Texan in AZ

There are a few things every one of the million people gathered here at the Independence March agrees on. They all love Poland. And judging by the chants, they're all against communism – and against Prime Minister Tusk. To put it mildly… 🇵🇱 From outside Poland, those two might look like separate things. Here, people hear them as one. They remember how it feels when power answers to someone outside the country, when the media all sing the same song, and when anyone who disagrees gets called an extremist. We all know what the Lie sounds like, and we recognize it to be communism, whatever name it goes by today. That's why the march looks the way it does. It isn't a party rally. It's a nation remembering what it cost to be free and saying so out loud, in front of a government it doesn't trust – and in front of the media that are calling it far-right. Reuters already called it a "far-right Polish march", after Community Notes had corrected them for the very same thing. That's no longer a mistake. A mistake gets fixed. This is a method: repeat the label until it sticks harder than the facts, so the reader in London or New York never finds out that this "far right" is a million Poles who still like being a nation. And it's the same old song. Call anyone who disagrees an extremist, and you never have to answer what they actually said. We heard it for decades under communism. We recognize it now. We still don't hate the mainstream media enough. We keep acting surprised. It's time we started to understand what they are.