Those cheeky, ungrateful and xenophobic Poles really went too  far this time around! In their resistance against immigration, they have resorted to “blackmail” against the European Union (EU), according to the left-leaning Dutch newspaper NRC. Which also accuses critics of immigration of waging “hysterical culture wars.”

The object of its scorn and that of other liberal critics is the referendum in Poland on October 15. The right-wing government in Warsaw wants to give the voters a say, preferably a negative one, on the agreement on Arab and African migration the 27 EU member states reached last June.  Poland and Hungary voted against, but will have to respect it regardless. The referendum, coinciding with parliamentary elections, allows Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki to rubbish what he sees as the EU’s politics of coercion. (RELATED: Is Civil War on the Horizon in France?)

Morawiecki recently kicked off the referendum campaign with a video on social media showing burning cities, violent rioters, looters and a black man with a crazed look in the eye licking a large knife clean. In this none too subtle reference to the recent riots in France, the leader of Poland’s ruling Party for Law and Justice (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, asks the rhetorical questions: “We witness what is happening on the streets of Europe. Do you want this to happen in Poland as well? Do you want to stop being the rulers of your own country?”

Definitely, these cocky Poles have it in for what they consider an arrogant France sermonizing it on the merits of multiculturalism. Early July, when France was burning, Morawiecki had already posted a video of a calm, sunny Poland with families passing time in well-maintained parks, when at the same time France was held a knife to its throat by the offspring of migrants. Morawiecki  squarely lays the blame at immigration, calling in his video for “secure borders in Europe.”.

Thus, president Emmanuel Macron had got his comeuppance  for branding Mr. Morawiecki “an extreme right-wing anti-Semite.” That was early last year, just after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when Macron had tried to persuade Vladimir Putin to pull back his troops. Morawiecki saw this as trying to appease Adolf Hitler.

In their spat, Macron accused the Polish PM of supporting his right-wing rival Marine Le Pen during last year’s presidential election campaign. As it happens, Mrs. Le Pen also wants to consult the French people by referendum on the tough anti-immigration policy she aims to implement if she wins in 2027. (RELATED: Amsterdam No Longer Wants to Be a Narco-State)

She will closely follow what is happening in Poland, where voters are asked to reply to the question: “Do you support letting into our country thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced displacement mechanism that the European bureaucracy is imposing on us?” 

Poland’s government’s scorn is directed against the part of the EU’s pact for asylum and migration forcing member states to share the burden of the massive influxes in countries where most of them arrive, like Italy and Greece. A refusal will oblige those countries  to pay fines for every asylum seeker they turn down. 

The dreaded “illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa,” by the way, are already massing at its border with Belarus. This year, some 19.000 people are waiting for a chance to cross into Poland and, therefore, the European Union. Last year, their numbers reached an estimated 16.000, according to recent comments to the Reuters news agency by the head of the Polish border force. Just as in 2021, these poor people are being “invited” to come to the border region by the Belarussian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, possibly edged on by Moscow, to undermine the neighboring country. A form of hybrid warfare, with migrants used as arms. No wonder then that Poland erects walls and deploys extra troops to keep them out, resisting pressure from human rights organizations to let them in. Should Poland budge, Lukashenko would certainly open the floodgates. 

Poland’s stubborn resistance has not endeared it to the European Left. After its liberation from communism, it has rapidly grown into one of the leading European nations. It remains, however, the odd man out as a country where a proud, stubborn nationalism coupled with an unabashed Catholicism is the norm for many. These characteristics are not necessarily understood or appreciated elsewhere in Europe. Critics tend to denigrate Poles as reactionary and loath to accept changes other Europeans are expected to welcome, or at least grudgingly accept. Like immigration. 

Thanks to their lack of conformism, Poland’s successive governments, not only right-wing, have succeeded in saving their citizens from the lies about the merits of immigration and multiculturalism, lies that their fellow-Europeans have been fed for decades. 

During the holiday months, Poles have travelled widely through European countries grappling with the consequences. In The Netherlands, the center-left government collapsed over the issue. This happened amidst stories of people living near a center for refugees forming vigilante groups to protect local girls, women, shopkeepers and homeowners from the violent and criminal minority in the overflowing camp in the northern province of Groningen. (RELATED: Silent French Minority Wants No Part In Pension Reform Protests)

In France, unfortunate tourists fled from unprecedented violence in cities, towns, and villages. In Great Britain, Poles witnessed the further dwindling of white minorities in cities like London and Birmingham. Britannia does not even rule the waves in the narrow English Channel, where a daily fleet of dinghies filled to sinking point with young males cross over from France. Polish visitors note that even in German provincial towns like Düsseldorf and Koblenz the population has darkened considerably since Angela Merkel opened the borders in 2015 and 2016. Islamic headscarves abound, these newcomers have no intention of respecting the mores of the country that gave them a new lease of life. 

Dutch sociology professor Ruud Koopmans, of Berlin’s Humboldt University, recently remarked upon the high crime rates under these “new Germans.” His latest book, The Asylum Lottery, available in Dutch and German editions, will not have gone unnoticed in Poland.

Officially, Poland’s referendum only concerns the EU-agreement, but its question comes down to: “Do you want the same type of immigration that is such a blight on other countries?”  

Of course, the referendum also reeks of a political ploy to win the simultaneous parliamentary elections. In practice, experts say, the EU will not call upon Poland to accept Africans and Arabs, as it has welcomed more than a million Ukrainians.

Marowiecki’s party, PiS, has been in power since 2015. The liberal Civic Platform, led by former prime minister Donald Tusk, aims to stop it from winning a third term. Will Tusk, if he wins,  allow Poland to go the way of France, Germany and The Netherlands?

That is unlikely. Tusk has said that the uproar in France shocked him deeply, too.  And in a video message he chastised the government … for recruiting non-Europeans to take jobs that the ever more prosperous Poles disdain. Tusk was not convinced by the government’s pledge of “controlled immigration.” And stated: “Poles must regain control over their country and its borders.” His opponents will find it impossible to disagree.