As Poland’s exit polls rolled in on Sunday 15 October, Adam Michnik, the founder of liberal daily paper Gazeta Wyborcza, made a prediction to his newsroom: “In 1989, we Poles were the first to wipe out communism, now we will be the first to wipe out Trumpism.” He proclaimed the “end of Kaczynskism,” after eight years under the Trump-like Jarosław Kaczyński and his far-right Law and Justice party (PiS). Though the party remained the largest party, on just over 35 per cent support, it fell far short of a majority, has no apparent route to forming a coalition, and the broad opposition looks ready to form a government led by Donald Tusk.
When Michnik spoke of “Poles” setting an example, he subverted two common tropes. One was to reject PiS’s attempt to monopolise patriotism by presenting its adversaries as anti-Polish stooges of Berlin or even Moscow. Yet his comment also clashed with a framing that has become widespread in international media, which has presented Poland, together with Hungary, not just as states whose illiberal ruling parties have tried to entrench their grip on power, but as societies whose young democracies formed in the 1990s proved unable to resist the force of entrenched national and religious chauvinism.
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