Conservative Poland now faces an ideological assault from its new radical leftist regime, starting with the conscription of transgender persons into its military.
Poland has been hailed by conservatives across the West for many years as one of the last remaining bastions of conservatism in Europe alongside Hungary. Under conservative President Andrzej Duda, the nation bravely resisted an onslaught of threats from the European Union meant to intimidate it into adhering to “woke” tenets.
One such attempt in December threw Polish politics into a frenzy when the EU threatened to withhold billions of dollars until conservative reforms were undone, a task its leftist prime minister, Donald Tusk, was willing to undergo.
Tusk went forward with his leftist allies to enact what has been called a “democratic coup”: He bypassed the Polish Constitution and purged Poland’s most important institutions of their conservative power.
In what one Polish judge has called the “neo-Bolshevik demolition of Poland,” Tusk’s Gestapo fired countless conservative government employees, shut down conservative media outlets, and even arrested two prominent conservative politicians.
While the constitutionality of Tusk’s actions is playing out in Polish courts, the leftists are taking advantage of the crippled resistance to conform Poland to the EU’s “woke” doctrines radically and are pursuing everything from broader abortion accessibility to taking an active effort in fighting climate change with tax dollars. But first, they must erode the integrity of their nation’s military.
Poland’s now-leftist Ministry of Defense wants to declassify gender identity disorders as a “disease or defect” and “are analyzing the possibility of amending the regulations” that legally bar transgender people from military service.
Such a decision, of course, would be a predicate to an inevitable decline in the overall quality of the Polish military. Flooding the military with people who are mentally unreliable on the battlefield is a recipe for disaster.
In addition, by intentionally confusing the rank and file on the most fundamental aspects of both human nature and national identity, the unity of the Poles will soften. By casting out the tradition and pride of Polish identity, the Poles will be less motivated to serve adequately. By artificially introducing unnecessary ideological tensions among the ranks, divisions will create dissidence and noncompliance from comrades, superiors, and subordinates at the most critical moments.
Take the state of the United States military as a warning of what is to come to Poland if it indulges in such a “woke” military policy. After President Joe Biden undid his predecessor’s rule to bar transgender people from enrollment in the military and tried to promote an LGBT military culture, its quality quickly took a nosedive that only continues to spiral as the threat of war on multiple fronts increases.
The military is increasingly failing to reach its constantly decreasing expected recruitment goals. This is due to a multitude of factors: lowering fitness standards for women and obese people to enter, degrading portrayals of soldiers, declining motivation and patriotism among younger generations, etc.
Transgender ideology is the latest in a long evolution of variants of ideological parasites. Once it infects society, it is nigh impossible to uproot. Once it infects a government body, it is hard to say if there is any reliable resolution.
This is not the sort of easily avoidable internal crisis the Polish government should be prioritizing when it faces the ever-growing threat of yet another Russian invasion into its eastern borders. More now than ever, the people of Poland need to rally around their distinct autonomous cultural identity to resist the foreign threats posed by both Russia and the EU globalists.
Parker Miller is a 2024 Washington Examiner winter fellow.
