Donald Tusk attacked writer and columnist Bronisław Wildstein, twisting his words and distorting their meaning. During the so-called unification convention – the same event that officially glued together Civic Platform (PO), Nowoczesna, and Inicjatywa Polska under the common banner of the Civic Coalition – Tusk used a manipulated version of Wildstein’s words, not only for a personal attack but also to use their distorted meaning as a shield for… the pro-Russian policy of the European Union (EU), which the writer had criticized.
The controversy concerns the words of the author of “Czas niedokonany”, spoken during a Law and Justice (PiS) convention in Katowice. There, in one of the many panels devoted to ideas, Wildstein presented his diagnosis of the crisis of the Western world (particularly of Western Europe and the European Union).
According to Wildstein, because of the “ideology of universal emancipation” – that is, liberation from all constraints – the West has fallen into an identity and economic crisis. Its ability not only to act but also to react and deter has weakened. Wildstein argued that this weakness emboldened Putin to launch a full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022, assuming that the West would not respond decisively. Which, indeed, turned out to be the case.
Outrage over the “ideology of emancipation”
The words were sharp but hardly controversial. Anyone with even a basic grasp of reality can see that the European Union has long been drifting dangerously – politically, economically, and ideologically – while the only prescriptions offered are “more of the same”: more regulation, centralization, consolidation, and internal control, coupled with an almost total retreat from what once formed the ideological core of Western civilization – the outward projection of thought, strength, and intellectual attractiveness. This was the kind of emancipation – an escape from roots and obligations – that Wildstein spoke of.
What did Tusk understand? Very little. Worse still, he based his attack on Wildstein not on the original text but on… a tweet by a certain Patryk Michalski, a journalist of the so-called “Third Republic media,” who happened to be at the peak of his career (it had just been announced that he was moving from WP to TVN24). Yes, ladies and gentlemen – the prime minister and his followers played a game of telephone, at the end of which the message bore no resemblance to the original.
First, Michalski – a man of rather modest intellectual capacity – not only failed to understand anything but also distorted everything, becoming most agitated (for reasons known only to himself) by the phrase “ideology of emancipation,” which, to him, likely evoked LGBTQ issues.
“I must admit, some of the program materials prepared for the PiS convention are shocking. According to the published text by Bronisław Wildstein, ‘the weakness of the West, undermined by the ideology of emancipation, caused Russia to decide to attack Ukraine.’ Really? Russians started murdering Ukrainians because of the West’s weakness? Bucha happened because the West was ‘undermined by the ideology of emancipation’?” wrote Michalski, concluding that Wildstein – and the entire conservative milieu – not only equates the West with Russia but also that “by demonizing the West, they justify Moscow’s criminal actions, presenting them as defensive.”
Tusk attacks
Normally, no one would care that among journalists of the Third Republic the ability to read and listen with comprehension has all but disappeared. However, the Polish prime minister considered Michalski’s outburst worthy of repeating to his party colleagues – while attacking Wildstein himself. “They published some other ‘brilliant’ theses about how Russia had to attack Ukraine because the rotten West led to it. That was Mr. Wildstein, I believe. These are their official documents and papers,” Tusk said at the congress, drawing the following conclusion from those already manipulated words:
“They really are desperately trying to justify, more and more often, the Russian aggression against Ukraine, because for them, the main problem, the main enemy, is Europe, the European Union, Germany, France. And you know what that means in practice? For them, the biggest problem is our freedom.”
Of course, one could shrug this off as yet another example of the Civic Coalition leader taking his voters for fools. Unfortunately, he is also the prime minister, which makes it impossible to ignore such framing of his critics. No one needs an introduction to Bronisław Wildstein or an explanation that a man whose entire life testifies to the defense of freedom is not, in fact, its enemy. Worse still, Tusk’s followers, fed on party propaganda – as well as journalists of the Third Republic’s media – seem, as we can see, fully convinced otherwise.
Defending his own – and Russia’s
The situation even surprised Wildstein himself, who, clearly weary of having to explain the obvious, said in an interview with Krzysztof Skowroński (Radio Wnet): “It doesn’t affect me much anymore because I’ve grown used to the lies and manipulations from our prime minister. I said that one must ‘look deeper’ when describing political phenomena and point to certain fundamental dangers. It means that Western civilization is beginning not only to ‘question itself,’ but it looks as if it wants to commit suicide,” said Wildstein.
“And this stems from a certain ideology that has no name. I call it the ideology of emancipation (…), which seeks to emancipate, that is, to liberate man from all identities, including civilizational ones, and thus, as an expression from within, strikes at civilization itself. This also means, of course, an attack on national, cultural, and religious identities, etc. All this leads to the West – especially Western Europe – weakening itself,” he added.
Wildstein also reiterated that the weakness of the West – both Europe and America under Democratic leadership – enabled Putin to pursue imperial policy and, ultimately, to unleash a criminal war.
If such an argument is now considered controversial, and those who point it out are accused of “supporting the Russian narrative,” that is truly alarming. It means that, at best, the Polish prime minister operates intellectually on the same level as an ordinary journalist of the Third Republic, such as Patryk Michalski.
Unfortunately, it seems even worse. Tusk is no fool – he is consciously drawing a binary division in which anyone daring to draw obvious conclusions contrary to left-liberal dogma is automatically placed on the side of the Russian aggressor. Hence his unbearable defense of a “sanitized” West, stripped of values and “emancipated” from meaning. A West which, at the moment of truth, instead of confronting Putin’s aggression, nervously awaited the fall of Kyiv – and even today would hardly mind it. These are facts.
It is therefore no surprise that Tusk does not want (or – more likely – both does not want and cannot) bring himself, before his electorate or himself, to criticize the policies that for years have led the West to where it is today. He cannot, because doing so would mean denying his entire political career and going against his patrons in the West. That is why he prefers to attack those who, in one form or another, have long warned not only against Russia but also against the crisis and decline of that same West – a decline to which Tusk himself has significantly contributed.
Ultimately, this dangerous twisting of concepts, besides defending his own political network, serves the interests of Russia itself. And yes – that makes it pro-Russian.