“The Fourth Polish Republic is a Threat to Freedom” – police forbid distributing a flyer criticising the government (Torun, 16.09.2007)
source (pl): LaLucza.bzzz.net, 16.09.2007
On Sunday 16.09.2007 in Toruń, at 12:00 midday in the city centre, a communication action promoting the activities of the infoshop ALTERNATIVE SPACE LaLucza – active since a few months ago in our town – took place.
During the action, literature discussing antifascism, freeing animals, anarchism, etc. was presented. One of the materials distributed during the action was the antifascist flyer of the Agreement of Anarchist Communities: ( flyer )
During this action, city guards and police appeared and tried to stop us from distributing this leaflet. Despite requests and threats, the material continued to be distributed. The “guardians of order” motivated their actions by the intervention of an upset passer-by who during our action had received a flyer and after reading its content had contacted the police, saying that it was against the law (meaning: the government was criticised).
The police and city guards couldn’t find the appropriate paragraph (of legal texts), so they complained about every detail of the action. The action had been legalised [registered with the town authorities before it took place], so a “loophole” was sought and after some discussion with plainclothes policemen and city guards, a paragraph was eventually found.
They informed us that we didn’t have authorisation for a table with posters, so we had to stop the action.
The flyer was confiscated by a police officer, and we’re waiting for further developments of the situation.
The person who officially registered the action with the authorities was threatened with prosecution. That person was identity-checked. We’ll keep you informed of further developments.
We think that the content of the poster is highly relevant. It’s enough to compare the text with the present situation.
It turns out that distributing a flyer criticising the authorities of the Fourth Polish Republic is quite risky.
M.
Text of the flyer
Antifascist campaign
THE GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS FASCISM
FASCISM SUPPORTS THE GOVERNMENT
THE FOURTH POLISH REPUBLIC IS A THREAT TO FREEDOM
Many politicians from the ruling coalition today do not hide their extreme right and nationalist sympathies. They express their support for fascist dictators who formerly ruled Spain, Chile and Portugal. Youth groups linked with the present authorities publicly and privately, without any inhibitions, display their fascination with nazi symbols and literature. There are more and more groups openly promoting fascism, extreme nationalism, as well as hate towards other nationalities, races and social minorities. This has led to physical assaults with a political and racist background.
Before the Second World War, the nazi machine built up its power thanks to the support from conservatives, the army and the main leaders of industry and finance as well as the Christian-Democrat Centre Party. Adolf Hitler’s victory in parliamentary elections (1933) was preceded by an economic crisis resulting in high unemployment. Very similar conditions brought the present ruling coalition of PiS, LPR and Samoobrona to power in Poland.
We should already now be reacting firmly against the growing wave of fascist hate and violence. We must fight all of these symptoms by creating a grassroots antifascist movement organising communication actions, postering, meetings, exhibitions, demonstrations, etc. We must show that we are not frightened and that we will respond clearly to every example of fascist intolerance. We’ll fight fascism on the streets and in the stadiums. We don’t agree with using the education system for propagating authoritarian content. We will stigmatise every politician promoting fascist or extreme nationalist content. No example of this type of ideology will go unanswered.
Agreement of Anarchist Communities
