Let’s not be under any illusions—this pattern works the same in every post-Soviet regime. First, freedom of speech is gradually dismantled; next, unknown perpetrators murder opponents of the government. Why? Because nobody can shine a light on those crimes when all the major media outlets are in the hands of those in power, who actively help cover them up. The current regime in Poland is at the stage Putin reached in 2000, when security services armed to the teeth stormed Vladimir Gusinsky’s NTV station. Here, we didn’t need the FSB; all it took was Judge Barbara Kołodziejczak-Osetek. Now is the moment—when millions of Poles are mobilized—when we can still halt this process. In just a while, it might be too late, writes Piotr Lisiewicz, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska and a journalist at Telewizja Republika, for the portal Niezależna.pl.
What would Poland have looked like in recent months if Telewizja Republika didn’t exist? Anna Wójcik would still be imprisoned, and Ryszard Cyba might have received a Cross of Valor from those in power. And what then? Nothing, absolutely nothing—because people wouldn’t have known the truth about what was happening around them. If the major media could broadcast that Anna Wójcik had stolen millions, that her son was faking an illness, and that Ryszard Cyba was acting in self-defense, most people would have believed it. Simply telling the truth on social media wouldn’t be enough to defeat a regime’s powerful propaganda machine. Besides, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski—he of the red tie and the Internationale—is already preparing a tool for censoring the internet, removing individual posts or even entire channels. And it can be done not by a court, but by a government official.
Given that when Poland had three TV stations all broadcasting the same narrative, it was possible to cover up Smoleńsk, then anything can be covered up. They have the experience and the knack for labeling anyone who suspects a cover-up as delusional. Their only limitation at the moment is the existence of the country’s largest news channel, where we can show facts instead of government propaganda—on a large scale, with top technical standards, and in the right proportions: major issues treated as major, secondary matters as secondary. It’s thanks to Telewizja Republika that Poles found out the truth about Anna Wójcik and Ryszard Cyba. Tusk’s government ran polls and realized these stories were hurting its reputation; only then did it start to back off. If Republika disappears, nothing will stop them. Anyone smaller than Republika will be crushed.
Those responsible for murdering people with pro-independence views may not necessarily be the government itself; it could also be Russian security services. The government will lose control over that once the supervisory mechanism—freedom of speech—is destroyed. It’s been written many times that censorship always leads to violence, but perhaps no one described this Bolshevik invention better than Polish writer Józef Mackiewicz in his novel Droga donikąd (Road to Nowhere). There, he captures the seemingly inexplicable power of mass falsehood. One of the characters, Tadeusz, says: “The Bolsheviks really made an epochal discovery (…) Human nature, by its imperfection, cannot grasp absolute truth. Under those conditions, a lie in the psychological sphere is as natural a phenomenon as air or water in the physical realm—something we simply cannot do without. It makes no difference whether that lie is evil, malicious, innocent, social, or, as sometimes happens, merciful.”
Is that obvious? Yes—but the communists drew conclusions from that fact that no one had ever drawn before. Tadeusz explains: “Once there was a great inventor who harnessed a water wheel (…) The Bolsheviks did precisely the same with the natural potential of human lying: they attached a mill wheel to grind the human psyche.” They established that “concentrated human falsehood possesses a power whose limits we do not yet know, and that it can bring about a fundamental revolution in realms like language and the very meaning of words.”
How does this “Bolshevik technique” work? Tadeusz lays it out for Paweł: “The Bolsheviks (…) point to the ceiling and say immediately, ‘You see that ceiling? It’s black as tar.’ (…) You think it matters to people that the truth is the opposite? (…) From their own experience, they’ve learned that it doesn’t matter in the least.” Sounds impossible? Tadeusz notes that something is only impossible as long as there’s a way to point out the lie. Once “that pointing finger is paralyzed, everything becomes feasible.”
Today we find ourselves at that critical point where we can decide whether the finger that calls out the government’s lies will be paralyzed. Beyond this point lies a slippery slope.