Jacek Miedlar – Faith Matters

Roman Kneblewski – An Ultra-Nationalist, Anti-Migrant and anti-LGBT Activist in Finchley

Faith Matters — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:12:52 +0000

The Polish Catholic Parish in Finchley has just announced on it’s website that this year it’s Lent Retreat – (17 to 20 March) – will be led by Roman Kneblewski, a radical priest from Poland known for his ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT messages:

Kneblewski repeatedly praised ONR (‘Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny’ or ‘National-Radical Camp’), a Polish Fascist youth movement.

He is on record as saying:

“I wouldn’t condemn Fascism. If by Fascism we mean Francoism for example, which saved Catholic Spain from communist criminals, then I’m all for it.”

He also expressed full support for Jacek Międlar, an extremist former priest who is banned from entering the U.K. Kneblewski stated that Międlar’s anti-Semitic and hateful rhetoric is in fact a “language of love”. He also called Międlar “a good Catholic and a good Pole”.

Photo of Kneblewski and Międlar together

In a sermon, Kneblewski repeatedly called refugees heading for Europe an “invasion of Islamists”, adding that should they come to Poland, they would “slit throats, rape women and force children to become Muslims”.

In the same sermon he stated:

“Those invaders come here and they want benefits which they see as a tribute owed to them by us, infidel dogs” and: “Whoever encourages to accept those invaders is a sinner”.

On his Facebook profile, he wrote: “The Qur’an should be burned! Burn it, nothing else!”

He also approved of burying pig carcasses on mosque construction sites as a possible method of preventing mosques from being built.

Kneblewski is also known for his hostility to LGBT communities. In an online sermon he called homosexuality a “heinous perversion”.

Speaking about Anna Grodzka, the first Polish transgendered politician, Kneblewski stated:

“Some individuals shouldn’t even see a psychiatrist but a vet. And I will have to see a gastro-enterologist as I’m getting a gag reflex”.

Kneblewski also hosted a lecture by Paul Cameron, an American anti-LGBT pseudo-scientist, in his parish in Poland. The lecture was titled “The Myths of Homo-Propaganda”.

Considering there are thousands of Catholic priests in Poland, most of whom preach a message of love, peace and respect, one has to ask why would the Polish Parish in Finchley choose such an individual to lead their faithful during a Lent Retreat? It is a legitimate question and we will be letting the relevant authorities know.

Husaria Manchester, Karol Peruta and Extremism Targeted at Settled Polish Communities

Faith Matters — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 18:10:24 +0000

Concerns about the views of the leadership of a Polish community group has intensified after Husaria Manchester has procured the lease for a community centre inside of a former church in the Manchester area.

Karol Kamil Peruta, who appears as Husaria’s main contact on YouTube, following its founding in 2017, has posted a litany of anti-Muslim content on social media and follows several far-right Polish groups and individuals on his personal Twitter.

He appeared in a Facebook Live video on the official page of Husaria Manchester on February 6, stating that the group had obtained a lease to use a disused church as a community space.

In 2016, an anti-Muslim and Islamophobic meme appeared on Mr Peruta’s Twitter account, which depicted an individual in a niqab as a bearded man with explosives attached to their chest in the place of their breasts. The tweet has since been removed but remains archived.

Following the terror attacks in Manchester and London in 2017, Mr Peruta called for Islam to be ‘banned’ on his personal Facebook account.

A blog written in 2015 by Mr Peruta claimed that Muslims, “cheat and lie. They steal and break the law. They are lazy and filthy.” This is one of many examples seen by Faith Matters brought to our attention by concerned members of the Polish community.

Activists in the Polish community have shared a photograph Mr Peruta took with Paul Golding, leader of the far-right street defence movement Britain First. An interview with Mr Golding, recorded in 2017, also appears on the Twitter feed of Peruta.

Mr Peruta has ranted against interracial relationships in the Polish community, adding that such relationships were turning ‘traditional’ Polish shops into ‘pseudo’ stores which stock halal products, where the store’s profits could be going towards the funding of a mosque, an Islamic centre, or terrorism. He went on to lament the ‘stupidity’ of Poles who welcome their ‘own destruction’ by working with Muslims. Peruta ended his hateful rant by suggesting that he will upload photos of such ‘pseudo’ Polish stores in what amounts to a boycott, in pursuit of ‘authentic’ Polish stores in Manchester. The attached image claimed that Polish barcodes begin with the digits 590. The post, which appeared on his Facebook on September 30, 2015, gained almost 100 shares.

