As someone who has grown up in Poland, I’ve been horrified by the news of increasing knife crime and violence taking place in my home-city, Warsaw, and across Polish schools and cities, resulting in countless injuries and some deaths.
Hearing all of this, I was reminded of another violent incident from over a year ago now, when a woman was “killed in an axe attack at the University of Warsaw.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t arbitrarily frame these incidents as connected, but I want to emphasise this sense of a growing frequency of violence in Poland.
Now, I can already predict what some right-wing, propaganda-gulping enthusiasts will claim is the reason for this feeling, so I’d like to briefly point out who is engaging in all this violence. It is predominantly Polish men, with some cases of Polish women. I will hear nothing of the ridiculously exaggerated notions that migrants enact the most violence upon other Poles (an unfortunately common myth) when this evidence to the contrary couldn’t be more blatantly apparent.
Then there’s the matter of Poland’s confederate party wanting to increase the liberalisation of gun ownership. Forgive me for not having anything more intellectual to say about this besides it being perhaps the most disconnected idea from reality any contemporary politician could invent. I don’t care how many mental health screenings would accompany it; it’s genuinely unfathomable to me how anyone could believe greater gun accessibility would somehow support Polish people’s safety. ‘Poverty-alleviation is radical, but guns will definitely make our country safer!’ seems to be the so-called logic of its brainless proponents, preferring short-term insanity over transformative improvement. No, your neighbour having a gun on hand won’t save Poland from a Russian invasion. But it might be used to intimidate and threaten — if not kill — ordinary citizens. It’s not a far-fetched concern at all, considering recent developments.
This goes to show how delusional right-wing nationalists are. They construct fears that something dear to us — the intangible, beautiful concept of one’s nation — is being attacked (who knows by whom, really, but that’s what they’re saying, so it must be true!) and then act rashly and irresponsibly to defend it. They compel people to oppress and divide others: they constrict women into vile traditionalisms with violent consequences, and frame marginalised communities as threats. Meanwhile, the only truly threatening development is the strengthening conviction that we are enacting a moral patriotism, which only really maintains a persistent hatred.
Let me put it plainly. When right-wing ideas — especially nationalistic ones — assimilate into day-to-day attitudes, and subversively entrench themselves into our cultures, violence increases. It is not simply radicalism, or the result of a just-recent “online glorification of violence,” but specifically the dissemination and widespread acceptance of right-wing radicalisms.
The seemingly-organised knife attacks in Poland might be being driven by a different cause. Same with the violent axe incident from 2025. But it’s not surprising that these incidents would become more frequent amid the mass popularisation of hateful, nationalistic rhetorics.
We can see the prolonged consequences of these narratives in the UK now, as hate crimes by British citizens have been on the rise, creating a harmful, general sense of insecurity across the country. It’s important to recognise that, more broadly, the ideas belonging to this ideology — particularly in its current form — are plainly destructive.
Stop listening to reactionary, right-wing lunatics. There are far better political options for us to look towards.
Photo by Egor Komarov on Unsplash.
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The violence of radical nationalism
As someone who has grown up in Poland, I’ve been horrified by the news of increasing knife crime and violence taking place in my home-city, Warsaw, and across Polish schools and cities, resulting in countless injuries and some deaths.
Hearing all of this, I was reminded of another violent incident from over a year ago now, when a woman was “killed in an axe attack at the University of Warsaw.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t arbitrarily frame these incidents as connected, but I want to emphasise this sense of a growing frequency of violence in Poland.
Now, I can already predict what some right-wing, propaganda-gulping enthusiasts will claim is the reason for this feeling, so I’d like to briefly point out who is engaging in all this violence. It is predominantly Polish men, with some cases of Polish women. I will hear nothing of the ridiculously exaggerated notions that migrants enact the most violence upon other Poles (an unfortunately common myth) when this evidence to the contrary couldn’t be more blatantly apparent.
Then there’s the matter of Poland’s confederate party wanting to increase the liberalisation of gun ownership. Forgive me for not having anything more intellectual to say about this besides it being perhaps the most disconnected idea from reality any contemporary politician could invent. I don’t care how many mental health screenings would accompany it; it’s genuinely unfathomable to me how anyone could believe greater gun accessibility would somehow support Polish people’s safety. ‘Poverty-alleviation is radical, but guns will definitely make our country safer!’ seems to be the so-called logic of its brainless proponents, preferring short-term insanity over transformative improvement. No, your neighbour having a gun on hand won’t save Poland from a Russian invasion. But it might be used to intimidate and threaten — if not kill — ordinary citizens. It’s not a far-fetched concern at all, considering recent developments.
This goes to show how delusional right-wing nationalists are. They construct fears that something dear to us — the intangible, beautiful concept of one’s nation — is being attacked (who knows by whom, really, but that’s what they’re saying, so it must be true!) and then act rashly and irresponsibly to defend it. They compel people to oppress and divide others: they constrict women into vile traditionalisms with violent consequences, and frame marginalised communities as threats. Meanwhile, the only truly threatening development is the strengthening conviction that we are enacting a moral patriotism, which only really maintains a persistent hatred.
Let me put it plainly. When right-wing ideas — especially nationalistic ones — assimilate into day-to-day attitudes, and subversively entrench themselves into our cultures, violence increases. It is not simply radicalism, or the result of a just-recent “online glorification of violence,” but specifically the dissemination and widespread acceptance of right-wing radicalisms.
The seemingly-organised knife attacks in Poland might be being driven by a different cause. Same with the violent axe incident from 2025. But it’s not surprising that these incidents would become more frequent amid the mass popularisation of hateful, nationalistic rhetorics.
Braverman’s denial of her English identity sets a worrying precedent
We can see the prolonged consequences of these narratives in the UK now, as hate crimes by British citizens have been on the rise, creating a harmful, general sense of insecurity across the country. It’s important to recognise that, more broadly, the ideas belonging to this ideology — particularly in its current form — are plainly destructive.
Stop listening to reactionary, right-wing lunatics. There are far better political options for us to look towards.
Photo by Egor Komarov on Unsplash.
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