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Part 1 of 2

Despite all the black-pilling and visions of impending doom, I personally like to focus on the positive issues and those examples of our people doing something good despite all the evil around us. In this essay I would like to paint a broader picture of the ongoing Ukrainian refugee crisis in Poland, which is a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including its background — i.e., the attitudes of Poles toward previous “refugee” crises, as well as Polish-Ukrainian relations — the various ways in which Polish society has offered help to Ukrainian refugees, and what lessons we can learn from this example of white solidarity in action.

The attitude of Poles toward the “Syrian refugee crisis” of 2012-2015

First, let us get one issue out of the way: the so-called “Syrian refugees crisis,” in which two out of the three terms in its name are false. While we can all agree that it was indeed a crisis, it was neither about Syrians nor about refugees. Yes, there was — and still is — a civil war in Syria, and there are Syrians who are fleeing this conflict. But the vast majority of those who have been trying to get to Europe were and are neither Syrians, nor refugees. They are young, non-white male immigrants coming from numerous Middle Eastern, Sub-Saharan, and Asian countries who are seeking a better material status in the wealthy Western countries. They are demanding, aggressive, and cowardly, hiding behind the few women and children they take along for the ride so that they can be used as human shields when they storm a border checkpoint or clash with the local populations and authorities. Furthermore, the whole crisis was not a spontaneous event, but rather an orchestrated affair organized by a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and crime syndicates — more specifically, professional “volunteers” and human traffickers — enjoying the financial and political support of political parties that are organizing the great replacement of the native European populations.

While this is probably obvious to all Counter-Currents readers, it was not obvious for a majority of those in Western Europe. However, in Eastern Europe, Poland included, the majority knew right away that these people are neither Syrians, nor refugees, and that they pose a threat to the existing social order. Nevertheless, liberal politicians and the mainstream media in Eastern European countries have been spreading the same anti-white propaganda as their Western European counterparts.

This was precisely the situation in Poland when the “refugee” crisis began in 2012: Poles were against the immigrants, but the ruling liberal party — at that time, Platforma Obywatelska, or Citizens Platform — started a campaign which was supposed to prepare Polish society to accept large numbers of immigrants. This created growing distrust and tension between the people and the government. Reports of the rising crime wave driven by the immigrants, especially in Germany, and what many Poles have witnessed during their visits to Western and Southern European countries added a lot to the tensions. Polish society therefore divided into two camps: the liberal camp, which wanted to accept a limited number of actual refugees (women and children from Syria); and the conservative camp, which wanted no “refugees” in Poland at all. Even the liberal part of Polish society did not support the liberal government’s policy of accepting whatever number of illegal non-white immigrants that the European Union chose to dictate.

An aggressive propaganda campaign was then waged by the international NGOs, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, in order to shame the Poles, who allegedly lack humanist and Christian values by refusing to help their fellow men due the original sin of racism. But this did not bring the desired effect. In the end, the “refugee” crisis was one of the nails in the coffin of the Citizens Platform government, which lost the 2015 elections to the major conservative opposition party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or Law & Justice (PiS). PiS made “no illegal immigrants” one of the main points of their campaign.

The “refugee crisis” on the Poland-Belarus border in 2021

Law & Justice was reelected in the elections of 2019, and in the middle of their second term, Poland faced a second “refugee” crisis. Once again, the refugees were not actual refugees, but rather young, aggressive non-white males, and again, the crisis was not a spontaneous event, but an orchestrated affair. Alexander Lukashenko, the ruling President (and de facto dictator) of post-Soviet Belarus, was accused of fabricating the results of his country’s 2020 elections — which he probably did lose for the first time since he was first elected in 1994 — and thus decided to go from authoritarian rule to an open dictatorship. This included a violent, full-blown crackdown on the Belarusian political opposition, which meant violent crackdown of the majority of Belarusian society. Belarus quickly returned to the worst Soviet norms, including open political violence and locking up and torturing political dissidents — meaning anyone voicing any kind of dissent.

Contrary to popular belief, Alexander Lukashenko is not a half-wit wannabe dictator, as the liberal media often portrays him, but rather a very smart and cunning politician who is quite skilled at playing games with the West, Russia, China, and Belarusian society itself, including with the Belarusian opposition. It is exactly this style of cunning which has helped Lukashenko remain in power for nearly 30 years without being overthrown by the West, Russia, or by the Belarusians themselves. Thus, this sudden shift to an open, Soviet-style brutal dictatorship was quite a shock to those versed in Belarusian affairs. Poland and the Baltic states have openly supported the Belarusian opposition, and with Russia openly supporting Lukashenko, it resulted in a strengthening of ties between Belarus and Russia.

