The Montage of the National Past: Polish Right-Wing Illustrated Press and the Abuse of History

Abstract

The study analyzes covers of contemporary Polish right-wing magazines and shows that many of them use historical images for political purposes. Referring to the terminology of Antoon de Baets, the author argues that the images on the covers “abuse history,” i.e., use history in an intentionally deceptive way. The main technique of abusing history is montage. Historical motifs are combined with each other either on particular covers or between them. Although originally montage was widely used as means of avant-garde and leftist art, it is now a common method of designing conservative and right-wing imagery. Drawing on the premises of the pictorial turn, the author further claims that the covers shape social and political realities. They are not mere illustrations but powerful actors of the public discourse that promote a view on history in which whole nations are either heroes or traitors, good or bad. Therefore, they contribute to the simplified and even falsified perspective on the past.

1 Introduction

In November 2015, just after the national-conservative PiS-party¹ won the parliamentary elections in Poland, the history supplement² to the right-wing magazine Uważam Rze (I Mean that) published a cover depicting the European flag with yellow swastikas instead of the golden stars. The title reads: “How Hitler’s Germany invented the European Union” (Fig. 3.1). The affective power of this image is based on its simplicity: The swastikas replace the stars. The initial symbol is visible only as shadows in form of the stars, behind the swastikas. In this way, the image suggests a causal relation between Nazi Germany and the EU. Even though accusing the EU of having Nazi origins is an extraordinarily provocative and factually false message, the cover hardly got noticed by other Polish media. Soon it became clear that the rhetoric of mixing EU-symbols with Nazi iconography would stay: At the peak of the refugee crisis in late 2015 and early 2016, the newly elected government rejected the European Commission’s proposal to introduce quotas that should regulate the number of refugees per member state, as the PiS considered it an intervention in Poland’s sovereignty. In that context, the magazine Wprost (Straight Talk)³ published a cover depicting leading European politicians as Nazis, with a large headline in white and red (Polish national colors) saying: “They want to supervise Poland again” (Fig. 3.2). While Uważam Rze adopted a rhetoric that referred to iconic symbols, Wprost’s argumentation was ad personam. The cover combines an image of men in Nazi uniform with the edited faces of Angela Merkel, Martin Schulz (then President of the European Parliament), Jean-Claude Junker (President of the European Commission), Guy Verhofstadt (Member of the European Parliament and leader of the liberal group), and Günther Oettinger (one of the European Commissioners). As the general Polish audience hardly recognizes non-Polish politicians, the cover also includes small captions with their names. The Nazi imagery is taken from a famous photo displaying Hitler, Mussolini, and three generals bending over a map in Hitler’s headquarters Wolfschanze (Wolf’s Lair) in August 1941. While on the original Nazi photo there was a military map in the background, on the Wprost-cover we see the European flag. It strengthens the message about the alleged threat coming from the EU. The picture from 1941 was part of a series of propaganda photos taken during Mussolini’s visits in Hitler’s Germany (Goeschel, 2017). Today, some of them are available through commercial photo agencies; for relatively small fees, their digital copies can be legally downloaded and reused.

Fig. 3.1

Cover of the history supplement to Uważam Rze 11 (2015)

Fig. 3.2

Cover of Wprost 2 (2016)

This time, Polish and international media commented on the cover extensively (Henley, 2016), although it was not the first comparison of Angela Merkel to Hitler published in Europe. Similar images appeared during the economic crisis in Greece, for instance, due to Germany’s leading role in establishing European recovery plans for the country (Bach, 2013; Laurelle, 2019). However, the images circulating in Greece usually juxtaposed Merkel with Hitler; Wprost, in contrast, replaced Hitler’s face with Merkel’s. To be precise, she was not compared to Hitler but presented as Hitler—a rhetorical technique called reductio ad Hitlerum, i.e., “an attempt to invalidate someone else’s position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler” (Laurelle, 2019, 308). Usually, this kind of rhetoric is characteristic of extremist media: After the German magazine Compact depicted Merkel with a Hitler moustache in January 2017, for example, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany classified it as right-wing extremist, arguing that Campact questioned the “democratic order” (Deutscher Bundestag, 2020); Facebook removed the magazine’s profile for the same reason (Berry, 2020). In Poland, in turn, it was the mainstream Wprost magazine presenting Merkel and other European politicians as dictators and Nazis, without any consequences.

