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by adimitrov 2218 days ago
Just so you know why I downvoted you:

- your comment is not at all unpolitical, even though you claim to not "have a political horse in this race." Your dismissal of the opposition to PiS as hypocritical, small, and a "certain minority" is deeply political.

- saying "evil people X" say Y thing, therefore Y thing is false/unworthy/etc. is a fallacy. Saying that (former) communists are upset about the removal of the song has no bearing on whether this is an important story or not

- all Polish people I know (my in laws and Polish friends) know about this and think it's a big deal. Yes, they live in Poland. I don't have a clear overview of all Polish newspapers, but those that I saw definitely ran the story prominently. It's also been big is Polish social media. This story made waves in Poland.

- criticizing all Polish state media in a general fashion when this story is a bout Trójka specifically is absolutely fallacious. Trójka has not praised Potassium exports or had similar stories; even the NYT piece says that Trójka has been a special case among Polish media as far back as 1982.

- there can be no doubt about the current ruling party's intention of trying to subsume all relevant media under its control. Examples [1][2][3]. Lots of pieces have been written about this, and it's nothing new. It's not even going on in secret.

Your tone is not apolitical with respect to the situation in Poland, and the content of your writing isn't either. Claiming you're apolitical is disingenuous. That's why I think you deserved the downvote.

Me, I'm against PiS, and similar movements throughout Europe. I believe they are harmful to their countries, and to the European project.

[1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/31/polands-government-is-s... [2]: https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/threats-to-media-indepen... [3]: https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/04/21/polands-ruling-l...

1 comments

That's a mostly fair and accurate summary of the "this is a big scandal" position imho. Quite representative of people holding that position in all aspects including tone, length, and content.

FWIW I am not a PiS supporter, have never voted for them, and likely will not vote for them in the forseeable future.

> FWIW I'm an American living in Poland since 2 years ago, though I'm participating only as a spectator and I don't have a political horse in this race

I find these two comments a bit hard to reconcile, as the second comment implies that this person is not an “American” with no “political horse in this race”.

I'm a Polish citizen who grew up in America and am culturally American. So for example I don't get any of the jokes about bad TV shows from people's childhood 20 years ago, but on paper I count as Polish etc.

By "no horse in this race" I mean that I am a neutral bystander in the complicated, very-passionate multidirectional culture war centered on the PiS party, and whenever possible I try to avoid arguments like this one.