In what is now widely seen as a prelude to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the Lukashenko regime, probably under pressure from Vladimir Putin, began an operation to destabilize its Western neighbors – mainly Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — by using illegal non-white immigrants disguised as refugees. This was to mimic the previous “refugee” crisis, which succeeded in destabilizing Western and Southern Europe. In the spring of 2021, illegal immigrants from the Middle East — especially Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan — started arriving en masse in Belarus, mostly coming by airplanes landing in Belarus and Russia. In June and July these immigrants, aided by the Belarusian border guards, began storming the Latvian and Lithuanian borders, and in August the Polish border. This was met with strong resistance by the Polish border force, aided by the Polish army.

Once again, this new “refugee” crisis was met with opposition from Polish society. The vast majority of Poles supported the conservative government in their attempts to counter the organized influx of non-white immigrants. Only a small minority of the most liberal Leftists criticized the actions of the Polish state. In an interesting turn of events, opposition to this wave of non-white immigrants was backed by the largest opposition party, the previously-ruling liberal party Platforma Obywatelska–Citizens Platform. But this was not a result of some change in their moral convictions — which, like most liberal politicians, they probably do not have — but due to the fact that the Polish government’s actions were silently supported by the European Union, which had come to realize that the Western European economies could not stand another wave of immigrants.

As a consequence, there was then a new propaganda campaign, again carried out by the international NGOs, local Leftists, and the Roman Catholic Church, but this time with the support of the Belarusian and Russian media. They went into a full frenzy of shaming the “evil racist Poles” and the “fascist Polish dictatorship” that was letting “refugees” starve in the wild forests. But again, this campaign brought no effect, either on the Polish government or on Polish society. While the Polish authorities increased the number of troops on the border, declared a state of emergency in the region bordering Belarus, and began construction of a wall along the border, ordinary Poles started mocking and meming tall tales about a Syrian refugee who was forced to live in cold river water for six days, or about Polish border guards killing immigrants and feeding their bodies to the wolves — both of which were actual stories told by NGO activists as well as the Belarusian media. For the second time, moral blackmail had no impact on the vast majority of Poles.

The Polish-Ukrainian relationship and Ukrainian immigration to Poland before 2022

Before getting into the third refugee crisis — which involved actual refugees for a change — let us dive a bit into the background of Polish-Ukrainian relations. To make a very long and complicated story very short, Polish-Ukrainian relations are both tight and tense. Poles and Ukrainians share a lot of history, but it is often difficult history that is seen differently depending on which side of the fence you are on. For Western Europeans to understand it, we could say that the relationship between Poland and Ukraine is analogous to the relationship between the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Poland being the UK and Ukraine as Ireland. For much of history, Poland colonized Ukraine, and a large part of the Ukrainian national memory concerns their struggle against the Polish state or the Polish people. But both Poland and Ukraine have another difficult neighbor: Russia. This means that another large chunk of our shared history is our shared struggle against this threat, meaning both a joint military struggle as well as attempts to create a unified state that could be a homeland to both peoples.

The Ukrainians were one of the primary nations of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a large kingdom that united most of Eastern Europe, and the main rivals of Muscovy/Russia, and ruled this part of the world. But the Ukrainians predominantly felt like second-class citizens in it, being treated with arrogance by the ruling Polish nobility and not being allowed full rights as a nation, contrary to the other two nations of the Commonwealth, namely those of the Poles and Lithuanians. This led to rising tensions, culminating in open revolts in the seventeenth century.

The partitioning of the Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia, and Austria at the end of the eighteenth century led to both Ukrainians and Poles becoming second-class citizens under foreign rule within the kingdoms of Russia and Austria. But whereas Poland regained its independence after the First World War, the Ukrainians did not succeed in creating a sovereign state of their own. Western Ukraine became a part of the Second Polish Republic, and eastern Ukraine became a part of USSR. Once again, the Ukrainians predominantly felt that they were second-class citizens ruled by foreigners. As I sadly admit, Polish policies towards our Ukrainian minority were terribly crafted: granting them enough freedom to gain a national identity, while on the other hand taking away enough freedom for them to feel persecuted by the ruling Polish majority. On the other hand, the Ukrainians in the USSR were subjected to full-scale genocide in the form of an organized famine — the Holodomor — and later to the eradication of their national identity, just as all whites were under Communist rule.

