The sacking of Przekrój's left-leaning editors is the latest in a narrowing of public debate to the neoliberal viewpoint
After 1989, eastern Europe was supposed to join the club of so-called "normal countries". From now on, we were told, there would be free speech, a free press and free debate, all prevented during the years of communist oppression. But in practice, this free liberal debate is anything but.
These days, whenever someone in the post-communist countries of eastern Europe tries to criticise the changes that their country have undergone, the tendency is to ridicule, or worse, silence them. We're all middle class now, we are told. Start your own little enterprises, consume and shut up. Those trying to discuss a solution to the current crisis other than the orthodox austerity measures is quickly dismissed.
So when a group of left-leaning editors took over the troubled Polish news weekly Przekrój ("Slant") last winter, it felt like a breath of fresh air in a public sphere usually divided evenly between neoliberalists and nationalists. Yet the change of direction didn't last long. After only a few months, and with the circulation having shrunk by roughly 50%, the editors were sacked and replaced with an editorial team with a track record in entertainment and lifestyle journalism.
What Przekrój had dared to try and do was initiate a debate about capitalism, in a country where the language of class struggle had supposedly been discredited. It interviewed trade unionists and spoke about strikes and opposition against austerity. They profiled prominent critics of the US and Israel, wrote features on David Harvey's Rebel Cities book, the Occupy movement, Spain's Indignados and last year's English riots. In sharp contrast, the rest of Poland's "liberal" establishment has largely turned a blind eye not just to developments abroad, but also those on its own doorstep.
For example, when Solidarity – one of the unions who played a key role in the 1989 uprisings – recently protested against the government's raising of the pension threshold from 65 to 67 years, its co-founder Lech Walesa said in an interview that he'd have liked to have seen the police face down the demonstrators. Such robust protests were legitimate if directed against a dictatorship, he said, but couldn't be tolerated in a modern democracy.
Did the protesters get a fair hearing in the media? One of the protesters complained about the government's lack of empathy with their cause: "What does he [prime minister Donald Tusk] know about being old and having to work in a coal mine?" Tellingly, his complaint wasn't found in any of the mainstream liberal outlets, but on an English-language blog. Class is an issue in modern Poland, but the media refuses to talk about it.
This protest, as well as recent strikes of nurses, was a rarity, because in the whole ex-bloc the culture of protest has largely died out with the end of communism. A look at a map of Indignados and Occupy solidarity marches on 15 October 2011 tells you all you need to know: there was almost nothing to the east of the former iron curtain, with only tiny groups in Warsaw, Bucharest and Prague.
This is even more surprising since eastern Europe – the Balkans and Baltic states especially – has been hit very hard by the crisis. Latvia has experienced economic collapse on the scale of Greece. But there is no Latvian Syntagma Square or Syriza party. In Poland, there are currently two kinds of protest: the old Solidarity generation still marches for workers' rights; while post-89 youngsters demonstrate on issues such as freedom of speech – in January thousands protested against the international counterfeiting and piracy agreement Acta. Yet how political that younger generation is remains unclear: what motivated them to take to the street wasn't unemployment or the scaling back of the welfare state, but the fear of free culture being taken from them.
All this is taking place in a situation where the state is focused on liberalising employment legislation, tax cuts and privatisation. Leszek Balcerowicz, the economist who adopted the "shock therapy" doctrine in the early 90s, today bemoans the "swollen public sector". Nobody investigates the dealings of Atos, who are not only active in Britain but will soon also be taking care of "benefit reform" in eastern European countries.
One of the reasons Poland has been able to avoid having a wider debate about the flaws of capitalism is that mass emigration, EU subsidies and exports to Germany have been covering up the tolls of the crisis.
Under the new editorial management, Przekrój's reaction to the jobs crisis has been much like that of the rightwing press in Britain: "Stop being so lazy and get on your bike!" Needless to say, the change in editorial direction has been cheered on by the economic liberals that dominate the debate in Poland. Unless the tone of the debate fundamentally changes soon, Poland will be taken completely by surprise when the crisis eventually starts to hit home
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