How Braun’s ‘Freedom’ Posturing Ensnared Many in the Polish Liberty Movement
Poland might be the most unpredictable of all political realms. Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, once brawled in illegal stadium fights and swindled the elderly — now holds the highest office in the country. Yet, he is not the only right-wing force on the rise now — nor is he the worst. A once-niche politician, Grzegorz Braun, known for his radically anti-Western views, claimed 6% of the vote in the first round of the last presidential election. How come that someone who used to be a political pariah has made it this far in the presidential run? And why do so many people allegedly standing for liberty cast their ballots for him?
Six per cent might sound unthreatening, but in the Polish political system, it is not insignificant. A parliamentary election result of such size would ensure having representatives in the parliament and enable a party to receive state funding for its campaigns. In a nightmare scenario Braun’s party could even be indispensable for a working majority in 2027, becoming part of the ruling coalition.
Braun’s views are frequently distorted, but surprisingly, not in a negative way. His horrendous statements are often whitewashed and rationalised by his electorate or sometimes even by himself. Yet, the stains of blood on his hands are unwashable.
On the one hand, more gullible (or sometimes honestly mistaken) people tend to view Braun as a free-marketer, a proponent of national self-interest, and an advocate for the welfare of Poles. After all, he has been a close associate of Janusz Korwin-Mikke — a radical capitalist figure in Polish politics — and has spoken against authoritarian tendencies of the government.
This view of Braun, however, rests on a superficial understanding of what he means by these terms, which is grotesquely dissimilar to what these terms actually mean. To see an ally in Braun because he invokes the slogans of ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ would be akin to seeing an ally in a communist who may shout ‘freedom,’ yet by it meaning only freedom from supposed economic exploitation, not the liberty of the individual. Braun has repeatedly called for governmental oppression of the sinful personal choices under the Catholic doctrine (e.g., whipping as the punishment for, as he calls it, ‘sodomy’). Another striking example comes from Gietrzwałd, a rural village in the East. Braun, being then an MP, petitioned the parliament to legally prohibit Lidl from investing there. The reason? — in Gietrzwałd, Holy Mary supposedly made an appearance herself, a dubious event that has been used by the most radical catholics to ascribe a supernatural justification to their primitive nationalism. In effect, Braun thinks that men lose all property rights if they happen to live in the vicinity of a site he deems magical. What he calls freedom is simply the Catholic’s sacred right to dictate how everyone else lives.
The main reason for his popularity, I claim, is that good or semi-good people fall for his, or his cult’s, bogey explanations and justifications. People seem to regard Braun as a true statesman, even if mistaken. His views on social issues, many say, don’t matter because he stands for freedom. His attitude to Russia, they say, is rather motivated by his concern for the welfare of Poles, and not by his actual admiration for Putin. And his ‘incident’ with Hanukkah was a ‘performance piece’ against religious practices conducted in the Parliament, rather than an anti-Semitic scandal. This perspective might seem at least understandable for people who know very little of Braun, but I vehemently deny that any person who knows anything substantial about him could utter such nonsense.
Capitalism
On the surface, Braun might seem to be outstandingly good on free market issues. He wants to abolish social security, deregulate access to firearms, de jure equating their status to that of scissors, and has repeatedly praised Polish entrepreneurship. Yet how does he put his pro-market attitude into practice?
In October 2024, Sławomir Mentzen, the co-chairman of Konfederacja, proposed a bill abolishing the inheritance tax, arguing that it is fiscally irrelevant and that it discriminates against and extorts the wealth of childless people. For a proposal to reach a vote in Parliament, it must first secure a required number of MPs’ signatures. Konfederacja, at the time, had enough MPs to make it happen. So why, then, the deafening silence around this project in the months that followed?
Because Braun and his party members withdrew their signatures from the bill. The reason? Stated by Braun explicitly in an interview with Wojciech Cejrowski: in the justification section of the Bill, there was the statement that the inheritance tax discriminates against homosexual people, as well as against the unmarried individuals who face high taxes if their friend were to inherit a house. The brief mention of the fact that homosexual people are discriminated against by our tax code was enough for Braun to lash out at Mentzen and at the project. After all, he openly holds the view that ‘sodomites are perverts.’
Considering our current makeup of the Parliament, the bill could have actually taken off and quite possibly entered into law. There was a good chance that the liberals from the Third Way or the left-wing parties would have voted for it. There was no justification for scrapping this project other than sheer hatred of LGBT people. Driven by his bigotry, Braun sacrificed the rights of unmarried or infertile Catholics, and those who have lost their children in an accident, only because securing their property rights would have also benefited people in homosexual relationships.
