Narutowicz Assassination Politicized Blame Game Example Brykczynski

Primed For Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland, by Paul Brykczynski. 2016

A Revival of the Decades-Old Politicization of Political Assassinations. Obvious Parallels With Old Communist Propaganda

This book is telling nothing new. The authors whom Brykczynski admires or cites (p. xiii, pp. 202-208) are themselves instructive. They are a veritable Who’ s Who of Pole-hostile authors: Robert Blobaum, Alina Cala, Celia Heller, Grzegorz Krzywiec, Ronald Modras, Brian Porter-Szucs, Piotr Wrobel, and Genevieve Zubrzycki. [To see how, read my reviews of these authors]. Brykczynski gives unstinting credit to Brian Porter-Szucs. (p. xiii). It figures. The reader should be aware of the fact that Porter-Szucs is much further to the left than is apparent from the books he writes. Check out his blogspot [I did], in which he engages in cultural Marxist anti-PiS messages.

Just as significant are top-quality scholars of Polish nationalism that Paul Brykczynski does NOT include: Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Leszek Zebrowski, Jolanta Mysiakowska-Muszynski, and Wojciech J. Muszynski. Their scholarship does not fit the left-wing template, so therefore it does not exist. They are Orwellian unpersons.

The undermining and discrediting of the religious and patriotic traditions of nations (white, Christian-majority ones, that is) is a long-term project of cultural Marxism (kulturowy marksizm). This book consistently shows such tendencies.

ACCUSATIONS OF ” INCITING VIOLENCE’ ” THE OLDEST LEFTIST TRICK IN THE BOOK

The very title of this book is revealing, and it has a long pedigree. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, liberals had hoped that the assassin was a right-wing extremist, so that they could pin the blame on all conservatives. When the facts refused to cooperate, they changed their story. They now said that conservatives had created an ” atmosphere of hatred” that had incited the killer to pull the trigger. They also politicized the assassination, and repeated the slogan that ” America is a sick society!” [Well do I remember.] The only remedy was (what else?) more government programs.

Enter the assassination of Gabriel Narutowicz (1922). Brykczynski leaves no doubt about how he plays the blame game. He writes, “The long-term causes of the murder can be adduced to the culture of hatred cultivated the National Democrats (NDs) and their allies in early twentieth-century Poland.” (p. 157). Same old same old.

MORE ASSASSINATIONS EXPLOITED FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES–INCLUDING IN ISRAEL

Fast forward to 1995. When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, Israeli politicians took turns pointing fingers at each other. Atheist Jews seized on the tragedy to make it into an indictment of religious Jews.

THE HISTORY OF EXPLOITING THE NARUTOWICZ ASSASSINATION FOR POLITICAL ENDS

In making his rather scurrilous insinuations, author Paul Brykczynski is not saying anything new. When the Soviet-imposed Communist puppet government took power in 1944, it knew that it had no legitimacy. So it did its best to delegitimize Poland’ s pre-Communist society in general and Polish Catholic-national traditions in particular. The Narutowicz assassination was instrumentalized for this purpose. [I was in Poland, and personally heard Communist apologists dust it off and bring it up in reference to how awful pre-Communist Poland had been.] Now Paul Brykczynski is doing exactly the same thing.

In fact, the “incitement to murder” charge is a very easy one to make, and, if Polonophobes can do it, then so can I. What if I said that it was the Jewish hatred of Poland that had driven Narutowicz-assassin Eligiusz Niewiadomski to obsess about Jewish influence, and then to commit murder?

DEMONIZING THE ENDEKS

This book is less about the Narutowicz assassination than it is one long tirade against the National Democrats. This is especially egregious on some pages (e g., p. 81). Brykczynski also tries to make the Freemasons into some kind of a bogeyman (e g., p. 21). In doing so, he completely ignores their long history of intense anti-Catholicism.

The author does sometimes drift into a state of objectivity when he, for example, mentions the separatist actions of the Jews. However, he glosses over their full extent. Otherwise, Brykczynski displays an attitude that implies that Poland is some kind of free-for-all over which Poles have nothing to say, and that Poles had been a naughty people for not sitting back and letting the Jews do whatever they please.

A ” CULT” OF THE ASSASSIN ELIGIUSZ NIEWIADOMSKI?

Author Paul Brykczynski argues that, after a short period of condemnation, Poles sort of made a martyr out of Eligiusz Niewiadomski. However, if true, it is hypocritical to make an issue of it, as leftists do it all the time. For instance, think of the way that the American left has long made Jewish-American Communist spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg into ” martyrs of McCarthyism” . Additionally, and to this day, some leftists excuse Communist crimes by transforming Communists into ” misguided idealists” , or ” fearless progressives in a hurry” .

ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT THE DIFFUSION OF GERMAN GUILT FOR THE EVENTUAL HOLOCAUST

Brykczynski (p. 159) bends over backwards to connect what he considers the anti-Semitism of the Endeks with those of the fascist movements, including that of eventual Nazi Germany. This is a rather transparent attempt to relativize Nazi German conduct, to dilute German guilt, and to shift part of German guilt unto the Poles. This, too, is the same old same old left-wing rubbish.

Finally, the conflation of Endeks and Nazis takes the mystification of the Holocaust to new levels of absurdity. It ridiculously confuses the mere DISLIKE of somebody with the MURDER of somebody. It comes close to conflating the IMAGINARY “thoughtcrime” of disliking Jews (by the Polish Endeks) with the VERY REAL crime of genocide against Jews ( bythe Germans/Nazis). Then again, such is the “logic” that reigns in much of today’s largely left-wing academia.