Bieganski Threatens World Peace: Jan Tomasz Gross in The New York Times

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On Thursday, November 16, the New York Times ran a racist, anti-Polish piece by Jan Tomasz Gross.

Gross resorts to racist stereotyping in addressing Poland's resistance to the Islamization of Europe.

This is especially ironic given that Jan Tomasz Gross *appears to be* condemning racism.

But he is resorting to racism.

We all know why many people think that unvetted and unchecked immigration of Muslims into Europe should be stopped.

Terrorism, like the Bataclan.

Birth rates. European women have rights, and can delay having, or even decline to have, children.

Gender apartheid strips Muslim women of rights. In Islam, given the example of Mohammed, who married his favorite wife, Aisha, when he was over fifty and she was six, there is no age of consent. Females can be married off quite young. Men are allowed four wives and an infinite number of sex slaves. For these reasons, Muslims are statistically more likely to have many children than non-Muslims.

Western Europe's immigration policies have created seismic change and social instability. Women are less safe. Homosexuals are less safe. Jews are less safe.

Anyone who cares about social stability will question whether or not mass, unvetted and unchecked immigration is a good idea.

Jan Tomasz Gross declines to note these obvious roots for Poles' focus on Islam.

Rather, Jan Tomasz Gross plays the racism card. Poles qua Poles are guilty, disgusting, racists. It is in their blood. It is in their history. Gross misrepresents Polish history by presenting only one side – the racist side. Shame.

Poles are terminally stained by the unforgiveable sin of racism.

I have frequently defended Gross on this page, and I will defend him again. He has produced important scholarship.

In this New York Times piece, Gross is nothing but a racist.

Shame.

There's more.

The solution to the nationalism and scapegoating of Muslims going on in Poland and in the US today is *not* to demonize Poles – or Americans.

The solution can be found on the left.

The left has gone too far. It expresses contempt for its perceived enemies. It rides roughshod over mainstream culture.

This has happened before. A terrifying example can be found in the excesses of the Versailles Treaty.

If you push people too far, they push back. Solution? Stop pushing people too far.

Want to weaken racists, xenophobes, and chauvinists in Poland – and in the US?

Stop pushing people too far. Work for the change you want to see in a respectful way, rather than in an arrogant, high-handed, contemptuous way.  

Brief clips from Gross' NYT piece below. You can read the whole thing here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/poland-pure-blood-march.html

"Tens of thousands of people -- many of them young men with crew cuts, but some parents with children, too -- flocked to the Polish capital to celebrate Independence Day in a march organized in part by two neo-fascist organizations. They waved white and red Polish flags, they brandished burning torches, and they wore 'white power' symbols. They carried banners declaring, 'Death to enemies of the homeland,' and screamed, 'Sieg Heil!' and 'Ku Klux Klan!'"

Gross goes on to say that "we are witnessing a resurgence of fascism in Poland."

"…Ever since the Law and Justice Party won both the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015, Poland has been undergoing a disturbing political transformation…Two years ago, the party bet that latching onto the refugee crisis in Europe would give it purchase…"

The governing party, he says, is using the threat of Islamization as is occurring in Western Europe to radicalize Poles into violent xenophobia and dangerous, primitive nationalism.

"Poles," Gross writes, "couldn't tell a Muslim or a Buddhist from Jesus."

Their attitude toward Muslims, Gross insists, "springs primarily from a deep pool of ethnic-cum-religious hatred, which is indigenous to Poland and has historically been aimed at Jews."