well established that unlike Vichy France, Poland didn't collaborate with Nazi Germany over the holocaust, other than the usual dumb jokes about the location of Auschwitz. People forget half of Poland was taken over by Russia at the time and the Nazi's policy in Poland was Lebensraum. How is this discussion even a thing? Those are not dumb jokes. There are people in positions of power in Israel who genuinely believe that Poles ran the extermination camps alongside Germans, Austrians etc. Yair Lapid is one of them. He'll be the next prime minister of Israel, if I'm not mistaken. That belief is also very widespread among American Jews. And recently there was a scandal in France because according to one textbook, Poles were helping run the Treblinka extermination camp. | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4315 Posts
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/draft-shows-eu-propose-aviation-fuel-tax-green-policy-push-2021-07-04/ The minimum EU tax rate would not apply to cargo-only flights or to "pleasure flights" and "business aviation". That could include recreational use of an aircraft or a company using a plane, not for public hire, to conduct its business. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11340 Posts
I don't get why these corrupt assholes always get to put in exemptions into everything. And in this case, exemptions that are utterly not explainable in any reasonable fashion except that the rich get what they want. | ||
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