{"id":6079,"date":"2020-04-02T15:28:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T19:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/?p=6079"},"modified":"2020-06-10T20:04:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T00:04:53","slug":"pandemos-and-the-slow-death-of-democracy-in-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/2020\/04\/02\/pandemos-and-the-slow-death-of-democracy-in-poland\/","title":{"rendered":"PanDemos and the Slow Death of Democracy in Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Tomasz Kitlinski,<\/strong> philosopher living in Lublin (Poland), & Angus Reid, <\/strong>artist living in Edinburgh (Scotland), both activist<\/em>s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

On February 5th the Polish government announced that the Presidential elections<\/strong> will be held at the earliest possible date, <\/strong>that is, on May 10th. <\/strong>  One month later, on March 20th, Poland declared the imposition of a \u201cState of Epidemic\u201d, a new set of regulations that affect civic freedoms, giving considerable arbitrary power to the state administration.
At the same time \u2013 despite massive protests — the decision was made not to reschedule the elections. They are to be conducted by mail at the time when the country may be facing the peak of the pandemic.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nlack a fresh language with which to capture the surge of new forms of legalistic\nright-wing authoritarianism.  During\nlate-night parliamentary sessions, the Polish authorities are forging ahead\nwith their upending<\/em> of laws \u201clike\nthieves in the night\u201d (as the poet Ola Zinczuk puts it), while the citizens are\nasleep.  As we speak, while the upward\ncurve of the coronavirus is still far from its peak, they are carrying out a coup\nd\u2019\u00e9tat. They have insisted on scheduling a presidential election for a time\nwhen the voters will still be confined to their homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do\nwe have an adequate language to depict what this hollowing out of democracy is\ndoing to us? It feels like anomie but with the sense of an indescribable evil\nhovering over it. With no language at our disposal we have lost the ability to\nthink about this politically.  And yet we\nmust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\na time of crisis like ours, a radical new policy move is not a mere luxury that\nwe cannot afford. A solution to the widespread impoverishment of an unemployed\nPolish population \u2013 such as the Warsaw philosopher Aleksander Temkin recommends\u2013is\nthe creation of a universal basic income, enough to live on for everyone, which\nrequires no complicated bureaucracy but simply expresses the basic human right\nto exist, to live, to breathe under the conditions of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nclose our borders in the fight against an international and ubiquitous virus is\na ridiculous expression of ultra-nationalism. It is as feudalistic and\nxenophobic as the Medieval crusades. The crusades of today are deployed to\nretake from the infidels residing in Brussels our sacred nation-state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nautocratic leaders are behaving like B-movie villains, while the doctors and\nnurses who care for the infected population are our heroes. And they are not being\nradical when they say in their letter to the Minister of Health that they are\nready to pay the highest price to care for the sick; they are just asking that\ntheir sense of responsibility for the job they do be respected. They \u201crequest, beg\nfor, and demand\u201d fairness in the body politic. They request, beg for, and demand\na postponement of the presidential elections unsafely scheduled for May 10th<\/sup>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nleader in the armchair, tapping his fingers. Deadpan, he watches carefully over\nhis grand plan for the re-election of his apprentice President five weeks from\nnow, when Covid19 reaches its peak in Poland. His master-plan to lockdown\ndemocracy is being implemented as we speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Tomasz Kitlinski, philosopher living in Lublin (Poland), & Angus Reid, artist living in Edinburgh (Scotland), both activists On February 5th the Polish government announced that the Presidential elections will be held at the earliest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50909,18694],"tags":[12943,42049,61850,882],"class_list":["post-6079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldnotes","category-events-news","tag-elections","tag-letters-from-the-field","tag-pandemos","tag-poland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/users\/289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6079"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6352,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions\/6352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-test.newschool.edu\/tcds\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}