Cultural Marxism Example Michnik Szechter

Michnikowszczyzna: Zapis Choroby, by Rafal A. Ziemkiewicz. 2006

Cultural Marxism: Adam Michnik Szechter and His Chronic Antipathy to Poland’s Catholic and Patriotic Traditions

“MICHNIKISM”: THE ANATOMY OF A DISEASE, is the title of this Polish-language book. Author Ziemkiewicz has written an eye-opening book that covers many topics, a few of which I highlight. I organize my review into three main topics: I). Michnik and Communism, II) The Communist Security (Bezpieka) Archives, and III), The War on Polish Patriotism and Catholicism. This maps onto cultural Marxism, and is consistent with GAZETA WYBORCZA and its funding by George Soros.

MICHNIK SZECHTER AND COMMUNISM

Author Ziemkiewicz characterizes Communism, in all its manifestations, as a form of banditry. Gierek, Gomulka, and Bierut had been little different in this regard. (p. 144). Had Walesa taken a moral rather than political stand, and not compromised with the Communists, their leftover influence would have ended long ago. (pp. 326-327, 338).

One major theme of this work is therefore the failure of Polish politics and society to make a clean break with Communism and its bandit nature. (p. 9). Although corruption exists everywhere, it rises to unusual heights in Poland. (p. 220). So profound is the enduring corruption that, according to Ziemkiewicz, Poland loses a great deal of investment money from western firms, which reckon Poland on par with Russia, and worse than many Third-World nations in this regard. (p. 392).

The author mentions various onetime agents of the Communists associated with Michnik-Schechter and GAZETA WYBORCZA. (pp. 235-241). Andrzej Szczypiorski, extolled by Michnik as a great moral authority, would attack Poles and the Church for “primitive nationalism”. Szczypiorski was a long-term confidante of the Bezpieka. (p. 235). Another Bezpieka confidante, who attacked his own Church for “intolerance and anti-Semitism”, was Father Michal Czajkowski. (p. 237).

Michnik objects to what he calls “caveman anti-Communism”, but Ziemkiewicz suggests that Michnik’s anti-Communism, as manifested during the Round Table agreements, was hardly anti-Communism at all. (p. 59). In fact, Michnik-Szechter is professedly anti-totalitarian (p. 145) rather than anti-Communist. He even goes on to equate fallaciously Pinochet and Franco with Communist rulers. (p. 153).

Some of Michnik’s supporters have tried to make an issue of the fact that the Communists had earlier repeatedly arrested and imprisoned Michnik. This proves nothing. The Communists had also arrested other Communists, including Wladyslaw Gomulka. (p. 67).

Ziemkiewicz repeatedly takes Michnik to task for opposing LUSTRACJI–bringing Communists to justice (e. g, p. 176, 234, 247, 264). In effect, Michnik’s policies are tantamount to re-murdering the murdered victims of Communism through deliberate forgetting. Michnik has come up with various creative arguments to justify this, including the bizarre contention that the archives of the Communist security forces (Bezpieka) totally lack credibility. [pp. 250-255].

THE COMMUNIST SECURITY (BEZPIEKA) ARCHIVES

The author characterizes Bezpieka (U. B.) archives as follows, (translate, quote) Of course, not every item found in a file about a person must be real. The ubeks [U. B. personnel] sometimes made mistakes, their confidantes sometimes fantasized, and the ubeks were sometimes led into error. The same can be said about the considerable amount of untruth in other archives. For instance, in meetings of the Politburo, all sorts of false statistics were quoted, and these were written down in the protocols. (unquote). (pp. 252-253). However, no historian has suggested that U. B. archives are TOTALLY unreliable. Only Michnik says so. (p. 252).

[The foregoing should be expanded to recognize the inconsistency of Michnik on the credibility of Communist-secured information. His blanket rejection of its accuracy rests in part on the argument that people making statements to Communist interrogators were coerced, if not tortured. (p. 255). However, Michnik unquestionably accepts Polish guilt at Jedwabne, which largely rests on the credibility of the processes that had led to the conviction of some Poles in the Stalinist-era 1949 trial. These processes certainly had a large degree of coercion!]

CULTURAL MARXISM: THE WAR ON POLISH PATRIOTISM AND CATHOLICISM

Pointedly, Michnik considers the Endeks as worse than Communists. (p. 357). The author suggests that, to Michnik, Communism is the flu, but nationalism is the bubonic plague. (p. 157). Michnik is allied with post-Communists against the bogeyman of nationalism. (p. 148).

Pointedly, Michnik equated nationalism and “tribal hatreds”. In doing so, Michnik cited the war in post-Communist Yugoslavia. However, Ziemkiewicz points out that this was a singularity. No such hostilities erupted elsewhere in post-Communist nations. For instance, the Czechs and Slovaks expressed their respective nationalisms by separating peacefully. (p. 218). Michnik (and Kuron) have offended Wilno (Vilnius)-area Poles by calling them nationalists merely for wanting to adhere to their own language and subculture. (p. 284).

Some Polish Jews, such as Marek Edelman had opposed the erection of the Warsaw monument to Roman Dmowski, “because he had been an anti-Semite”. However, Ziemkiewicz points out that at least half of statesmen of Dmowski’s time had similar views about Jews, including Winston Churchill. (p. 360). [And what if we refrained from building monuments to Polonophobes, including Jewish Polonophobes?]

Ziemkiewicz sees the Michnik group on one hand, and Fr. Rydzyk and RADIO MARYJA, on the other, as mirror images of each other. (p. 363). The author believes that RADIO MARYJA would not have formed in the absence of Michnik and his constant attacks on Polish Catholics (p. 364), who had grown tired of being insulted and name-called as anti-Semites, fascists, Catholic fundamentalists, and whatnot. (p. 366). They then returned the name-calling favor by calling Michnik such things as a Trotskyite and atheist. (p. 367).

Although Michnik denies being hostile to Catholicism, his actions tell otherwise. Michnik looks at such things as religious instruction in schools, the Mass on television, clergy taking part in official ceremonies, etc., and, out of these, he hysterically makes bogeymen. These bogeymen include “Poland a theocracy”, “the Iranization of Poland”, “a threat to pluralism and democracy”, etc. (pp. 359-350). More subtle cultural trends in Poland include such things as the Communist-introduced substitution of BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) for B.C. and A.D. (p. 351).[The same thing is done by many American Jews and academics.]

On another subject, consider Julian Tuwim. Ziemkiewicz (p. 356) states that Julian Tuwim wrote of his satisfaction that Communist censorship had prevented the expression of the “reactionary villains” of the PSL (Mikolajczyk’s early post-WII non-Communist party).