In Peruta’s blog entry from 2015, he states this about Muslims: “They cheat and lie. They steal and break the law. They are lazy and filthy”. There are many other examples of such dehumanising rhetoric used by Mr Peruta which have been sent to us by concerned members of the Polish community.

He follows the Twitter account of the disgraced former priest Jacek Międlar – a far-right extremist banned from entering the UK due to his antisemitic views.

Mr Peruta’s Twitter account follows several nationalist and extreme right-wing pages – from the National Radical Camp (ONR) to the National Rebirth of Poland (NOP).

A photograph later removed from Mr Peruta’s personal Facebook page showed individuals with ONR flags at an event in 2017 (see below).

A year earlier, on June 19, 2016, near Rochdale, Karol Peruta was photographed with the controversial revisionist historian with links to the ONR, Leszek Żebrowski, who was labelled an antisemite in a 2016 article published by Gazeta Wyborcza.

It was around this time in 2016 that Mr Peruta shared a meme on Facebook which referred to ‘Good Night Left Side’ – a neo-Nazi parody of the anti-fascist idea of ‘Goodnight White Pride’.

Nor is this the only example of this rhetoric appearing on his social media. A Facebook ‘like’ which appears on his profile is the neo-Nazi page ‘Anti-Antifa Hooligans’ which includes videos of individuals carrying out acts of graffiti and men performing Nazi salutes. Another nationalist meme was anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT in nature. Now, there’s no evidence of Karol Peruta interacting with the page, or liking any of the content, but the page itself boats almost 20,000 fans and draws in support of ultranationalists from across Europe. Why Mr Peruta liked such a page is, therefore, concerning.

An individual assisting Husaria Manchester with grave cleaning in the Birmingham area was photographed wearing a ‘Good Night Left Side’ t-shirt on April 18, 2018.

The official page of Husaria Manchester has been used to promote the neo-Nazi group Ogniwo (The Link).

Mr Peruta gave the Israeli Embassy in Poland a one-star review on Facebook, describing them as ‘liars’, days after official commemorations for Holocaust Memorial Day took place on January 27.

Given that Husaria Manchester has worked with mainstream Polish organisations, we are concerned that many are unaware of the views expressed on the social media accounts of Koral Peruta.

Husaria Manchester has worked with other mainstream Polish groups – from community outreach to the cleaning of gravestones, with children, and other communities. Organisations like the Kresy Family and the Polish Expats Association will abhor and reject the views expressed by Karol Peruta, and our research will be forwarded to them, to ensure such examples of entryism is not allowed to continue.

Faith Matters will be handing its evidence to Manchester County Council.

The Changing Face of Hate in Poland: From Antisemitism to Anti-Muslim Racism

Faith Matters — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 01:35:51 +0000

Faith Matters launches a ground-breaking paper looking at worrying levels of far-right anti-Muslim racism in Poland and anti-Muslim activism in the UK in Polish Communities

The full report can be downloaded HERE.

Faith Matters is proud to launch a new briefing paper to outline some of the key dynamics and drivers of far-right narratives between the UK and Polish far-right.

The new report, titled ‘From antisemitism to anti-Muslim racism: the evolving face of the far-right in Poland’, highlights how extremist groups like Britain First have continued to sow division by exploiting the religious sentiments of Poles in Britain to further their anti-Muslim agenda. This includes failed attempts to bring over antisemitic and anti-Muslim speakers, and the leadership of Britain First, namely its deputy leader, Jayda Fransen, has travelled to Poland to engage with such individuals like the antisemitic former priest Jacek Międlar.

Faith Matters intends to use this report as a springboard to engage with Polish communities in Britain to start an interfaith dialogue that includes Christian, Muslim, and Jewish voices that will seek to counter the exclusionary and dehumanising narratives of the far-right with a dialogue that will not only seek to address more painful aspects of Polish history but also celebrate the contributions of its Muslim minorities.

By identifying key voices both in Britain and Poland, the report will seek to expose their views, in the hope of marginalising their voice, and empowering Poles to challenge attitudes online, in the home, or in community spaces.

It took the combined efforts of voices within the Polish community to translate materials from the far-right politician Marian Kowalski which Faith Matters passed to authorities to prevent him speaking at a restaurant in London. Our concern remains that some will seek to use community spaces to push anti-Muslim or other hateful narratives away from media scrutiny.

