Is Donald Tusk still the EU "president"? I really liked him when he was the Polish PM. It's troubling to see the slide right-ward, but I can understand it from their point of view. You've got to remember, there's not a more conservative Catholic place on earth, including the Vatican, than Poland.
Yup, Tusk still is head of council. I somewhat understand their sentiments, but it's amusing to see how the fear of immigrants and multiculturalism is the highest in regions that are the least affected by immigrants. Happens in Poland, Hungary and also here in Germany the right-wing parties attract most followers in districts with barely any refugees or foreigners. Fear of the unknown mixed with bad education/income is a huge factor.
I would just like to say that the whole notion that modern Nazis are poor and uneducated sounds completely ignorant. If we look back at "actual history" we can see that the Nazis had some fairly rich and very educated people. I mean, they were technologically superior to many of the countries they invaded - and far richer. The same can be said of the Imperial Japanese.
No one is by any means saying all of them are uneducated idiots, but you can see a trend in certain regions. Heads of parties are often extremely intelligent, but they are able to gain a lot of voters by spouting sensationalist crap that other people can immediately dismiss. Seen it here in Germany, AfD mainly succeeded in areas with bad income and education by playing with the fears of voters. That said, of course there's a significant amount of wealthy people supporting right-wing parties, but you'll always have right-wingers from all income and education levels, as it's one of the more natural and historical politicial mindsets.
social class and education are main factors, each two months at McGill , they've a new visiting German medical student on rotation, they're remarkably nice,top notch at everything but their big challenges is : how to deal with rude patients,as some would be in tears struggling to deal with it, it's refreshing to see such individuals, dunno how they can survive South the boarder or anywhere else if they can't take it here
Then can we say 60,000 Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers? The other thing I would point out is that when I google images of the Polish independence day, I get pictures of nice Poles waving little flags in the daylight. The torch-bearing marcher photos are at night. It's November, so it probably gets dark by 5 in Poland, but there is probably a temporal shift here where patriots come out with their kids during the day and the thugs that want to kill Muslims come out at night. That's how it works here in the US.
It's a thin line with today's media, so I don't want to make absolute statements. It depends on what kind of political views you'd say make someone a "nazi-sympathizer". I'd say there's a decent amount of protesters who don't want to see a influx of refugees, ghettos and a Muslim culture. That alone doesn't make you a nazi sympathizer. I've read German articles, some attendees definitely weren't radical and tried to only celebrate an indepent Poland and its culture. From what I've read, it still was a right-wing event organized by radical parties and with a bunch of nazi speakers. So yes, I'm that regard you can say there were thousands of nazis openly spreading their views, which is concerning.
Just to clarify: It may sound nazi-ish to you guys when Europeans are heavily demonstrating vs refugee policies and speak of a cultural takeover, violence, rape culture etc. The situation is terrible in certain cities and districts though, so I can understand why many people are extremely upset and may seem like violet right-wingers to you. I have a lot of relatives and friends who work for the police or social agencies, so you are bound to hear a lot of things that the media won't publish (actually media and even police are often actively prohibited from discussing certain cases and situations). I am not against refugees in general, but there sadly are lot of true stories where police don't even want to visit certain districts anymore, as they'll be swarmed by dozens of violent refugees/immigrants that immediately threaten them. Same with ghetto-ish areas where Germans can't feel safe anymore and are cursed at, refugee camps where females get raped, kids are beaten etc.
