Michael Winiarski: the Murdered mayor was a target of right-wing hate speech

Should I go after the the reaction among the tens of thousands of grieving and shocked the poles who gathered for the memory and protests around the country following the assassination of the popular Pawel Adamowicz, the matter is clear: the Background is clearly political or have in each case a political context.

European council president Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister and close friend of Adamowicz, who himself is born in Gdansk, flew to his home town to participate in the sorgemanifestationerna.

Read more: the First political assassination in a long time chocking Poland

Adamowicz was, along with the rest of the liberal opposition civic platform (PO), long a target for a brutal political hate speech. From the right-wing press could not tolerate his tolerant attitude to minorities and transparency for the recipient.

the spectrum condemned the murder and appealed that this violent act should not be exploited politically. It helped little; from oppositionshåll stressed the political dimension, while government representatives pointed out that the suspected killer, identified as the ”Stefan W.” was mentally disturbed.

But one need not exclude the other. The suspected offender had indeed previously been treated for mental health problems. He shouted ”I was in jail and the civic platform, tortured me” when he slashed the knife against Adamowicz need not in itself prove anything. But what he said suggests that anything that he heard or read in the media can have ”legitimacy in the eyes” his acts of violence.

Michał Bilewicz, professor of social psychology in Warsaw, said to the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza that you know that the perpetrators of this type can have any disorder, and often psychotic people or psychopaths.

ideas to direct their aggression towards a concrete object, mean Bilewicz, which seems to link Anders Behring Breivik and the “Stefan W.” Their disorder does not rule out political motives for their crimes.

If you compare with the assassination of the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme are similarities as well as differences. We know still not know who or what was behind the murder, ”a lone madman” or a political conspiracy, but there was a political context. Palme had long been exposed to the hatred and slander from the far-right hold, primarily in the form of whispering campaigns.

But in Poland was Adamowicz and his like-minded objects for open hate speech, both in social media and in the government of the Polish television.

the Closest at hand, a comparison with the attack on the free Poland's first president Gabriel Narutowicz. He was murdered in 1922, only five days after he entered office, by a högernationalistisk fanatics.

writes the publicist Adam Michnik to Adamowicz was a successor to the Gdansk's best traditions; the resistance against nazi-Germany's onslaught at the Westerplatte in september 1939, varvsarbetarnas uprising in december 1970 and the strikes in August 1980 that ended with the Solidarity occurred under the direction of another Gdanskbo, Lech Walesa, as well as the strikes in 1988, which led to the first (partially) free elections in the communist eastern bloc of 4 June 1989.

Michnik concludes: “He stood for a Polish patriotism that is tolerant and pluralist, and a friendly against neighbouring countries, such Poland, he worked for during the dictatorial period of time and that the mayor of Gdansk”.