Other, more extreme neo-Nazi groups, like the National Rebirth of Poland (NOP), coordinated activities with both National Action and the National Front to do ‘whites-only’ foodbanks in Scotland and London. The NOP has also targeted NHS centres in small anti-abortion protests.

Steve Rose, the author of the report, said: “It’s clear that Britain First continues to exploit the religious sentiments of Poles to push an extremist narrative which mythologises a Christian Europe in opposition to very dehumanising anti-Muslim narratives which tap into wider anxieties towards cultural and national identity.

This report seeks to challenge that, and highlight that antisemitism remains a key driver of far-right ideology, with anti-Muslim racism seeking further division in a country where Muslims have accounted for less than 1% of the population.

What’s clear is that many Poles want to challenge this form of politics and this project will help provide a collaborative partnership to help build dialogue and see the contributions of Muslims historically and in Poland today.

Additional research in this field of work will expand beyond the scope of this report and encourage more forms of counter-speech online and through community events in the months ahead.”

Fiyaz Mughal OBE, Founder and Director of Faith Matters said:

“We have been seeing far right extremist groups like Britain First actively tout key activists in Polish communities in Poland and the UK. Yet, during the national Brexit referendum, these very groups were promoting hate against Eastern European communities. This shows the cynical posturing of these far-right extremist groups in the vain hope that they will gain support.”

KEY FINDINGS OF THE REPORT

Key findings of the report, which will be accessible on the Faith Matters web-site, state that:

A chronology of Islamophobic incidents in Poland demonstrates how some have exploited international events to attack Islamic institutions, including an attack on a mosque in Poznań, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks in Paris in January 2015,
Polling of European countries in 2016 found that negative views of minorities and refugees were commonplace. Negative views of Muslims were widespread in Italy (69%), Hungary (72%), and Poland (69%). It is perhaps unsurprising that almost a quarter of Poles interviewed expressed negative opinions towards Jewish communities. Ideological leanings to the right were indicators of increased unfavourability towards Muslims.
Anti-refugee sentiment remains stubbornly high in Poland, even though the country has hardly taken in refugees post the Syria civil war. For example, just over half of Poles polled who expressed favourable views of Muslims had agreed that refugees pose a threat, though this jumps to 81% amongst the Poles who expressed unfavourable views of Muslims. Outside of Hungary, Poles expressed the most concern (71%) that refugees will increase the risk of domestic terrorism. Almost of a third of Poles agreed that Muslims in their country support ISIS, as a similar number declined to answer this question. As with other countries, Poles also overwhelmingly agreed that refugees were ‘drains’ on the welfare system.
Perhaps these factors help explain how many Europeans uniformly overstate the size of their respective Muslim populations. In Poland, researchers found that on average, Poles believed that of every 100 people, seven are Muslim. The reality is that this figure is under 0.1%.
Regarding population shifts, Poles believed that Muslims would make up 13% of the population in 2020. Pędziwiatr (2016) attributes this perception gap to the misinformation presented in sections of Polish press and by certain public figures.
Social researchers, Gawlewicz and Narkowicz (2015), highlight how the rich Islamic history of the region is ignored, demonstrating how this panic is a modern problem, and reflective the political shifts in Poland in recent years. Some of the key social agitators, highlighted in the Faith Matters report are based in the UK and Poland.

The history of the Polish Muslim Tatars is completely overlooked by social commentators who promote anti-Muslim hate, as though hundreds of years of engagement with Muslims that have shaped and made up a part of Poland’s history, simply do not exist.

KEY PURVEYORS OF ANTI-MUSLIM BIGOTRY

The report lists these to be:

Miriam Shadad: Miriam Shadad was behind the attempted settlement of fifty Christian Syrian refugees in Poland in 2015, but most would leave Poland within months. She made various anti-Muslim remarks when interviewed in the Financial Times which included the claim that many who practice Islam are ‘criminals’.

Shaded has expressed support for Viktor Orbán’s proposed ban on Islam in Hungary. In other media, she said that the Qur’an is a book that calls for ‘hatred and violence’ and that the concept of Jihad is one of force and submission. She appeared on the cover of the Polish weekly magazine Wprost in 2016. She used this interview to call for a ban on Islam in Poland, to praise the Assad regime for its liberal protection of Christians, including her relatives, and to warn that if ‘Europe does not quickly wake up, it will become Islamized.

