HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019272.jpg

BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

len" the democratic revolution from the Polish people by failing to carry out a proper purge of communists and their collaborators.¹⁴ PiS even initiated a campaign to sully the reputation of Lech Walesa, leader of the anticommunist Solidarity movement in the 1980s, by accusing him of working as a communist agent.¹⁵

Since coming to power with a parliamentary majority in October 2015, PiS has embarked on a course of change that places it solidly in the illiberal camp, with many of the initiatives mirroring those enacted by Fidesz in Hungary.

As in Hungary, an initial focus for the new government was securing control of the Constitutional Tribunal. PiS has moved to pack the court with its own appointees, using tactics that are blatantly illegal according to Polish law and which have drawn criticism both from the EU and the United States.¹⁶ However, party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who holds a seat in the parliament but no formal government position, has much greater ambitions to refashion Poland along culturally conservative and politically illiberal lines.

The media are a major target. The government quickly asserted control over public broadcasters and purged them of journalists whom it regarded as loyal to the opposition.¹⁷ PiS officials have also spoken of the need to "restore balance" to the private media by, among other things, taking measures to reduce foreign ownership of key outlets. Already, the new government has used its power over the allocation of state advertising to reward friendly media and punish its critics.¹⁸

The new government has involved itself in a debate over history. It proposed a law that would punish those who use the phrase "Polish death camps" to refer to sites established by Nazi Germany in Poland during World War II.¹⁹ PiS leaders have demonized scholars, such as the eminent historian Jan Gross, who have published research on the participation of Poles in the persecution of Jews during the war. Gross was questioned by a prosecutor on his research, and there was talk of rescinding an award he had received.²⁰ The government threatened to withdraw support from the Museum of the Second World War, a project that was near completion in Gdansk and enjoyed strong support from such highly regarded scholars as Timothy Snyder and Norman Davies. PiS complained that the museum focused on all victims of the conflict rather than on specifically Polish suffering.²¹

Perhaps the most unsettling measure enacted under the PiS government is an ambitious law that, in the name of counterterrorism, gives the security services sweeping powers over telecommunications and personal information. With this legislation, Poland became one of the first countries in the democratic world to embrace the use of telecommunications shutdowns in a particular area, a measure that smacks of digital repression.²²

The law gives Poland’s domestic intelligence agency unrestricted access to personal data without approval from a court or any other body. Tax reports, vehicle information, insurance information, financial statements, and other records are all now available to the intelligence service of a government that has made a point of naming party loyalists to key security positions. The legislation also grants the domestic security agency the ability to shut down websites. The action can be reviewed by a court within five days, but this is far from reassuring in light of the government’s efforts to exert political control over the judiciary.

The legislation is ostensibly needed to counter acts of terrorism. But Poland has not experienced a terrorist act since 1939, and has one of the smallest populations of Muslim immigrants—often perceived as a risk factor for terrorism—in Europe. Furthermore, the law is written in vague terms that give the government great latitude to decide what is and is not an act of terrorism.²³ Given the PiS leadership’s penchant for smearing its political adversaries as traitors to the Polish nation,²⁴ it is not inconceivable that such a law could one day be used against the opposition.

Illiberalism’s preconditions
The triumph of illiberal governments in countries like Hungary and Poland raises the question of whether the phenomenon will spread further. Might illiberalism come to dominate a society with much deeper democratic roots—Austria, France, or even the United States?

From a practical standpoint, illiberal forces are unlikely to transform countries where the political divide is relatively equal and the established parties have strong, loyal followings.

It is only when the mainstream parties suffer catastrophic electoral setbacks that illiberal challengers can rush into the breach.

The Socialist Party had governed Hungary for much of the period since 1989, but it rapidly lost credibility due

38

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019272