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Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (NOP) (National Rebirth of Poland) is a minor nationalist political party in Poland (reaching 0.6% of the popular vote in regional elections as of 2006). It is a member of European National Front and a co-founder of International Third Position.

History and politics

The NOP registered as a political party in 1992. It claims to be the reincarnation of National Radical Camp, the pre-war nationalist youth organisation, which was banned in 1934.

NOP publishes the magazine Szczerbiec (the name of the Polish royal coronation sword), which lists neofascists Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore among the members of its editorial board, Młodzież Narodowa (National Youth), Myśl (The Thought), and Biuletyn NOP. The publishing house was closed after 1989 and the collapse of the Communist regime.

In 2001, NOP membership in Poland was estimated at 500, consisting mainly of neo-Nazi skinheads. ·

In 2001, the NOP tried to enter parliamentary politics for the first time. The newly created NOP front organization, the New Forces Alliance (Sojusz Nowych Sil), joined the nationalist electoral bloc, Alternative Social Movement (Ruch Spoleczny Alternatywa, RSA). Among the NOP candidates were Marcin Radzewicz, the leader of the openly neo-Nazi National Socialist Front (Front Narodowo-Socjalistyczny). RSA gained just below 0.5% of the votes, and the alliance was dissolved.

In the 2005 Polish parliamentary elections, the NOP received 0.06% of the vote. In the 2006 self-government regional elections, it received 0.64%.

The NOP is known for trying to get media attention with its shock value campaigns. During the 2007 parliamentary and Senate elections, the NOP distributed election campaign posters with the slogan "Fascism? We are worse."

Another, openly homophobic shock value campaign conducted by the NOP was called Zakaz Pedałowania (Forbid Homosexuality). On 17 May 2006 in Toruń, the NOP organized a counter-demonstration against a public LGBT rights supporters' meeting. NOP members chanted slogans, including "gas the queers" (pedały do gazu) and "there will be a baton for each queer face" (znajdzie się kij na pedalski ryj). ·

Party program

The official NOP's program includes:

• The interests of the whole (Polish) nation always come before everything – social class, religious beliefs, skin color or political views.
• Minimal government bureaucracy.
• It wants to end conscription and to introduce a voluntary army.
• The party is pro-life and thus opposes euthanasia and abortion.
• It is against same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption.
• Strong opposition to EU and NATO.
• Decommunization and Lustration.
• It calls for a return of capital punishment (for murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealing, organized crime and for acting against the state of Poland) as well as large penalties for any immoral acts such as corruption.
• It is against any form of socialism and liberalism with respect to moral and economic conduct.
• The National Rebirth of Poland says that the party's ideology does not fit in with any form of left-wing and right-wing politics, preferring to call itself the "Third Position movement".

Anti-Semitism and racism

The NOP is stated to be an anti-Semitic organisation by a number of government bodies, nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and individual experts worldwide, such as the United States Department of State ·  · and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). According to The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, the NOP is promoting violent forms of neo-fascism and antisemitism, including Holocaust denial. According to the British historian, Dr John Pollard, neo-Nazi elements in the NOP and their racism and homophobia continue to give rise to concern in other member countries of the European Union. NOP actions were also condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, which states that the NOP is an openly anti-Semitic extremist organization. According to the magazine The Warsaw voice, the manifesto of the National Revival of Poland, which contains a sentence stating that "Jews will be removed from Poland, and their possessions will be confiscated", is taken directly from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. The magazine also claims that the official greeting gesture used in the party is the Nazi-like gesture of the raised arm.

A number of NOP-related incidents received some media coverage in Poland and abroad. According to the European Roma Rights Centre, on July 3, 1998, NOP supporters vandalised the Roma community centre in Łódź. Along with racist graffiti, swastikas were sprayed onto the office walls. The perpetrators also left behind their signature as NOP - Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski. During the same night, the same group reportedly vandalised the premises of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group.

In March 2000, in Lodz, swastikas and the slogan "Jews out!" along with NOP symbols were spray-painted on the home of Marek Edelman, who was the deputy commander in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the last of the leaders of the uprising still alive. The incident was condemned by the president and prime minister of Poland, who sent Edelman letters of support and apology.

