https://vimeo.com/448150391 Poland's right-wing fundamentalist Catholic government has been brutally suppressing the LGBTQ community to strengthen the move to a broad authoritarian government. Boyan Stanislavski joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. Transcript Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. This episode is produced in collaboration with Other News. Other News is an international press platform that disseminates analysis, insights, and information about global issues in English, Spanish, and Italian. You can find it at http://www.other-news.info. Poland is one of the more important countries of Europe in terms of geopolitics and the size of its economy. Yet in North America, we hear very little about it and most of us know even less. Poland is a regional power in Central Europe, with the largest stock exchange in the East Central European zone, the sixth largest economy in the European Union, and 10th largest in all of Europe. Poland maintains a high income economy, along with a relatively high standard of living. At least that's what it says when you research Poland, we're going to find out how true all that is. It has, relatively speaking, high living standards and does well in terms of standards of safety and education. Alongside a developed educational system, the state also provides free university education, Social Security and a universal health care system, none of which you can find in the United States. Poland is one of the closest allies of the US in the world, contributing troops to the invasion of Iraq and supporting the US policy of encirclement of Russia. Now, joining us to discuss the situation in Poland and its role in the world is Boyan Stanislavski. He's a Bulgarian and Polish activist, a journalist, an editor, publisher, translator. In the late 90s, he was active in the Polish left and later in the labor movement, particularly the biggest Polish labor confederation, the All Poland Trade Union Alliance. Until 2012, editor in chief of its weekly magazine and senior editor at baricada.org and strike.eu, he's the Polish correspondent for the Bulgarian National Radio. Thanks for joining us, Boyan. Boyan StanislavskiThanks for having me. Paul JaySo why don't we start with what's in the news and then get to the bigger picture? Poland has a very right-wing, almost virtually fundamentalist Catholic government, and there's been very brutal suppression of the LGBTQ+ community recently. So tell us, first of all, what's been happening and why, and where is Polish public opinion on this? Boyan StanislavskiAbsolutely. What we're witnessing in Poland right now is a major crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community here, and violence on top of that. And it bears no resemblance to anything that I can think of in the modern Polish history since homosexuality was not outlawed, anymore. And that happened in the early 30s. And this is, of course, abhorrent because we saw a lot of politically motivated police violence against the LGBTQ+ activists and their supporters. The events that surfaced in the international media that happened last weekend, I don't want to go into all the details of it, but it was rampant police violence in the very center of Warsaw, the Polish capital, where people were not only beaten up, you know, dragged on the concrete to police cars, massively arrested. I think even the police even went over the top in a way that there was not enough room below the police stations,
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