This rhetoric is used not by a consciously right-wing party but by a group that claims to be the only revolutionary left force in Poland: Communist Youth Of Poland. They use racist and antisemitic propaganda, advertise Iranian cartoon of Holocaust denial trust and, of course, support separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine.
The history of reactionary tendencies in the Polish Communist movement is very long. Before the WW2, the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) was had a big number of Jews in its ranks. But some leaders of Polish Workers Party (PPR) that was set up during the WW2 later came to be known as antisemites. They became more influential after the war, when the USRR became more nationalist.
The leader of antisemitic fraction Mieczysław Moczar was the Minister of Interior. His activities were supported by Bolesław Piasecki, the leader of the interwar fascist party National-Radical Movement „Falanga” who became a powerful person in the communist dictatorship. Antisemitism became stronger during the students’ revolt in 1968 and after the rise of Solidarność, whose leaders were often attacked as “Jews” by the special forces and the Patriotic Assembly „Grunwald”, national-communist organisation. Many members of Polish United Workers Party (PZPR: “communist” party created in 1949 that was not communist event in its name) were active neofascists and antisemites after 1989. Among them we can mention Bolesław Tejkowski and Janusz Bryczkowski who were leaders of neofascist parties, or Bogusław Wolniewicz, Jerzy Robert Nowak and Ryszard Bender: leading antisemite „intellectuals”.
Today, the communist movement hardly exists in Poland. Former members of PZPR created Alliance Of Democratic Left that supported the neoliberal agenda, as did most of social-democratic parties in Western Europe. The few others created Communist Party Of Poland that is a self-proclaimed euro-communist party. But this little party is marginalized on all levels and was never a part of Polish radical left. Members of the party were violently treated on many occasions when they tried to show up on left-wing demonstrations with Bolshevik symbols. The exception is May Day in Warsaw, which is organized every year by Piotr Ikonowicz who tolerates „communists” on his demonstrations.
The youth wing of KPP, Communist Youth of Poland (KMP), existed for a few years as a small sect affiliated to the marginal party. Its members were only known from their webside and some troll accounts on the social media. Both fake Stalinist vision of Marxism and the interaction with reactionary „anti-imperialist” groups active on the internet led to the radicalisation of the group. They started affirming Stalinism as an alternative to the modern world which KPP could not stand, and started breaking any connections with KMP.
The young generation of the so-called communists felt closer to neofascist „anti-imperialist” organisations like Falanga (the new group which borrowed the name of their inter-war predecessors) or The Camp Of The Great Poland (OWP) than to any political organisations marching under the red banner. Activities of those groups intensified during the Ukrainian crisis. Their activists were demonstrating their solidarity with Eastern Ukrainian separatist forces, maintaining close contact with them.
KMP was also responsible for the famous provocation during the anti-fascist demonstration in Warsaw on 8 November 2013. Members of the communist youth, already known for their far-right connections, came with flags of the USSR and North Korea, thereby causing a violent incident between them and the black block. Three days later, they went to Krakow to take part in a fascist march organized by Falanga.
The political madness was developing further, and a few months later (February 2015) these groups, along with activists connected with Mateusz Piskorski, created Zmiana Party. The party united Polish right-wing and left-wing extremists and positioned itself as openly pro-Kremlin. Among the founders of the party we could spot Bartosz Bekier (the leader of Falanga), Ludmiła Dobrzyniecka (KMP), and even a trade unionist known for stealing money from his union. The party, which had a fascist as a vice-president and a former neonazi and Euro-Asianist as a leader, was the first one to „fight against fascism” in Ukraine. Ludmiła Dobrzyniecka gave a lot of interviews to the Russian media.
Another member of KMP, Dawid Kenert, was also the founder of Zmiana’s trade union „Jedność Pracownicza”. The interaction with those reactionaries helped make KMP’s discourse openly antisemitic and national-radical. Zmiana had problems with their members who often hated each other, so both Falangists and KMP members decided to distance themselves from the party. The party’s crises went much deeper after the detention of Mateusz Piskorski, who was arrested on 18 May 2016 and is still in prison awaiting for the trial. The other person from Zmiana arrested at the same period was Dawid Kenert who is accused of… jihadist activities. „It is impossible to mix Islam with Marxism which is a materialistic ideology but I think that mixing Shariah law with some elements of planned economy would be a great system for the whole world civilisation, especially for the Middle East” – he said later in the interview for antykapitalizm.pl, a national-Bolshevik website.
After Dawid Kenert’s arrest his mother and grandmother gave an interview to the press: „He could close his room and stop drinking and eating, claiming that Poland is not his fatherland” – they said. Kenert was addicted to the Internet and, in opinion of his close family members, had mental problems on this ground. This led first to his fascination with Stalinism and Zmiana Party (he spent 7 days in Donbas together with Banda Basotti as a member of Zmiana) and later radical Islam.
Both his mother and stepfather, who is Palestinian, tried to explain to him that he idealized this religion, but, as his mother said, he did not listen. It is difficult to say whether the Jihadi Bolshevik will be put in prison or set free on the grounds that he does not pose any danger and rather needs to be put in hospital than in prison. The latter happened earlier to the famous 18 year-old „jihadi” arrested in 2012 in Poland before the European Football Championships.
It is also known that both KMP and Zmiana party manipulated many young people with similar problems who were found on the Internet and used in the military conflict in Ukraine.
Such ideological-cum-mental sickness of the group had to make its leader crazy. She decided to leave Poland and join a „communist” unit in the Lugansk People’s Republic. „I think that if communists want to change anything they firstly have to change themselves” – she said in the interview made by Dawid Hudziec, member of OWP active in Donbas since the beginning of the war.