As noted in the HOPE not hate’s 2021 State on Hate Report, “While activists will generally be primarily preoccupied with local or national issues, they invariably contextualize them continentally or even globally.” For these foreign actors, local events are an opportunity to establish relations with their fellow-nationalists and to advocate for a wider (white European) identity based on shared views, concerns, and enemies.

They became one of the useful tools to gather, openly and publicly, white nationalists from around the world. In recent years, such rallies have played an important role in the transnationalization of the radical right. For example, Robert Bakiewicz, the main organizer of the rally, said that “Poland is being attacked on its eastern border by Moscow, which is using Belarus to apply pressure via migration” and that Poland is “also being attacked by Germany, which is using European institutions to take away our sovereignty.” Building a transnational movement The migration crisis at the Poland-Belarus border was exploited in order to attack countries who pose, according to the Polish nationalists, a threat to Poland. Marchers in Warsaw waved Celtic Cross flags while others burned German and anti-fascist flags. The main rally in Warsaw was organized by the neo-fascist party National Radical Camp (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR), and it attracted tens of thousands of nationalist groups and individuals. This symbolic manifestation of hate occurred at the Polish Independence Day, during a small rally in the city of Kalisz. “Death to Jews,” chanted the crowd while a man burned a book with the “Statut Kaliski” (Statute of Kalisz), a document from the Thirteenth Century that regulated the legal status of Jews in Poland. Koch’s research focuses on transnational violent extremist ideologies and movements.

Ariel Koch is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lauder School of Government Diplomacy and Strategy, at The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). Thousands gathered in Warsaw for an annual Independence Day march, organized by far-right groups, carrying Polish and nationalist – November 11, 2021.

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