Braun also holds horrid institutional views. He explicitly endorses implementing a theocratic and monarchic regime in Poland, paired up with a membership in BRICS. He is of the belief that the Polish government should be chiefly concerned with the ‘eternal life of the Poles’. For non-Catholics, Protestants damned as devil-worshippers among them, Braun prescribes the pyre; for Catholics, the leash. They may not fear outright religious persecution in his regime, but only if they piously bound their lives to his puritanical edicts. Even if indirectly, his policies are going to harm Catholics, as seen in the case of abolishing the inheritance tax. This is what he actually stands for. This is how much his ‘advocacy for freedom’ is actually worth.
War-mongery
In light of the aforementioned contradictions, the paradoxical nature of Braun’s views on foreign policy will not be much of a surprise.seems much less paradoxical.
Braun has been an ardent opponent of diplomatic policies that oppose Belarus and Russia for decades. During one interview this year, he resisted calling Putin a criminal figure — after all, his favouritefavorite slogan is ‘it is not our war.’ And we ought to pursue an ‘assertive approach to our foreign policy.’
Yet, he sees no problem in calling Israel ‘a Jewish state in Palestine,’ accusing it of ‘war crimes,’ and of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ especially conducted on ‘Palestinian children.’ And not only that: the very moment the war broke out between Israel and Iran he wrote on his Twitter account: ‘Warsaw, Teheran — a common cause,’ and has repeatedly expressed his admiration for BRICS, calling it, on live television, ‘a promising project.’
In that context, it becomes clear that his policy of ‘National self-interest’ is pure hatred of Western civilisation. It has no connection to what ‘national self-interest’ means to a rational person. What unites Belarus, Russia and Iran? Authoritarianism, the lack of free speech, murder of political opponents. Iran’s savagery is evident in its use of capital punishment for simply criticising the Koran or for engaging in homosexual acts. Whereas, on the other side of the barricade, we’ve got the US, Ukraine and Israel — in many ways flawed countries which, nonetheless, at least aspire or try to strive for the Western ideals, like democracy, rule of law, or due process. Braun doesn’t even pretend to pay lip service to these ideals. Interestingly enough, he established a common bond among his brothers in spirit: radical Islamists. Among them, Braun became a hero who is willing to fight against ‘the Little Satan.’ United in their hatred of Jews and the West, Braun seemingly regards Jews as a greater threat to Poland than radical Islamists. Among non-Christians, it is those who are more pro-West who he deems worse.
Why doesn’t Braun then come out openly to praise Putin and Lukashenko? Oh, but he does! In his erudite and baroque manner of speaking, he conveys essentially every single talking point they could desire.
Hanukkah
Still, it was the Hanukkah attack that brought him worldwide fame and captured quite neatly, in one short video, the essence of Braun. After wreaking havoc in the parliamentary corridor—smashing property and assaulting a woman—he went on to address the Parliament. What he spoke of was revealing: ‘There can be no place for … the Talmudic cult in the Polish Parliament. (…) I am reinstating the state of equality and balance by putting an end to Satanic, Talmudic, racist triumphalism. (…) I dare you to stand with me in a theological debate!’
Why are Jews satanists, according to Grzegorz Braun? Is it because they rejected Jesus? No. Protestants accept Jesus, yet face the same accusation. The real reason is more complex: they are deemed satanic because they are not Catholic. Braun uses this smear of satanism to stir fear among his followers, painting everything opposed to Catholicism as a dark force to be eradicated — and he seems to actually believe in it. For him, the ‘globalist’, ‘satanist’ or ‘freemason’ are catchphrases, although he himself seems to regard them seriously. In his view, Jesus should be made the literal King of Poland, and any ideology that contradicts Catholicism must be vilified and eliminated. As Braun said himself: ‘The purpose of the existence of the state of Poland is so that the Roman Pope will have a faithful knight on his side.’
Some Braun apologists were raising the question of why Hanukkah candles should be lit in the Parliament in the first place? Is it not an inappropriate place for such ceremonies? Here, again, the nature of white-washing and deceit can be plainly noticed: Braun and his followers have no problem whatsoever with the concordat, which, I may remind, imposes a duty to spend taxpayers’ money on churches, to teach catholicism in public schools, or to provide the Catholic church with other legal privileges — and, of course, Braun didn’t run with an axe to cut down the crosses hanging in the parliamentary halls. Braun has no problem with the exclusively Catholic prayer room located in the Parliament, although it is standard on almost all airports to have multi-faith chapels.
The Hanukkah incident makes plain that Braun (and his followers) twist the legitimate principle of church–state separation into a weapon for persecuting every faith but Catholicism—by force.
Conclusion
Whatever drives Braun, it is not a concern for capitalism, the interests of Poles or the separation of church and state. The essence of his worldview is medievalism and, consequently, the hatred of the Enlightenment ideas of individual rights and freedom. The end goal is the salvation of Poles — and he will not be deterred by the corpses piling up on his way to heaven.
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