So all we have to do is wait patiently until the unwashed drunk sobers up and heals himself, and then will either support the painfully faithful, or at least abandon the corrupt. Then the minority will again become the majority, and the suspended path of history will flow back to its rightful course.
“Or rather its rightful trough,” Jo Harper would probably add. But his book
Our Man in Warszawa: How the West Misread Poland, which has just been published in English by the Central European University Press, is not built on “a plague on both your houses” schadenfreude – although there are disturbingly many such elements in it.
Маршът на Източна Европа към короната в ИТ индустрията money.bg - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from money.bg Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A Briton in Poland: Wise observer or naive fool?
April 12, 2021
I didn’t know what to expect.
I knew that social media and the comments sections below media articles tend to attract people with perhaps too much time on their hands, who might harbour frustrations and not be entirely sane.
But I also thought that this is a space that allows for something real, visceral, unedited and authentic to be said.
My fear was that it would repeat the old stereotypes, that a foreigner would never understand Poland, that by definition whatever he says is wrong, or naive, or conceals some kind of anti-Polish current.
Bill Gates on a farmland shopping spree msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
summary
Written by a Brit who has lived in Poland for more than twenty years, this book challenges some accepted thinking in the West about Poland and about the rise of Law and Justice (PiS) as the ruling party in 2015. It is a remarkable account of the Polish post-1989 transition and contemporary politics, combining personal views and experience with careful fact and material collections. The result is a vivid description of the events and scrupulous explanations of the political processes, and all this with an interesting twist – a perspective of a foreigner and insider at the same time. Settled in the position of participant observer, Jo Harper combines the methods of macro and micro analysis with CDA, critical discourse analysis. He presents and interprets the constituent elements and issues of contemporary Poland: the main political forces, the Church, the media, issues of gender, the Russian connection, the much-disputed judicial reform and many others.