Poland and Hungary Are What Healthy Democracies Look Like
‘These countries aren’t in decline, despite what the Left wants you to think.’
Even by today’s low standards, this is shockingly delusional,” I thought after reading Kati Marton’s diatribe against the current Polish and Hungarian governments in the Los Angeles Times last week.
Most such pieces are relatively standard and don’t warrant a response. This one, it seemed to me, mutilated the charred corpse of the truth. As a Polish citizen and Polish speaker who has lived in Hungary, I concluded it was too much to overlook. Allow me to share some of my experiences from these two countries, which most often bear no resemblance to the ones Marton describes.
Polish Government Gets Plenty of Criticism
The author portrays a Poland where opposition figures are under attack. She must not have spent time in global financial hub Warsaw, postindustrial-artistic Łódź, university town Wrocław, or reliably leftist Gdańsk, all places where the ruling conservatives are personae non gratae.
Perhaps she missed the trinkets mocking the cat-loving Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński that are sold in Warsaw souvenir shops and the ubiquitous “PiS Off” (PiS is the abbreviation of the Law and Justice party, which leads the current ruling coalition) scrawled on graffiti-strewn walls, Gen Z T-shirts, and Instagram hashtags. Anti-government messaging, campaign related and otherwise, is omnipresent. (RELATED: Trouble in Putin’s Gangsta’s Paradise)
