Grzegorz Piotrowski

Antifascism in Poland after World War II re-emerged during the 1980s, as a response to the growing skinhead movement and the threat it posed. Initially labelled as ‘clash of countercultures’, antifascist activism in Poland was focused on self-defence and on physical confrontations. As the far-right was becoming mainstreamed and former skinheads began joining political parties, antifascist movement shifted towards NGO-activism and focused on legal solutions to existing challenges as well as on education. The last big campaign of the antifascist movement of that era was the attempt to block the Independence March (a grassroots celebrations of the Polish Independence Day organised by the far right), however after the street riots of 2011 and 2012, confrontational tactics were abandoned. This however has changed around 2016, when the policies of the new, populist-conservative government of Law and Justice were regarded as helping the far right and extreme right. This has changed the Polish antifascist movement that not only grew in its size, but became more open and inclusive, linking issues of homophobia, xenophobia, and repressive state actions against women and their protests for reproductive rights (all issued by the government) with antifascist struggle.

Source: march organisers: Koalicja Antyfaszystowska.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9wju8e/an_antifascist_march_starting_in_my_hood_in/#lightbox

Bibliography:

Piotrowski, Grzegorz: 2024 – The dynamics of the antifascist movement in the context of illiberal democracy in Poland (with P. Kocyba), Partecipazione e Conflitto 17 (1), 80-95
Piotrowski, Grzegorz: 2023 – “Antifa in Illiberal Democracy” https://antipodeonline.org/2023/03/29/antifa-in-illiberal-democracy/ (online)
Piotrowski, Grzegorz: 2023 – “Acting Alone Together: Reconfiguration of the Pro-Migrant and Refugee Activists’ Arena in Poland”, Teoria Polityki 7 (2023), pp. 193 – 214
Piotrowski, Grzegorz: 2021 – ‘“Sometimes Anti-Social, Always Anti-Fascist” – Interplay Between Moderate and Radical Actors in the Polish Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist Movements’, Studia Socjologiczne, no. 3(241),