How the Kaczynski twins are dragging Poland back in time
The latest clash between the EU and Poland's government, headed by the troublesome Kaczynski twins, Lech (the president) and Jaroslaw (the prime minister), has reinforced the fears that, rather than bringing a fresh and forward-looking perspective to the club, Poland is increasingly playing the role of the introspective and unreliable partner.
That President Lech - the younger by 45 minutes - has suggested the EU should reconsider its ban on the death penalty has alarmed other members. In so doing, he has deliberately attacked one of the core values held dear from Reykjavik to Athens and seen as a condition of membership to a union that Poland joined amid high hopes just two years ago.
Jaroslaw - who was brought into power by his sibling last month - swiftly came to Lech's defence, saying that it was his "private opinion" and "we're not aiming to make any such proposal right now".
But the words "right now" have rung alarm bells in some quarters. How many politicians have managed to turn "private opinion" into public policy? And with more than 70 per cent of Poles said to be in favour of capital punishment, there is a political furrow ready and waiting to be ploughed.
With local elections due in Poland this autumn, it is clear to domestic observers that the stout and silver-haired brothers - who came to fame at the age of five when they starred in a film - are already on the campaign trail. The junior partners to their Law and Justice party (PiS), the Right-wing nationalist party Self-Defence - whose leader has praised Hitler and counts Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko as a friend - and the ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families are standing poorly in the polls. The death penalty topic now forms the main plank of their populist campaign.
The brothers also know that the concept of the strong man Poland standing up to the evil outside goes down well with the electorate and also helps to divert from other more pressing issues, such as Poland's 18 per cent unemployment rate.
Yet the EU's largest new member is attracting increasing condemnation and ridicule amid the twins' regular colourful expression of their extremist views on issues from homosexuality - which they equate with paedophilia - to anti-Semitism, racism and the slighting of most minorities.
"We are radical," admits Jaroslaw, an eccentric, cat-loving bachelor who is said to be distinguishable from his brother only on the occasions that he forgets to brush the cat hairs off his trousers. "Poland needs a certain amount of radicalism to change and cleanse."
That is, it seems, to be at the centre of the brothers' political raison d'être. Brought up as fervent patriots, the sons of intellectual, resistance-fighting parents who read them history books rather than fairytales at bedtime, and instilled in them the sense that they were wronged, their goal - or what they call their "moral revolution" - is to protect Poland from the outsider. The outsider is no better personified than in the forms of Russia and Germany. Passionate conspiracy theorists, they even consider the fall of communism to have been a secret "plot" between the communists and Left-wing dissidents.
An integral part of their moral clean-up includes the instigation of a "truth and justice commission", a McCarthy-style body, which will seek to rid all communists from public life.
The EU, say the brothers, is a threat because of its overly-liberal, Western-oriented, anti-Catholic ways, which have so far made no room for Poland's Catholic conservatism.
The way the brothers are treated in the media only serves to reinforce their sense of being wronged by a liberal elite.
When a Left-wing German newspaper portrayed the brothers this summer as insular and narrow-minded "new potatoes" who knew nothing about Germany except the toilets at Frankfurt airport, Lech cancelled a meeting with German and French leaders, citing "stomach pains". The Polish foreign minister threatened to sue Germany, comparing the culprit newspaper to a Nazi rag, and media close to the twins published the contact details of German journalists working in Poland. Germany politely reminded Poland that it was home to a free press.
The incident spoke volumes about the brothers' style of rule and the sense of paranoia currently sweeping Poland, where foreigners and the Chief Rabbi have been beaten up.
Only a year ago, Poland was being applauded as a role model for the rest of New Europe, as a fresh new player within Nato and the EU and a participant in Iraq. But as a conservative European parliamentarian recently said: "Slowly but surely, Poland is moving towards the same level of respect for fundamental rights and human rights as Turkey."
Russian attempts to false history.
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