I LOVE POLAND

They love their country, their Poland. Not just any old Poland, however, but a “great, Catholic Poland”, a Poland purged of “perverts of any kind”. And the members of the right-wing student organization All-Polish Youth, founded in 1989 by Roman Giertych, are not afraid to march for their convictions. The streets resound with their choruses of “Zero tolerance for perverts!”, they hold “seminars” and “workshops” in which impressionable youngsters are taught the values that count in life: patriotism, self-discipline, subordination and religion – the latter synonymous, of course, with Catholicism. The Pope, a ruminating stone figure, gazes on absently. I LOVE POLAND conveys an alarming picture of nationalist and reactionary tendencies in that country, and of the support afforded by the Catholic Church. In 2001, Giertych was among the founders of the League of Polish Families – LPR, and was elected to parliament on the party ticket. The party programme was basically identical with that of “All-Polish Youth”: concern over the health of the population, the demonization of dissenters and homosexuals. Instructive excerpt from footage of the LPR election campaign shows a candidate being quizzed by one such “deviant element”, who suggests that freedom might be the basic human right of homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. After some blustering, the LPR man blurts out his black-and-white view of the world: it is a choice between “Good and Evil”. Any more questions? Good, at all events, that the film was made.