The tensions between Ukrainians and Poles culminated in the German occupation of eastern Poland and western Ukraine in the so-called Volhynia Massacre of 1943, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army carried out an operation to kill and terrorize Polish civilians. The number of victims is disputed, with the Polish side claiming larger and the Ukrainian side lower figures, but it can be estimated that around 100,000 Poles were killed. This was met with retaliation by the Polish military underground, but this resulted in a much lower number of victims, estimated to have been around 2,000 Ukrainians killed. To this day this event is the main point of contention between Poles and Ukrainians, as well as that of relations between both countries and peoples.

As a result of the Second World War and the subsequent changes in Europe’s borders, the Polish and Ukrainian borders were moved westward. Poles from eastern Poland/western Ukraine were deported — or as the Communists called it, repatriated — to Poland, and vast majority of both peoples finally lived in their own states. Unfortunately, they were both under Communist regimes, with Ukraine being in a worse situation as one of the Soviet republics. But hatred of Communism and Soviet imperialism was something that united Poles and Ukrainians. Poland was the first country — along with Canada — to recognize Ukraine’s independence in 1991, and since the fall of the Communist regimes in both countries, Poland-Ukrainian relations were growing closer and friendlier, probably more so than at any other time in the last 500 years. Poland opened its labor market to Ukrainians in 2007, but the largest financially-motivated migration of Ukrainians to Poland began after 2014, as the situation in Ukraine worsened and the situation in Poland got better. This resulted in an estimated one million Ukrainian immigrants living in Poland by 2021.

The Ukrainian refugee crisis of 2022

From its very first day, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a typical Soviet war of destruction, the aim of which is both the destruction of military targets as well as terrorizing the civilian population. Missile attacks on civilian targets such as power and water plants, hospitals, or ordinary apartment blocks were aimed at triggering a humanitarian crisis so that masses of displaced people would block the movements of the Ukrainian military. To increase the terror, the Russian military targeted civilian infrastructure that was far away from the actual battlefields in western Ukraine, which was the most obvious destination for Ukrainian civilians to seek refuge. The resulting massive wave of Ukrainian refugees quickly reached the Ukrainian-Polish border.

Given the two previous “refugee” crises in Poland and the rather “cold-hearted” (in liberal eyes) or “well thought out” (in conservative eyes) reaction of the Polish authorities and society, both the Russian authorities and Western liberals expected Poles to look the other way. But this time the reaction was completely different. The Polish authorities quickly decided to again put more border guards on the border — not to stop the refugees, but to ensure faster border controls so that they could cross over more quickly. Furthermore, the border control regulations were loosened — but only for Ukrainian refugees. For example, women with children who had no valid passports were allowed in. What followed was an immediate reaction from Polish society. Ordinary people drove to the border with food, water, medicine, clothes, and blankets (after all, it was February). They also provided transportation in their own cars or buses so that the refugees could move deeper into Poland.

The main problem was how to house these people. Some of them had families living in Poland — mainly those Ukrainians who had come during the financially-motivated migration of the previous period — but the majority had nowhere to stay. It was obvious that the Polish state would not be able to build refugee camps for such a large mass of people in such a short time. Both Polish society and the authorities resorted to a rather surprising solution: housing the refugees in the homes of ordinary Poles on a voluntarily basis. What is even more surprising is that this idea actually worked, and large numbers of Poles decided to temporarily welcome refugees into their homes. Furthermore, hotels, hostels, universities, and school dormitories began housing refugees — first for free, and then with government subsidies.

In the first weeks of the crisis, as the number of refugees entering Poland increased, the level of solidarity expressed by both Polish society and the Polish state also increased. The Ukrainian refugees were quickly granted free train and bus tickets so that they could reach other regions of Poland, as well as free public transportation in Polish municipalities. They were also formally included in the Polish public health care system and given financial aid by the Polish government. But despite all the efforts by the Polish state, it was Polish society that provided the most help. It was ordinary Poles who used their personal resources to help the refugees on a daily basis: they collected food and clothes, provided transportation from the border, voluntarily organized help and information centers near the border as well as at all the main railway and bus stations, provided free medical and psychological aid, and ultimately, welcomed refugees into their own homes.

It is very difficult to provide exact numbers, but it is estimated that since February 24, 2022 over 17 million Ukrainians have entered Poland. Not all of them have stayed in Poland, however, as many decided to go to other European countries, or even to the United States or Canada, both of which have a large Ukrainian diaspora. Others even decided to go back to Ukraine once the Russian forces were pushed back to the east. But every one of these 17 million refugees received some form of help from the Polish people and the authorities. The number of Ukrainian refugees staying in Poland was estimated as being four million at the peak of the crisis; at the moment it is estimated as 1.5 million, with Poland having a population of about 40 million native inhabitants.

