The European Commission on Tuesday stepped up its latest legal case against Poland, where the ruling nationalists stand accused of bulldozing the independence of courts and judges, thereby undercutting democracy.

Governed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, the EU’s largest ex-communist state has most recently enacted laws forcing into early retirement many Supreme Court judges. The bloc, rights groups and domestic political opposition decry that as going against the rule of law.

These moves came after the PiS had already exchanged many judges at the Polish Constitutional Tribunal and heads of many regular courts, while also tightening its grip on public media and controls over non-government groups since coming to power in late 2015.

Now, the head of the Polish Supreme Court has been defying the new law and the situation risks paralysing the court, which validates election results in the country of 38 million people.

“The Commission maintains that the Polish law is incompatible with EU law as it undermines the principle of judicial independence, including the irremovability of judges,” said the EU’s executive on Tuesday as it took to a second level a formal infringement procedure against Warsaw.

Poland now has a month to make amends or the Commission will file a lawsuit at the bloc’s top European Court of Justice.

But the PiS remains defiant and enjoys broad public support – largely thanks to generous social spending – despite its many bitter feuds with the EU.

Their slogan is Orthodoxy or Death. They are convinced Russia should be ruled by an autocratic monarch. They believe the coming of a new tsar may be imminent.

The Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers is a small fringe group of Russian nationalists with no political power that stages processions, rallies and even burns books to promote their views.

Clad in all-black and marching with their Orthodox banners, the group pairs a biker club’s aesthetic with the gold of religious icons.

“We are striving for the restoration of an autocratic monarchy. Like the one we had under our tsars,” Leonid Simonovich-Nikshich, the group’s white-bearded leader, said.

“It is only possible through the church. In no way is this possible in a political secular way because that would be a dictator,” he said.

Its leaders say they are unsure how a shift to a monarchy might come about, with some members seeing the change emerging from a bloody social convulsion and others simply praying for it to happen.

Ultra nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky has referred to Putin as a modern-day tsar, but the Orthodox group’s political allegiances are unclear and it is not suggesting that the Russian president head an autocratic monarchy.

The group held a religious procession at a monastery in Moscow last month to mark one of the most important recent dates in their calendar: the 100-year anniversary of the murder by the Bolsheviks of Russia’s last monarch, Tsar Nicholas II.

The tsar, his wife and five children were shot on the night of July 16-17, 1918, in the basement of a merchant’s house in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,450 km (900 miles) east of Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state atheism it espoused, the church canonised the tsar and his family, and his popularity as a historical figure has grown amid a Russian Orthodox Church resurgence under President Vladimir Putin.

Russian religious conservatives last year waged a campaign to block the release of Matilda, a Russian movie the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers described as blasphemous for its depiction of a romance between the tsar and a young ballerina.

The group did not attend the main memorial event in Yekaterinburg to mark the centenary of his murder however.

It was told it would not be allowed to raise its standards – some of which feature skulls and radical slogans like Orthodoxy or Death – at the event, Igor Miroshnichenko, a member of the group, said.

Instead, the group gathered at the Andronikov Monastery of the Saviour in Moscow on July 17 where they marched with tall crosses and standards depicting Russia’s last tsar.

Director Spike Lee says he wants U.S. President Donald Trump to see his new movie “BlacKkKlansman,” an impassioned, tense but often funny movie about race relations in the United States across the decades.

“BlacKkKlansman,” based on the true story of an African-American police detective in the 1970s who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, arrives in movie theaters on Friday.

Lee has said the movie is specifically timed to mark the anniversary this weekend of last year’s violent clashes between white nationalists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman died.

Trump last year drew broad criticism for blaming both sides for the violence and news footage of the protests is included in the film.

“I want the guy in the White House to see it too. I don’t say his name though,” Lee told Reuters Television at a Beverly Hills premiere of the film on Wednesday.

“When I saw the horrific act of domestic, American homegrown terrorism, I knew right away I wanted to do this,” Lee said of the events in Charlottesville.

Topher Grace, who plays 1970s Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, said the cast and crew were struck by the movie’s contemporary relevance while filming.

“It gets more and more timely with every second that passes, sadly. This film shouldn’t be more timely now than when it takes place, but unfortunately it is,” Grace said.

“BlacKkKlansman,” also starring Adam Driver and John David Washington, has won warm reviews, scoring a rare 100 percent approval from top critics on aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Several critics have called it Lee’s best film in years.

The New York Times called it “a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare.”

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