On Poland and its borders – J. Hoberman in NYRB:

‘Europe, in Agnieszka Holland’s rough-and-tumble Green Border, is a beacon of hope and a cauldron of hate. The dual perspective is implicit in the movie’s title, which refers both to the European Union’s “open” internal borders and those forested international boundaries associated with smuggled contraband and illegal crossings.
Holland’s film dramatizes an incident precipitated in the autumn of 2021 by Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus. After luring several thousand asylum seekers—mostly Syrian, Kurdish, and Afghan—there with the promise of free transit to the EU, Lukashenko dumped them on his country’s borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Poland, then led by the right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), responded by creating a militarized security zone between the barbed-wire borders and barring aid workers and doctors from helping the stranded refugees. The so-called tourists were forced back and forth along the 250-mile frontier. The situation continues today—part of a larger, fifteen-year-long humanitarian disaster exemplified by the more than two million Middle Eastern and African refugees who have crossed or attempted to cross the Mediterranean.’

(…)

‘Released in Poland last fall after winning a special jury prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, weeks before a national election, the movie became an issue in a campaign already largely concerned with demonizing refugees. It was attacked unseen by PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who called Holland a Stalinist and compared her to Joseph Goebbels. (She filed a defamation suit.) The government released a campaign ad that, among other things, deployed the wife of a border guard to characterize Holland’s film as “international propaganda” aimed at “destroying our lives.”’

(…)

‘If Green Border’s greatest offense was its depiction of Poland’s security force, its epilogue, by celebrating Polish generosity, brings down the hammer even harder. Dated February 26, 2022, two days after Putin invaded Ukraine, the movie shows the Poles—including some previously seen in their capacity as border guards—courteously welcoming the vanguard of the two million Ukrainian refugees.’

Read the article here.

For my book on refugees, I visited Poland in December 2022. The situation was dire, more so than in many other European countries, but it’s hard to compare human abuse, especially the treatment of refugees. Compared to drowning in the Mediterranean, almost everything is better, but then the old Agamben questions kicks in: has bare life still something to do with the good life?

Interesting is that the same kind of language pops in many places. International propaganda, globalists, our way of life.

The fear of change, the fear of death; we need an enemy that can be defeated, the refugee for example.