“This is hutzpah, the fraking hutzpah. This is foreign, as far as the Polish people are concerned, this is a foreign government; it’s a foreign CIA front apparatus imploring their own elected government about which citizens they need to arrest, even giving them the list of targets. Imagine if the Russian Ministry of Affairs sent Donald Trump a message saying, ‘Not only do you have to arrest the remnants of the Kamala Harris–Joe Biden campaign, but we’re giving you the list of target names. Here’s who Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, must file criminal indictments against.’ This is an irrational incident,” said Mike Benz, head of the Foundation for Freedom Online, on The Joe Rogan Experience, commenting on how power changed hands in Poland in 2023.
USAID in Its Current Form Has Gone Down in History
One of the first decisions by the new U.S. President Donald Trump was to suspend for 90 days all American foreign aid programs, including those of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to assess their compatibility with his foreign policy.
Under Joe Biden’s administration, USAID funded, among others, foreign media outlets and NGOs promoting a broadly defined left-liberal agenda.
Trump’s decision to suspend foreign programs provoked reactions from organizations and media operating in Poland as well. Among the beneficiaries listed were outlets such as Krytyka Polityczna and organizations like the Mariusz Szczygieł Institute of Reportage and Citizens Network Watchdog Poland.
Not Only USAID
Alongside USAID, another key tool of U.S. administration influence on the politics of various countries worldwide is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Founded in 1983, it is described as a “quasi-autonomous” organization whose goal is “to spread democracy worldwide.” Its funding comes from the U.S. Congress. For years, NED has been pointed to as a mechanism for conducting American foreign policy.
Recently, Elon Musk declared the organization to be “full of corruption” and stated it “must be dissolved.” Media have noted that so far, NED has not received funding from the current U.S. administration.
One of NED’s branches is the journal Journal of Democracy. In its December 2023 issue, an article titled “How to Dismantle an Illiberal Democracy,” authored by Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura, addressed the political changes in Poland.
“Win the Next Election So We Don’t Have to Fund You”
The article became a topic of discussion on the extremely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, where Mike Benz, head of the Foundation for Freedom Online, was a guest.
“Formally, what’s published here isn’t technically an official NED publication, nor does it mean it’s NED’s foreign policy. But it is a publication they paid for. They’re saying that Poland is not an autocracy—unfortunately, we can’t call it a dictatorship like Putin’s or the Chinese Communist Party’s—because people voted for them, and they won fairly. But they’re calling it an ‘illiberal democracy’ because the ‘democratic institutions do not have the freedom to operate,’” Benz observed.
He pointed to references about “holding accountable those responsible for the worst violations of the rule of law” and the need for the new Polish government to apply “transitional justice.”
“That’s exactly what we see in every USAID operation. They have to arrest people from the government we’ve just replaced. Prime Minister Tusk and his coalition must—no longer ‘should’ or ‘might consider’—they must stabilize the political system, meaning they have to govern in a way that prevents them from losing the next election,” Benz added.
He noted that populists who “cannot return to power in the next elections” include Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Matteo Salvini.
“It’s a direct order to make sure you win the next election so that we don’t have to fund you or use our delicate pressure to steer you. Arrest these people so they can’t run against you again,” Benz described NED’s methods of operation.
A Bizarre Case of Chutzpah
He then focused on another excerpt from Kuisz and Wigura’s article:
“The new government should concentrate on whether and how to punish suspects. There are currently a number of cases that should be immediately adjudicated.”
“This is hutzpah, the fraking hutzpah. This is foreign, as far as the Polish people are concerned, this is a foreign government; it’s a foreign CIA front apparatus imploring their own elected government about which citizens they need to arrest, even giving them the list of targets. Imagine if the Russian Ministry of Affairs sent Donald Trump a message saying, ‘Not only do you have to arrest the remnants of the Kamala Harris–Joe Biden campaign, but we’re giving you the list of target names. Here’s who Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, must file criminal indictments against.’ This is an irrational incident,” Benz warned.
He recalled that Poland’s ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), “was an ally of Trump.”
“And that’s another issue. NED is carrying out a boomerang attack by preventing PiS from gaining popularity in Poland,” he added.