My guess was that the bright ones were flares and the smaller points were torches. I was looking at Google Images to get confirmation and didn't quite get it. But, I did see that white nationalist demonstrators love torch-lit marches. I found Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Charlottesville, Greece. And it was always white nationalists even searching simply for "march with torches." I stuck an "Antifa" on there to find some lefties, but I couldn't find any. Antifa seems to like to throw public property instead. It makes sense the the alt right though. They above all want to look really cool and stuff, and torches do make you look badass (except of course those doofuses in Virginia with their tiki torches -- I know, "safety first!" but you can't look cool like that). And it does explicitly link you back to the KKK and the Nazis who both liked doing torch-lit marches too.
... organized by these guys: The march, organized by a group called the National Radical Camp, underscores the rightward politics of a growing section of Polish youth. The Radical Camp presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which fought to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. Do you go to events organized by the KKK or Neo-nazis in the US and say "oh, it was just a cool even to attend" ?
From what I understand this event has been going on for many, many years. Did it originate with this group? Edit: Found my answer. The independence celebration is entirely seperate from the March. Lumping everyone who attended the event in with the marchers and calling it 60,000 Nazis is seriously duplicitous.
To put it into context, this would be like if Richard Spencer organized a demonstration at Houston's yearly Freedom over Texas 4th of July event and the news covered it as a 50K strong far right rally at Eleanor Tinsley.
Except the numbers they were talking about was specifically for the march. From the original article: The Radical Camp has been holding independence-day marches since 2009. Until several years ago, it struggled to attract more than a few hundred people. In the past three years, it has become the largest independence-day occasion in Poland, and one of the largest nationalist marches of its kind anywhere in Europe. Saturday’s was expected to be the largest ever. Police estimated the crowd at 60,000.
Poland, just like every other Central/Eastern European country, is dealing with some immigration issues (to say the least). They don't like too much of it, because they are very proud of their heritage, but they're cool with some of it. They have also, always, been dealing with internal racial issues, border issues, EU issues, nationality issues - Slavs v Jews v Roma v Germanics. As a general rule, they hate the Russians/Soviets more than they hate the Germans/Nazis. Doesn't shock me at all that there were Nazis marching around Soviets marching around people who just want Poland to be left the **** to themselves. The "Crossroads of Europe" is a complicated place. Curious what @AroundTheWorld or @Yung-T have to say.
I don't know enough about what happened, all I know is from reading this thread, and that is that Major and FranchiseBlade make a real effort to convince everyone that every single one of these 60,000 people was a frickin' Nazi. Maybe they were. I dunno.
That's not so helpful. Talk to me again when you have some info that I don't have. You're closer than I am. English language papers/articles, something, German, Ukraine, Pole, Czech, Slovak, etc.... Hook a brother up.
Is that what you know? Please point to the post where I made that point. Did I even post in this thread prior to this?
That statement on the crowd does not link all those people to the far-right demonstrators. I can't find any article that says all 60,000 there for Poland's Independence celebration were far right demonstrators.
I've been trying hard to look into this. Admittedly I'm not finding a ton of info, but luckily I do work with two Polish people whom gave me their thoughts. I think my analogy was off. It seems like this is an independence celebration/demonstration that is put on routinely (in large part) by far right nationalist groups. So, a better analogy might be like if the Oathkeepers decided to sponsor a huge 4th of July event. The people behind the event hold some very far right views, but the event itself is attended by a myriad of people because of its national pride and celebratory theme. So, 60K Nazis it ain't. But it's decidedly right wing in flavor.
Maybe you know better than I, but in Europe, do people who don't support Nazism go to Nazi-organized events and march alongside people chanting about white power and new holocausts? If they do, I stand corrected - it's not particularly the norm here in the US.
Yes. It's a massive celebration that brings out all of them: the Commies and Nazis have kind of taken it over in recent years. It used to be just a what we would consider Memorial Day Parade, 4th of July kind of thing, normal people. I don't know what has changed in the past couple of years, that's why I was asking the Euros.
From what I've read (note that no media outlet can possibly provide the real numbers or a complete picture), this was covered up to celebrate independence, but nearly all of the invited speakers and politicians were far right-wing and spread an agenda there. The official theme said "we want god", speakers and banners were anti-islam and anti-left. This mainly was an Anti-Islam and ultra-nationalist rally and was known to be beforehand, so it's unlikely that a large amount of attendees only wanted to celebrate independence and didn't have an agenda. You wouldn't attend an "independence" event where all announced guest speakers were from right-wing parties or outlets but think it was just to celebrate independence. Saying 60k were nazis is probably BS and sensationalist, but I'd think the majority have right-wing views. Some interviewed people said they were definitely only there to celebrate independence or a strong Poland (which by itself doesn't make you a nazi). Definitely a no, you will always see a counter-rally organized by the opposite party, but the parties would never mix. But that said, it has little to do with this event, as barely anyone would claim that left-wingers or "antifa" attended this event. But this of course doesn't mean 60k attendees were nazis, there were likely a number of conservative and patriotic people there that aren't radical or clearly right-wing.
I don’t know the intentions of all 60k demonstrators but I do know that history has sort of reverse repeated itself either way with Germany turning towards globalism and progressivism, and Poland turning inward as one of the more far right nationalist countries in Europe.
We had our share of tensions in recent years, especially with the refugee influx and the rise of right-wing AfD. A couple of more nationalistic views are definitely on the rise here, especially when it comes to refugees and people not wanting an "invasion" of foreign cultures in German society. That said, it's luckily only a minority (only 13% votes for AfD, but nearly 20% in some parts of former East Germany) and the vast majority of Germans is pretty liberal, although sceptical of recent developments. Poland and Hungary are definitely concerning in that regard, as their main party is right-wing conservative. I think these views are mainly popular in countries with a lower income, it was a relieve to see voters being reasonable in recent European elections (Germany, France, Holland etc)