Piotr Ryback: The extremes of an ethno-nationalist fringe in Poland have gained notoriety in recent years, most notably in the actions of Piotr Rybak, of the Wielka Polska Niepodlegla movement. In November 2015, during an anti-Muslim protest in Wroclaw against Poland accepting Syrian refugees, Rybak burned an effigy of an Orthodox Jewish man. During the protest, most of which was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, Rybak said, ‘we will not bring a single Muslim into Poland, Poland is for Poles.’ He then set fire to the effigy, which featured an EU flag.

The National Radical Camp organised the protest and presented Rybak with the effigy to burn, but the courts rejected his claim that the effigy was of Hungarian-American Jewish philanthropist George Soros, finding him guilty of ‘public incitement to hatred on the grounds of religion and nationality to an unspecified group of Jews by burning an effigy’. The prison sentence given to Rybak fell to three months after an appeal.

Jacek Miedlar: The notoriety of the disgraced former priest Jacek Międlar grew after he was detained at Stansted Airport to prevent him from attending a Britain First rally in Telford, Shropshire in February 2017. Międlar, 28, is an important fixture in the extreme right-wing political scene in Poland, and in Wrocław in west Poland. Two years earlier, Międlar spoke at the far-right organised nationalist demonstration which marked the anniversary of Poland’s independence after the First World War. Organisers claimed that 50,000 attended but police put the actual figure at 25,000 people.

On the Polish Independence Day march on 11 November 2016, Międlar is alleged to have publicly called for hatred against Jews and Ukrainians. During the march, he is alleged to have said, ‘We must be strong in spirit, body, in our mentality and knowledge, because only we will be able to win with the left, with Jewry, and with communism, which is still in our homeland’. Months earlier, prosecutors dropped a hate crime investigation against Międlar, when during his sermon, he described Jews as a ‘cancer’. He is also alleged to have uploaded a photo of Poles performing a Nazi salute during a pogrom in the southern town of Myślenice in 1936 which resulted in non-lethal violence and property damage to Jewish-owned businesses.

Marian Kowalski: Marian Kowalski came to prominence in the English-language media in 2015 following a series of counter-protests following his speaking tour in Ireland during his failed presidential campaign in Poland. Hotels in Dublin and Cork cancelled speaking events for Kowalski, who represents the far-right National Movement (Ruch Narodowy).

Kowalski’s views towards the building of new mosques in Poland reflects how anti-Muslim racism is often anti-Arab in focus. In a 2016 speech, he is reported to have told a crowd that Arab-funded mosques are ‘breeding grounds’ for terrorists. On Facebook, he shared a meme about how Poland violently dealt with the ‘invasion’ of Islam on 20 May 2017. On Twitter, Kowalski compared Islam to a ‘trojan horse’. On 25 September 2016, he photographed a small rally in Trafalgar Square in London which called for the release of Janusz Waluś, a Polish white supremacist, who, in 1993, murdered the anti-apartheid hero and SACP leader Chris Hani. Waluś was a member of the leading neo-Nazi group in South Africa, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, who hoped his actions would trigger a race war in the final days of apartheid.

Kowalski has also gained a reputation for his provocative stunts which included the burning of a rainbow flag in July 2015 following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to legalise same same-sex marriage.

Weronika Kania: The self-styled reporter Weronika Kania, who has contributed one hundred posts to the Polish-language anti-Islamisation website NDIE, was active in interviewing members of Britain First before her videos disappeared from YouTube. She spoke at a Britain First rally on 28 July 2017. On Facebook, she briefly updated her cover photo in praise of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán in 2015. Recent Facebook posts have promoted Tommy Robinson’s controversial new book and linked to a YouTube concerning the paedophilia and Islam. She has also regularly interviewed Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First.

Piotr Szlachtowicz hosts the online radio show ‘The Nowy Polski Show’. It sponsored an event in Slough which listed Jacek Międlar as a keynote speaker. The event celebrated the underground Polish army which fought in anti-communist resistance movements. Międlar, of course, was denied entry into the UK.

Another event promoted by his radio show featured the Polish MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who, in 2015, was suspended from the European Parliament for ten days after performing a Nazi salute. He has also claimed that Hitler ‘probably’ did not know about the Holocaust and the murder of millions of people was not his ‘goal’. Korwin-Mikke used racial the epithet ‘n—–‘ in 2014 and was suspended this year after making sexist remarks in parliament. An interview with Korwin-Mikke was uploaded by Mateusz Jaronski on 18 July 2017. The Twitter feed of the Nowy Polski Show, has, on multiple occasions, posted tweets favourable of the leadership of the far-right political party Britain First.