Polish opposition to sue right-wing newspaper for Tusk “Hitler” cover

Poland’s largest opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), has announced that it will sue Gazeta Polska, a newspaper supportive of the government, for a cover that appears to liken its leader, Donald Tusk, to Hitler.

Yesterday, Gazeta Polska – which came to international attention in 2019 when it distributed “LGBT-free zone” stickers with copies of the newspaper – revealed its latest weekly cover.

It features an image of Tusk with a raised fist and his nose casting a shadow that looks like Hitler’s moustache. Beneath him is written “Gott mit uns”, meaning “God with us”, a motto used in the past by the German military, including by Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht.

The words on the cover are a reference to a recent speech by Tusk in which he declared that if “you believe in God, you do not vote for PiS”, referring to the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Gazeta Polska accused Tusk of standing “on the side of tyranny” by opposing a government that has been strongly supporting Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

Tusk is regularly portrayed as a representative of German interests rather than Polish ones by media supportive of PiS. News broadcasts on state television, which is a government mouthpiece, have shown a clip of Tusk saying “Für Deutschland” (“For Germany”) more than 125 times in the last year.

In response to Gazeta Polska’s new cover, PO’s spokesman announced that the party would be suing both the newspaper and its editor, Tomasz Sakiewicz.

“This cover is so brazen that it cannot be left unanswered, for the good of public life in Poland, so that we do not reach the level of the gutter,” he told media news service Wirtualne Media.

Another news website, Wirtualna Polska, reported yesterday that Tusk himself is also preparing a personal lawsuit against Gazeta Polska.

However, the author of Gazeta Polska’s article on Tusk, Piotr Lisiewicz, denied that the cover or his text was intended to portray Tusk as Hitler. But Wojciech Szaczki, a commentator for the Polityka weekly, showed how the newspaper had enlarged the shadow under Tusk’s nose to give him a “moustache a la Hitler”.

Gazeta Polska and its editor have regularly courted controversy. Earlier this year, Tusk sued Sakiewicz for saying that the PO leader had, as prime minister, in 2010 “allowed Putin to kill” then President Lech Kaczyński in the Smolensk air crash (which official investigations found to be an accident but PiS claims was deliberately caused).

In January, European Court of Justice judge Marek Safjan launched lawsuits against Sakiewicz, Lisiewicz and Gazeta Polska’s publisher for a cover that featured him alongside figures in Nazi uniforms and judge’s robes.

Last year, a court ordered Sakiewicz and his newspaper’s publisher to apologise to Borys Budka, head of PO’s parliamentary caucus, for a cover saying that he was “spreading plague and death”.

Data released earlier this year show that Gazeta Polska has been the biggest beneficiary of a shift in state advertising money towards media outlets supportive of the government. It received 9.66 million zloty (€2 million) from state firms in 2021, almost a third of its income.

Main image credit: Gazeta Polska

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.