In 2003, the NOP, together with other Polish skinhead and far right groups, organized free summer camps for teenagers. During the camps participants were trained how to recognize a Jew from his physical appearance and how to recognize anarchists, pacifists and "the pigs who endanger the white race" by their clothes. In the camp the pictures of African-Americans hanged by the Ku Klux Klan were shown, and tapes with Nazi music were played. Paint-ball was practiced shooting at targets depicting a Jew, an Arab and a pig standing on two legs.

NOP front organization National-Radical Institute (Instytut Narodowo-Radykalny, INR) was involved in publishing Western and Polish Holocaust denial literature. In 1997, INR published a volume of translated works of Western Holocaust deniers under the title The Myth of the Holocaust. The same year, INR announced that there were no exterminations in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

In 2006, the NOP was involved in campaigning to free convicted British Holocaust denier David Irving from prison in Austria, and produced a poster containing the slogan "David Irving - Uwolnić prawdę" ("David Irving - Free the truth".)

The party also expressed support for the bombing of Israel at the time of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, with a poster image stating, "Bomby na Izrael - Już czas !!!" ("Bombs against Israel - it's about time!!!"). On August 13, 2006, NOP leader Adam Gmurczyk published a declaration on behalf of the NOP Executive Council titled Izrael musi zostać zniszczony! (Israel must be destroyed!), calling for the international military takeover of Israel, and offering to put administrative control of Jerusalem in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI and his successors.

On April 14, 2007, in Krakow, anti-Semitic slogans were shouted and fascist-like gestures made by the participants of an NOP demonstration. Investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office were discontinued on November 26, 2007, as no perpetrators were identified and the case was not classified as an offense.

References

1. ^ Michael Shafir Varieties of Antisemitism in Post-communist East Central Europe: Motivations and Political Discourse
2. Poland 2001-2, by Stephen Roth Institute
3. Poland 2000-1 by Stephen Roth Institute
4. Cas Mudde (2005). Racist Extremism in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge. p. 162. ISBN 0415355931. OCLC 55228719.
5. Elections 2005 on Gazeta Wyborcza website (en)
6. http://www.wiadomosci24.pl/artykul/wyborczy_slogan_nop_u_jestesmy_gorsi_od_faszyzmu_44429.html
7. http://www.wiadomosci24.pl/artykul/wyborczy_slogan_nop_u_jestesmy_gorsi_od_faszyzmu_44429.html
8. « Zakaz Pedałowania » on NOP's website (pl)
9. United Nations Human Rights Council
10. Amnesty International Polska
11. NOP's official program(pl)
12. « Plakatem w żyda », Dziennik Wschodni, 17 January 2006
13. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor US State Dept.
14. International Religious Freedom Report 2007 US State Dept.
15. European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) Third report on Poland Adopted on 17 December 2004
16. Poland 2006, by Stephen Roth Institute
17. John Pollard ‘Clerical Fascism’: Context, Overview and Conclusion in: Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 11, June 2007
18. Poland: Democracy and the Challenge of Extremism, by Anti-Defamation League, 2006
19. ^ RACE: Fighting Fascism, Warsaw Voice, 31 July 2003
20. http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=88
21. Anti-Semitic Incidents - March 2000, by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
22. http://www.forum-znak.org.pl/index-en.php?t=przeglad&id=1852
23. Kwiet, Konrad (2004). Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust. Greenwood Publishing. p. 160. ISBN 0275974669. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
24. http://www.nop.org.pl/img/irving.jpg
25. http://www.nop.org.pl/img/bomby.jpg
26. Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski, Izrael musi zostać zniszczony!
27. « Anti-Semitic Incidents In Poland », The Jewish Press, March 26, 2008

External links

• Official website NOP
• Nacjonalista.pl web portal of Polish nationalist movement
• Szczerbiec, newspaper of NOP

• Political parties in Poland
• Nationalist parties
• Political parties established in 1981
• Antisemitism
• Holocaust denial
• Homophobia