Under anti family parties Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party, Ireland has pursued an aggressive foreign policy which has sought to damage the efforts of Poland and Hungary to implement ways of helping couples to take care of their children.
Lower taxes, limits on Sunday trading and financial supports for families have all contributed to increases in birth rates and higher standards of living in Eastern Europe. In Ireland, the inverse has been tried with the government dramatically reducing birth rates through austerity, the legalisation of abortion and encouraging young people to emigrate.
As part of the West’s new Cold War, Ireland has been at the forefront of attacks against these countries. Politicians such as Fiona O’Loughlin, who was emphatically rejected by voters before being made a Senator against the wishes of the public, have repeatedly attacked Poland with baseless accusations of discrimination. MEP Maria Walsh recently stormed Budapest to help to undermine the government in an astro turfed parade sponsored by banks that was mostly attended by activists from around Europe rather than by locals.
The tactic of trying to undermine Poland and Hungary has now switched to a new front, accusing the Poles of running the same concentration camps that millions of them died in during World War II.
First, there was the move from Israel to demand billions from Poland in restitution for Germany’s seizure of Jewish owned property from the late 1930s through World War II. This was exploited by Western media outlets who sought to portray the Catholic Polish government as being ‘far right’ and extremist when they are nothing of the sort. A remarkable charge was levelled at the Polish people which asserted that the concentration camps in which millions of Poles died were actually Polish and not German.
Now, the Irish government have joined in on the anti Polish bigotry.
Their propaganda arm, RTE, has now also used the term ‘Polish Concentration Camps’. RTE are funded by a mandatory tax which Irish people must pay or face imprisonment. Many of the higher ups at the station are heavily connected to the government and the ruling parties, through family and other connections.
In a report broadcast on the 30th September, concerning a Nazi prison secretary facing charges, RTE News repeatedly used the term ‘Polish Concentration Camps’. In a strong response to the slur, Polish Ambassador to Ireland Anna Sochanska claimed said that:
This repeated mistake is causing huge distress in the Polish community in Ireland.
It is highly unlikely that such a ‘mistake’ is accidental from RTE. Their close connections to the government and their recent successes at assisting support for austerity programs, abortion and other state initiatives has made them into maestros of propaganda linked to domestic and foreign policy. They have been adept at isolating Catholics and encouraging disparaging treatment towards them, earlier this year they even broadcast a ‘sketch’ which claimed that Catholics worship a rapist god. The deliberately offensive and painfully unfunny segment caused uproar leading to an eventual apology, but it revealed the incredible disdain with which the broadcaster holds people of faith.
These types of attacks test the waters for more overt aggression towards Poland and dehumanisation of its people to precipitate further efforts to impose isolation. Poland and Hungary should hold firm, there is no reason for them to listen to a country like Ireland which is facing electricity blackouts in order to facilitate American data centers and freefalling birth rates.
