Faith Matters calls on the Home Office to stop two far-right politicians from Poland from speaking at a community event in Manchester on Sunday, May 1.

Those names include the disgraced former MEP and far-right extremist from Poland, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, and Konrad Berkowicz of the far-right Confederation bloc, which we’ve highlighted before.

We made the same call about Mikke in 2018.

We are indebted to the organisation A Million Poles for making us aware of the event next week.

Part of our updated dossier to the Home Office highlights Mikke includes recent anti-Muslim content on Twitter, including propagating outlandish conspiracies about a so-called Islamic’ takeover’.

On Twitter, Mikke has pushed disinformation and propaganda about the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the ICC agrees to investigate war crimes.

Mikke supported the far-right media personality Eric Zemmour in the French election – LGBT+ groups are suing Zemmour for Holocaust revisionism over his denial about the deportation of gay men by the Nazi machine of tyranny.

When informed on Twitter that the falangist fascist dictator of Spain, Franciso Franco was “Jewish”, Mikke scoffed, stating that he “smashed” communism, before adding, “But you have to fight the JEWISH COMMUNE, because it is an intelligent, very dangerous enemy!”. The account Mikke quoted with this reply posts highly inflammatory and racists statements like, “Being jew/muslim is far worse for me than racemixing.”

Mikke’s use of Twitter has, over the years, targeted the Swedish furniture giant in July 2019, calling for the boycott of these “homo-fascists” in Poland. Much has also been written about their political aspirations to curtail LGBT+ rights in Poland.

It’s easy to find other examples of racist speech on Mikke’s Twitter – including a grotesque antisemitic meme captioned with the N-word.

Mikke has called for lowering the age of consent for children as, “There are girls who are 12, 13, and completely mature.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Grzegorz Braun, Artur Dziambor, Robert Winnicki and Konrad Berkowicz (of the far-right Confederation bloc) faced widespread condemnation for standing beneath a banner which read “Vaccination sets you free”, echoing the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign which hung outside the Auschwitz death camp and other Nazi concentration camps.

In 2019, Berkowicz put a kippah (skullcap) on the head of a rival lawmaker Anna Krupk, during a debate on restitution for Jewish Holocaust victims, the Times of Israel reported.

The Confederation bloc opposed a motion supporting Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

On Facebook in 2019, Berkowicz claimed that LGBT communities have “disturbed urges”. In 2016, Berkowicz shared an anti-Muslim meme linking refugees to ISIS as a “trojan horse” to enter Europe.

In 2020, the JPost reported that Mikke said on Polish television that “Murderous pogroms against Jews in Europe had a positive outcome because the weak in the Jewish community died and the strong survived”, which he used to claim that Covid-19 was ‘eradicating’ the weak and ‘improving’ the human gene pool.

Years earlier, Mikke made a Nazi salute in the EU Parliament in 2015 and 2014, claiming that the fascist dictator Mussolini was merely “trying to protect Jews” and that Hitler’ knew nothing’ about the Holocaust in a 2014 article where he expressed abhorrent views on rape.

The Polish anti-racism organisation Never Again told Faith Matters, “”The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is dismayed by the planned meeting of the Polish far-right leaders in Manchester. We are seriously concerned they are going to promote their hatred and bigotry among the Polish community in the UK. This meeting has to be prevented and the preachers of hate must not be allowed to sow division and strife.”

Faith Matters has been at the vanguard of writing about entryism by far right groups from Poland, who are seeking to access members of settled Polish communities in the United Kingdom. The aim is pretty simple. With over 700,000 settled members of Polish communities in the country, they make an accessible and ready pool of potential volunteers, supporters and donours to the extreme causes of such groups. It really is as simple as that.

We have written extensively about groups like Ogniwo, Leszek Żebrowski, Grom Legion, Janus Korwin-Mikke (and his group – Liberty), and the neo-fascist ONR. The comments and actions of such groups and individuals run contrary to the pluralism and the tolerant values that are part and parcel of our country.

Today, we can exclusively reveal that in January 2017, many of these groups signed a letter of alliance or partnership which is chilling. It was signed in Hammersmith in London and includes neo-fascist groups, ONR (Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny) and Ogniwo.

The document reads:

“We, the undersigned, the representatives of patriotic and libertarian circles, bearing in mind the greater good of our Fatherland – Poland, and the next generations of Polish men and women, declare the will to cooperate and the will of mutual pursuit of our common goals.”

It is then followed by a quote by a Polish nationalist leader from the 1930s, Roman Dmowski:

“We are different, we come from different parts of Poland, we have different interests but we are united in a common goal. This goal is the Fatherland, for which we want to live and work.”

It is ironic that the agreement was signed in London, when the groups want to live and work for the ‘Fatherland’ – Poland. A picture of the signatories and list of groups is highlighted below. 

This is clearly a worrying development, given some of the groups involved and the ideology of them. It also further adds to our argument that resilience, or rather the lack of it within Polish communities, means that many of these groups can conduct entryism for influence, pretty easily.

List of Groups Who Signed

Ogniwo

Patriae Fidelis

Independent Poland

Fides Et Libertas

ONR

Liberty (Janusz Korwin-Mikke’s party)

Commitee for the Defense of Poland

Patriots of the Republic

Against the Tide

The Patriots

Polish Patriots Association