Let us now answer the fundamental question: What caused the differing reaction of Poles towards the Ukrainian refugees as opposed to those during the two previous crises? First of all, the Ukrainian refugees were actual refugees: the vast majority were women and children, with a large cohort of elderly and handicapped people. Poles who went to the border or had any contact with the refugees could witness firsthand that they were real refugees with real problems who needed real help. Also unlike the previous crises, there was no contrast between the media’s portrayal of the event and the reality. The images shown in the Polish media were true. Crying women holding their children’s hands and with nothing more than a backpack, saying goodbye to their husbands who were dropping them off at the border before going back to fight against the invaders deeply resonated with ordinary Poles, who are raised to remember our own fight for independence. Second of all, Ukrainians are white, straight and simple. As I tried to emphasize previously, Poles and Ukrainians have a shared but difficult history, thus we have never been on best terms — to put it mildly. But despite all of that, we are after all neighboring nations with a similar language and a similar culture. And just as you help your family members when they are in need in spite of all the rifts and conflicts that naturally occur, you help others who share your blood.

To further prove my point that the ethnic factor was at play here, let me focus on the issue of non-whites from Ukraine and non-whites in Poland during the crisis. Non-whites in Ukraine can be divided into “old minorities,” such as gypsies, and “new minorities — mostly students and workers from Africa and Asia. When it comes to new minorities, just as they are keen on emphasizing the fact that they are a part of the white nations in which they live when there are government handouts to be had, they are just as keen on running away once there is any sacrifice to be made. When the first Russian missiles and shells hit Ukrainian cities, the non-whites were the first to cry, “I am not Ukrainian!” and run away to the west. But given that most of them were young men, they quickly became “discriminated” against by perfectly normal refugee policies that put white women and children, plus the elderly and disabled, first during evacuation from Ukraine. This was the case during the border controls, as well as when they were provided help by the Polish volunteers. The Poles expected them to stick to our standards and patiently wait until all those who were in greater need of help were served. This of course resulted in the typical non-white way of dealing with problems, namely raging and rioting, but they were quickly pacified by the authorities as well as ordinary people who had no sympathy for such behavior. This of course caused much kvetching and wailing by our local Leftists who, in an outburst of virtue-signaling, “rescued” non-white “refugees” from Polish racism and drove them to Germany or other, “more civilized” countries — to the relief of everyone involved. Ironically, the African and Asian communities in Poland were not keen on getting involved in aiding their fellow men.

When it comes to Ukraine’s “old minorities,” especially gypsies, they were “discriminated against” first by the Ukrainian refugees, who did not want to be near them, either on the same buses or especially in the same housing facilities; and second by the Poles, who simply refused to welcome them into their homes. Again, the local Leftists wailed and organized some special hostels just for gypsies, which again caused a sigh of relief among both Poles and Ukrainians. Anyone who has had any contact with gypsies will understand why even the gypsies living Poland did not want to get involved in helping their fellow gypsies from Ukraine.

The third factor at play when it comes to the Polish attitude toward Ukrainian refugees is the fact that Poles love patriotism and hate Russian/(neo-)Soviet imperialism. We believe that a man is expected to fight for his country and that independence is won, not given. Furthermore, most of our history of fighting against foreign invaders, especially during the last 200 years, was fought against first Russian and then Soviet imperialism. The fact that the Ukrainians did not run away, but sent their women and children to the nearest safe place and stood their ground against the invading army of a much larger country changed the attitude of Poles towards Ukrainians. This is a matter of the white worldview — of respect for patriotism, honor, and courage, even that of other nations. This is something which non-whites such as Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu do not understand. The Ukrainian prisoners of war who are put in Russian gulags are fed false stories that Poland will eventually enter the war and annex western Ukraine — something which surely would happen if Poland were a multiracial state run by non-whites, as Putin’s neo-Soviet empire is. This was also one of the reasons why the Poles had little sympathy for the actual Syrians running away from war: Most Poles believed that Syrians should fight for their country, not abandon it — and especially not abandon their own women and children.

On a personal note, let me add that what happened in Poland after the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the most uplifting display of solidarity and self-organization I have ever witnessed in my life. It really made me feel proud to be Polish, seeing that on the one hand the Polish government was maintaining a strong stance towards Russia, providing military aid to Ukraine and even forcing some “slower” countries such as Germany to provide it, and not backing down even in the face of real military threats, with the Polish President famously telling Putin not to shit himself. And on the other hand I was witnessing ordinary Poles devoting their time, money, and efforts to helping people in need, even knowing that it would mean lowering our own standard of living for the immediate future.