Undemonizing Dmowski Sorely Needed By Porter

When Nationalism Began to Hate, by Brian Porter. 2000

Left-Wing Hatchet Job on Polish Patriotism. Better Title: When Brian Porter Began to Hate. In Fact, Positions Used By Porter to Demonize Dmowski Were Commonly Held By Jews Themselves!

WARNING: Cultural Marxism
UWAGA: Kulturowe Marksizm

BACKGROUND: Author Brian Porter-Szucs has a blog [I read it]. It figures. He is much further left-wing than is apparent from what he writes in his books. For instance, he runs-down Poland’s freely-elected PiS government.

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Brian Porter (now Porter-Szucs) is almost devoid of objectivity. To begin with, he focuses on Jews being increasingly seen by Poles as “others” and “aliens” (e. g, 158, 179, 228) without elaborating how, long before Dmowski was even born, erstwhile Polish Jews themselves had departed from Polish-ness in several major ways.

In evaluating Dmowski and the Endeks, Porter writes, “One could selectively quote from National Democratic texts to show that they supported unqualified aggression, or to demonstrate that they were benign advocates of patriotism and national solidarity. Neither image would be inaccurate, but both would be incomplete.” (p. 218). So Porter is changing his argument–from Endeks being unilateral haters to Endeks as haters being “incomplete”. The weaseling is obvious. It is also ironic for Porter to complain about selective quotations, because, as demonstrated below, he is the worst offender in this regard. Virtually everything he quotes from Endek sources, assuming that the quotations are accurate, is tendentiously cited to make Dmowski look as horrible as possible.

I have reviewed a number of books and about Dmowski, and urge the readers to consult them [write Dmowski into the Search Box] as a corrective. Here are just a few of them:

DMOWSKI NOT “ANTI-MINORITY”

Leftists commonly call people, whose views they do not agree with, as “anti-minority.”

Porter falsely accuses Dmowski of inconsistency in opposing the forced Germanization of Poles in Poznania while supporting the forced Polonization of Ukrainians further east. This is flatly untrue. Dmowski was no chauvinist. In fact, Dmowski had said that he would be just as disgusted at a Polish teacher beating a Ukrainian child for speaking Ukrainian as he would be disgusted with a German or Russian teacher beating a Polish child for speaking Polish.

In fact, Dmowski had a flexible response when it came to Poland’s minorities. Then again, Ukrainian national consciousness had been, at that time, a recent development, and Ukrainians themselves had differing conceptions about what it meant to be a “Ukrainian” and how this related to Russians and Poles.

THE SAME OLD TIRED ACCUSATION OF “HATE”

Now let us consider this “hate” business that begins with Porter’s title of this book. The informed reader realizes that selective accusations of “hate” are a standard, canned left-wing tactic, and have only intensified in recent years.

In actuality, Dmowski never promulgated unilateral hate against anyone. Those who actually knew Dmowski personally said that he had a jovial disposition–quite the opposite of a hatemonger. Dmowski actually faulted Poles when they blindly hated Germans. He pointed out that there are many things that Poles could learn from Germans, and he envisioned a day when Germans and Poles could live in friendship.

LET’S UNDEMONIZE DMOWSKI A BIT

Dmowski’s antagonism to Jews was never total. It was directed solely against Jews as opponents of Polish natural aspirations. Dmowski always opposed violence against Jews, and was in no sense “ambivalent about pogroms”. (p. 231). Far from making “outlandish claims about vast Jewish conspiracies” (p. 232), Dmowski actually taught that it was just as incorrect to overestimate Jewish power and influence as it was to underestimate it. Finally, Dmowski always recognized the fact that some Jews, both converted and unconverted, were Polish patriots.

Nor was Dmowski a scapegoat-seeker. A cursory knowledge of Dmowski’s writings shows that he criticized his fellow Poles for accentuating their own problems at least as much as he criticized others for causing Polish problems.

THE AUTHOR’S FALSIFICATIONS OF HISTORY

Some of Porter’s assertions are particularly egregious. He actually accuses Dmowski of being a “proto-fascist” (p. 155) and even of promoting imperialism. (p. 183, 222). Precisely the opposite was the case. Dmowski opposed fascism to his dying day, and rejected ideas about resurrecting Poland in her 1772 boundaries, even in the form of a Pilsudski-style federation, precisely because the nations involved now had their own identities and would not want to be a part of Poland.

The Endek flirtation with Social Darwinism–a very popular concept among European intellectuals of the late 19th-century–and then more true of Balicki than Dmowski, should not be overstated. As anyone familiar with them knows, Dmowski’s later writings show a minimal imprint of Social Darwinist thinking.

THE LEFT-WING AGENDA COMES THROUGH AGAIN AND AGAIN

Considering all of Porter’s misrepresentations of Dmowski noted above, and still others that could be mentioned, the intelligent reader must ask: Where is Porter coming from? He reveals the source of his biases as he comments, “Like Andrzej Bryk, I believe…in the name of imaging a Poland–indeed, a Europe–for the twenty-first century, within which the nation-state will no longer be equated with cultural homogeneity…to envision a world of harmony among nations and diversity within nations.” (pp. 237-238). Translating the familiar left-wing code words, the reader can discern a veiled hostility to conventional Polish patriotism and Catholicism.

Then again, that is what cultural Marxism is all about.

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There is a further irony to all of Porter’s misstatements about Dmowski:

ALL THAT AWFUL ENDEK “BIGOTRY”—HELD BY LEADING JEWS THEMSELVES

Examples (Check my reviews):

Eminent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber: Even after centuries of assimilation, Jews remain a distinctive, Oriental people.

The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement

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Martin Buber: Jews are a “community of blood”. Jews are a VOLK. Jews are a STAMM (community of common descent).

The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany

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Prominent Yiddishist Noah Prylucki: Jews are the inevitable “other”. Jews are their own VOLK. Jews are in RASSENKAMPF (racial struggle) with other peoples. Jews in Poland were not, are not, and never will be, Poles. Even a fully-assimilated Jew retains an indelible “Jewish spirit” that remains alien to the culture in which he lives.

Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland

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Leading Cultural-Zionist Asher Hirsch Ginsberg (Ahad Ha’Am): When Jews assimilate, they do not, and should not, fully join the gentile culture. Instead, they do express, and should express, their Jewishness in terms of that gentile culture–all the while retaining their separatist identity.

Ahad Ha-Am ~ Essays – Letters – Memoirs

Evidently, if a Jew has a certain position, it is just fine, but if Dmowski has the same position, then he is a hater. Such is left-wing logic.