Hitler did for nationalism what Harvey Wienstein did for the casting couch. He went so far that the back-lash took decades to recover from. If it ever did. Maybe its just me but my hackles always rise when I see groups of nationalists, on the news, inevitably dressed in balaclavas and holding flags and flares, marching down the streets of, also inevitably, some East European country. As happened yesterday in Poland to mark their Independence Day. Not sure which particular ‘independence’ that refers to. Possibly from the Nazis, maybe from the Russians. But whatever, now they’re independent and they want more. They want to be white, Catholic and independent.

Which is just so at odds with European thought. The rest of Europe reacted massively at the end of the war away from nationalism, towards a more cuddly, soft & fluffy leftism that eventually became the European Union, via various stages of ‘we don’t need borders, we’re all the same’-ism. Europe has since the war been about ‘inclusion’ and ‘togetherness’ and here come the Poles saying, basically, a big FUCK OFF to foreigners, to people of colour and, of course, to Jews. Wouldn’t want to leave them out when the selectiveness and persecution kicks in.

My late grandmother, who was born in Poland and emigrated here when she was just 1 year old, used to say: ‘the Poles taught the Nazis how to be anti-semitic’. She also used to say a lot of other things; about calves-foot-jelly, about weird and wonderful practices, particularly in the kitchen, a lot of which made little sense, even in Yiddish. But that phrase always stayed with me. Mainly because its true. The famous ‘pogroms’ in Poland took place for decades before Hitler was born. And there’s no doubt that, even though they were under an occupying force during the War, many Poles were relatively eager accomplices in the ’rounding up and extermination’ processes. Others were indeed heroic and wonderful. But they represent the minuscule minority. And now Poland is demanding a ‘historical grievance’ payment from their German neighbours, just a paltry £758 billion. Just a ‘token gesture’.

Poland joined the EU because of trade and free passage for its builders. Who do a great job. But it never signed up to the spirit of the ‘union’. And is rather Trumpesque in its stance against Muslim immigrants and immigrants in general. But only if they’re non-white.

So in a way it was really refreshing in these times of inclusion and general softiness to see 60,000 masked Poles stomping the streets of Warsaw waving those lovely ‘almost-swastika’ nationalist flags and even the ‘falanga’ flags which are of purely anti-semitic origin.

Gotta love them Poles.

Happy Monday

A xxxx