Oh yeah, I forgot calling oneself a socialist lifts any questions from the western leftists. You can be a corrupt nationalist government, have mafia kill jurnos, all is good.
Ok, honestly I’ve got no patience to pretend that you don’t simply support him for his alignment with Russia/China as if their was any different from US imperialism. He represents (half of) a country in which Moscow used tanks to put down a popular uprising, but is their uncritical servant. Same as his other buddies, stirring up far right talking points in favor of “fortress europe”, against the backdrop of their Moscow handlers and their colony in Bealarus pushing out migrants into swamps and primal forests on the border with Poland and Finland in an attempt at creating a crisis.
We deal with this shit, find dead people in the swamps and bushes, and fight fascists stirred up by these migrations and openly supported by the same people who caused this. Meanwhile you get your edge-lord points for siding with something you consider leftist? or just admire their authoritarianism for whatever reason? I’m pretty sure I’ve encouraged you before; visit eastern Europe, or Russia and confront your imagination with the reality of what things are here.
Can’t be bothered to look for a similar research for SMER, but when the party members of Polish SLD (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej - same type of post-communist party) were studied they tended to be economically more liberal and socially more conservative then the local neo-cons, and that’s quite an achievement, as these are basically air-dropped chicago-school of economy US made products.
Left wing ideologies have been destroyed in CEE by the soviet fallout. What’s left* are parties cashing in on the nostalgia (/conservatism) and soft authoritarianism with a hint of social policies. By this account Polish PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party is also nearly leftist - they had some populist social programs. None of these actually affect the situation of the neglected parts of society in the long term, but the cash giveaways secure the vote, and apparently support from some…
*Of course outside of mainstream there’s tiny honest left, socialist or even communist groups, but that’s nothing to do with what passes as the mainstream “left”, most of which is to the right of western centrists.
You could ask literally any active polish Antifa who I am, if actually meant anything more than an pitiful attempt at an insult.
