Polish nationalists march against “LGBT totalitarianism” on anniversary of WWII uprising

Polish nationalists marched through Warsaw yesterday to mark the anniversary of the city’s uprising against German occupation in World War Two. A banner at the head of their procession declared opposition to LGBT “totalitarianism” alongside Nazism and communism.

During the event, which was organised by far-right groups that have received government funding, one of the main speakers took down two European Union flags and declared that “this is Poland, not Brussels”.

By 5 p.m. – the hour at which the uprising began – a crowd of “many thousands” had gathered at Roman Dmowski Roundabout in the city centre, reports Polityka. Dmowski was a founding father of independent Poland and a nationalist who campaigned for a country free from Jews.

Participants then set off on a march organised by the Independence March Association (which also holds a large annual nationalist march on Independence Day), Roty Niepodległości, and the National Guard (Straż Narodowa), three groups led by Robert Bąkiewicz.

He is the former head of the National Radical Camp (ONR), a far-right organisation that seeks an “ethnically homogeneous” Poland and which the Supreme Court recently ruled could be called “fascist”. The National Guard and Independence March Association recently received large state grants.

At the front of the procession was a banner declaring “Stop Totalitarianism” alongside images of three crossed-out symbols: a communist hammer and sickle, a Nazi swastika, and an LGBT rainbow flag. At the end of the march, the banner was displayed in front of the Warsaw Uprising monument.

During a speech in 2019, Bąkiewicz called for “LGBT totalitarianism” to be “fought with fire, literally with fire”. At last year’s Independence March, at which Bąkiewicz was the head of the organising body, participants set an apartment on fire in a building where an LGBT flag was hanging.

Poland’s ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party has also led a campaign against what it calls “LGBT ideology”, claiming that it “terrorises people” and threatens the existence of the Polish nation and state. The education minister has declared that “LGBT ideology comes from the same roots as Nazism”.

While speaking to the crowd in front of the uprising monument yesterday, Bąkiewicz took down two EU flags that were flying alongside the Polish and Varsovian ones. “This is Poland, not Brussels,” he chanted, while they were thrown to the ground. The PiS speaker of parliament recently made a similar declaration.

During the nationalist march, participants chanted “hang the communists”, “death to enemies of the fatherland”, and “one bullet, one German”, reports Polityka. When confronted by anti-fascist protesters, some of the marchers shouted homophobic slogans at them, including “ban faggotry”.

Such anti-LGBT rhetoric came despite the head of the Warsaw Uprising Association, a veterans’ group, speaking out in recent years in condemnation of homophobia. Such hateful language is “reminiscent of the worst times through which we lived”, he warned.

While the nationalists held their uprising anniversary march for the tenth time, a more recent tradition – the March of Silence – took place simultaneously, with several hundred people joining, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

“This [march] is for every citizen, for everyone who remembers that the rights of the weakest must be protected,” said Wanda Tkaczyk-Stawska, an uprising veteran, in a recorded address to the crowd. “Love is the basis of patriotism…Without freedom, there is no nation.”

The Warsaw Uprising, which began on 1 August 1944 and lasted for 63 days, was the largest single military operation by any European resistance movement in World War II. An estimated 16,000 members of the Polish resistance lost their lives, while up to 200,000 Polish civilians were also killed.

Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.