Thursday 25 February 2016

Observations on PiS and Father Rydzyk.

PiS should not be described as Catholic conservatives: they are a far right authoritatarian Party and Movement in continuity with the radical right Endecja of the 1930s with their obsession with 'alien elements', the sin of 'free thinking' and idea Jews are  agents of communist plots ( zydokomuna ) 
So it is hardly surprising PiS intends funding a private college run by an odious toad like Father Rydzyk, Reuters reported,
 'Members of the ruling Law and Justice Party say they want to earmark 20 million zlotys ($4.9 million) from this year's budget for Father Tadeusz Rydzyk's College of Social and Media Culture in Torun, which offers degrees in journalism and other subjects.' 
Father Rydzyk is an alleged 'Christian' who preys on the gullibility of stupid uneducated people to spread anti-semitic propaganda and hatred of people whose lives he knows nothing about buy feels knowledgeable enough to prate on about with infallible authority. .
This fraud has established a business empire in a manner that would rouse the ire of Jesus, though it's doubtful Rydzyk is even educated enough to realise this,unless, he is but is just a complete cynic laughing as he counts the money he rakes in through his media empire, especially the maudlin Radio Maryja.
Yet the scale of his fortune raises questions about where he really does gain such a large amount of funds as it cannot be only from his 'newspapers'.but there appears slightly too mich respect for anyone in poland, just as in the US, who conceal financial ambitions and careerism in the garb of religion
Typical of Rydzik's pronouncements are such as those even levelled against the last PiS government in 2007 when he accused Lech Kaczynski of being a 'swindler' for even discussing the return of looted Jewish property during World War Two, 
In so doing, Rydzyk thus explicitly endorsed crimes committed against Polish Jews who were murdered or driven out of Poland through pogroms by those furious they might have to move out of Jewish property they grabbed once their fellow Polish citizens were marched off to concentration camps.
In a lecture in 2007 this 'priest' gave to students at his media centre in Torun, northern Poland, Rydzyk criticise Kaczynski for his subservience to the Jewish lobby. "You know that it's about giving $65bn," to the Jews, "They will come to you and say 'give me your coat. Take off your pants. Give me your shoes'," 
This is the usual pathological form of demagogy  is there: the theft of Jewish assets as a criminal act is turned on its head and the greedy Jew is seen as the agent of evil and his own downfall ( and during the Nazi era his extermination and, later, under national-communism of his deserved expulsion ).
The hypocrisy of PiS moaning about liberal 'media bias' when Rydzyk's media empire, ( with Telewizja Republika and TV Trwam part of it ) alarmingly popular, supports PiS directly through what can only be termed pure propaganda. 'Trwam' translates curiously as 'I Endure ). 
In fact, hypocrisy hardly does justice to PiS: it's doublethink in the pathological and cynical sense described by George Orwell in 1984 where the lie is accepted both as a lie but also as expedient 'truth'. And both Kaczynski and Rydzyk come across physically and mentally rather like the Pigs on Animal Farm. 
While Rydzk was critical of the slightly softer and less vindictive Lech, Jarek Kaczynski has had no qualms about supporting this charlatan and ugly little con man' in 2007, addressing a crowd of around 150,000 people, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told them: "Here is Poland.". If so, God help it.
Not content with relentlessly pumping out hatred of others, Rydzyk has been working on a huge Church and heath spa complex in Torun for the use of VIPs , as opposed to the common folks, those, of course, who make personal financial donations so that Rydzyk can thus carry on the work of God 
After all, like US tele-evangelist huckers and charlatans, it is thought God naturally favours the successful while having less to do with the poor who curiously tend to support his worldview out of desperation and the fact the politicians cared nothing for them after 1990.
But, of course, Rydzyk was found guilty of illegal forms of fundraising in 2011, so added to bigotry and rabid hatred of anybody who does not accept his deranged version of Christianity can be added the sin of corruption and greed and dishonesty.
In the 1990s, Rydzyk made his fortune by trying to act as fundraiser to save shipyards in Gdansk from closure. in 1997, the shipyard was at the verge of bankruptcy. Rydzyk exploited the opportunity and with the help of his wretched Radio Maryja to plead for private donations to keep the shipyards open. 
The idea was to raise sufficient funds to buy out the company and run it privately. People began sending in their entire life savings, because they felt an emotional connection with the cause, because it was the cradle of Solidarity and the struggle against communism
Not known for 'transparency' ( the ways of God are vouchsafed only to those with a close relationship with Him ) it remains unknown how much money was raised because there were no accounts or official bookeeping documents about it anywhere. It is thought the donations could rack up to hundred million dollars. 
Curiously, just after two years, the fundraising ended. The shipyard was taken over by another corporation.The money. however, was never returned, Rydzyk had other plans to continue the fight for God in Polish public life and that involved his expanding media empire 
Later on in the 2000s Rydzyk branched out further and, later, his VIP health spa and mega-kitsch Church and 'educational college' have become for him and PiS prestige projects designed to preserve the sanctity of the Polish Nation from a host of evils from within and without.
Well connected with 'Law and Justice', Rydzyk seems to have put himself above the law and appears to have networked his way into the position of being untouchable. Such tolerance is not shown to those who find themselves the convenient targets of a renewed bout of political witch hunts 

The persecutions range from from Lech Walesa's alleged role as a collaborator and informer, with the documents still curiously not published, and Donald Tusk, smeared as an East German Stasi agent a piece of surreal nonsense that came from the clinically paranoid Defence minister Antoni Macierewicz.

The fact these slanderous allegations are lies while there are real questions about Rydzk's finances and corruption, reveals the true essence of the absurdly named 'Law and Justice' Party. Rydzyk is the Polish equivalent of a Jerry Falwell or Ted Haggart and Poland needs a Christopher Hitchens to skewer him

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