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Genetic patriotism

by MarekNYC Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 05:44:29 PM EST

An interview with Marek Suski, PiS (governing party) deputy and responsible for choosing candidates for local elections in Mazowsze province (the Warsaw region), also the head of the party in that region.

The criteria for choosing candidates for local elections are supposedly to include the family origins of the candidates. Would, for example, it be helpful in Mazowsze to have ancestors who fought in the Home Army?

Marek Suski: A Home Army ancestry doesn't give a 100% guarantee of getting on the list, the most important criterium is competence. We are open to all milieus, but it would certainly be a good thing, an extra point.

Why is that important for you?

Because if a candidate's family fought for Poland, for independence, grandpa was in the Home Army, and great grandpa took part in the January Uprising (revolt against the Russians in 1863), than that gives us a guarantee of genetic patriotism.


What else - besides genetic patriotism - will be seen as favorable in the ancestry of local candidates?

We are inviting people to our lists who come from the historic intelligentsia. Let me explain: if your grandfather had a diploma, your father had a diploma, then there is no need for you to show your diploma. An upbringing in a proper family, where values were cultivated, guarantees decency.
[...]

During the People's Republic, a working class or peasant candidate was given points, with you guys one can get points for a grandfather with a good biography?

And what's wrong with that, that we in PiS see ourselves as the heirs of the independentist ethos and wish to have people from that tradition on our lists?

Genetyczni patrioci na listy PiS-u w wyborach

Genetic patriotism? I think that certain things are simply beyond parody.

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Geneticism-racism was never too far for our nationalists.

Then Hungarian PM Péter Boross (1993-1994, after the death of József Antall) once told that we'd need "healthy countryside children" on state TV, a few years later he'd give the advice to right-wing leaders in an opinion piece to avoid using people from broken families, as they are mentally unstable...

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 06:25:35 AM EST
The early nineties conflict between the left and right wings (a bit more complex than simple left and right to be exact) of the Solidarity movement was very nasty. The presidential campaign between Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Lech Walesa in 1990 went racist as the Walesa campaign, run by  Jaroslaw Kaczynski, started asking why Mazowiecki and his advisors were 'ashamed' of their 'nationality' - we're proud of being Polish, why aren't they proud of theirs. Wink wink, nudge nudge.  A number of Mazowiecki's people were indeed of Jewish origin, but most, including Mazowiecki, were not.

The whole thing turned into a sick farce as the Walesa camp was using the one drop rule, and saying that some of Mazowiecki's szlachta ancestors from what is now southern Lithuania and northwestern Belarus might have intermarried with a large group of Jewish converts in the region who were given szlachta status in the eighteenth century.  And so the Mazowiecki people started digging up ancient parish archives and family records.  Absolutely stupid and pointless - those who actually cared about stuff like that would not vote for someone like Mazowiecki, nor would they believe any evidence - they're convinced that every politician they dislike is secretly Jewish.

by MarekNYC on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 01:29:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Is Jaroslaw Kaczynski Opus Dei, by any chance?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 01:43:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I've never heard of either of the Kaczynskis being Opus Dei, and I'd find it unlikely unless he joined recently. Mazowiecki btw, was a lifelong professional Catholic lay activist.
by MarekNYC on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 01:48:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
we're proud of being Polish, why aren't they proud of theirs

Already in 1990? I thought Wałęsa (& supporters) went overboard only towards his off-election...

I recall the use of that utterly disgusting rhetoric from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Croatia, too.

A further example of this: on 31 March 1990 (that is during the election campaign for the first free elections), the daily close to the then dominant right-wing party MDF published an article titled Fathers and Sons, listing mostly Jewish members of the liberal SzDSz who had either communist or Israel-connected ancestors. (And even that with many errors, I note.) MDF activists would later spread it as campaign pamphlet. (Years later, too late, the far-rightists would break off MDF and form MIÉP.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:24:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
These PiS people are worse than the Sabino Arana brand of negative-RH Basque racists.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 07:09:14 AM EST
It seems to bother our freemarketistas a lot less than "economic patriotism"...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 07:23:30 AM EST
So if my grandmother was a woman, and my mother was a woman as well ...
Nope, sorry. Guess it skipped a generation.
by Number 6 on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 07:33:25 AM EST
if your grandfather had a diploma, your father had a diploma, then there is no need for you to show your diploma. An upbringing in a proper family, where values were cultivated, guarantees decency.

 I personally call this logic to "sit on old glory without developing and improving yourself." The lack of competence can be vital(in negative sense) when the person takes part in serious task as in the representative government of in any other such responsible undertakings. And so I find the generic patriotism unsuitable in many areas. The background is important, but the self-mastery and improvement outweught it nowadays.

I'm not ugly,but my beauty is a total creation.Hegel
by Chris on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 08:39:48 AM EST
GWB is an excellent example of someone whose "ancestors" did the required work and had some skills.

Looking for a 'mental Habsburg lip' feels very postmodern.

by Number 6 on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 11:00:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Don't get me started on the Habsburg lip.

Had the Spanish Habsburgs not been so damn inbred we might not have all these problems with the various nationalities within Spain. But that's another story, to be told in its own diary.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 11:04:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Obviously "patriotism" (nationalism, chauvinism, fascism ...) is IN (fashion) around the globe...
This sounds ridiculous really and make my hear go up...I don't expect anything good to come from this OPEN discrimination that shows almost everywhere around the world. Of course it was not invented "last night" most of it is in practice for centuries...but at least it was hidden in my life time...I suppose Pandora's box is open and we will see much more of that staff in our life time...
 

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
by vbo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 10:58:52 PM EST


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