2 The Agency of Magazine Covers

In this chapter, I discuss how Polish right-wing media abuse history—a concept introduced by Antoon de Baets (2009, 14) for intentionally deceptive usages of history—by means of assembling imagery on magazine covers. I claim that magazine covers are crucial elements of the visual public, which may be referred to as “iconosphere”—a useful notion by the Polish art historian Mieczysław Porębski (1972).⁴ In addition to existing research on the “visual rhetoric” of right-wing actors (i.a. Richardson & Wodak, 2009, 50–53; Doerr, 2021) and numerous statements such as they “have become very skillful at using visual material” (Hokka & Nelimarkka, 2022, 771), I argue that right-wing images are more than just elements of discourse; they are agents of discourse. Ever since the pictorial turn in the early 1990s,⁵ we know that the iconosphere has its own agency in shaping social realities. When creating historical narratives, images such as the two magazine covers presented above do (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2.) more than just represent the past in an abusive way, they rather abuse history themselves. Not only do they represent deception, but they are deceptive.

Experts on the right-wing iconosphere observe a tendency towards transnationally circulating motifs (Doerr, 2017; Wodak, 2019; Hokka & Nelimarkka, 2022). Specifically images depicting migrants are framed in a way that supports “rapid and effective diffusion and continuous translation of denigrating images of minorities in multicultural transnational public spaces” (Doerr, 2017, 331). This observation corresponds with current trends in public history, visual history, or memory studies in the ongoing transnational turn (Wüstenberg & Sierp, 2020; Cauvin, 2018). Yet, the Polish right-wing media seem to pursue a reverse strategy: Instead of introducing national issues into transnational contexts, they shape national contexts for transnational issues. At the same time, they appropriate techniques previously “owned” by left-wing actors—a mechanism that Doerr (2021) also observed for German right-wing media. Below, I demonstrate the historical framing of current issues and the appropriation of previously left-wing visual techniques by right-wing actors through a close visual analysis and reading of right-wing magazine covers.

Cover pages, which at first glance may seem of minor importance for academic research, are especially informative for studying nationalistic communities in current East Central Europe. Unlike illustrations next to articles, cover pages are tools of self-advertising; since the early stages of the illustrated press at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, they “function not just as individual icons but rather as a symbolic system” (Heller & Fili, 1996, 8). In recent years, they have become an increasingly autonomous visual medium. While they used to advertise the main articles, called “cover stories” for a reason, they now often refer to content considered to be attractive, regardless of actual importance or length. The role of magazine covers is primarily to attract consumer attention, rather than provide information. Thus, many consumers study the covers in kiosks and shop windows without reading the content altogether.

Each cover remains on display for at least a week. D.W. Pine, designer of many famous Time covers, stated that “the cover… crystallises what’s important in a simple, graphic, impactful 8-by-10 space—and it’s that curation that is powerful in a day where most, if not all, of our visuals are presented in an instant and gone tomorrow” (Patterson, 2019). Magazine covers serve as labels for the respective (visual) discourses. It is not necessarily a contradiction that multiple Polish right-wing magazines were established in the 2010s, at a time when social media gained importance in political debates. In fact, print and digital media often complement each other and mutually reinforce their messages by addressing different target groups (Bijsmans, 2017). Magazine covers, for instance, are usually available online as advertising for future issues. They are shared on social media—in Poland mostly Facebook and Twitter and rarely Instagram, despite its visual character. Eventually, some controversial images such as the abovementioned cover of Wprost become news themselves, not least in the context of shaping historical discourses. Editors and journalists often “take on the role of public historians,” as Carolyn Kitch (2005, 5) rightly claims. As today other media can provide information much faster than classic print, magazines seek topics that are less dependent on being up to date, for example history (Popp, 2015, 5).

In Poland, two right-wing magazines—W Sieci (In the Web), later published as Sieci (Web),⁶ and Do Rzeczy (To the Point)—appeared at the turn of 2012 to 2013 and quickly became political game changers. The third right-wing magazine of the time was the abovementioned Uważam Rze, printing the cover of the golden swastikas instead of golden stars (see Fig. 3.1). It was published as a weekly starting in 2011 and changed into a monthly in 2013 when the other two right-wing titles entered the market. From the very beginning, all three magazines contained history supplements. Ever since the fall of communism, hardly any Polish media outlet supported a political party as openly as W Sieci and Do Rzeczy did for PiS; however, at the same time the right-wing magazines introduced themselves as voices of “the people,” “disobedient” to the alleged “left-liberal mainstream.”

Provocative covers have been the trademarks of W Sieci and Do Rzeczy ever since their earliest issues, and national history has been among their preferred topics. Their authors identified alleged analogies between the past and the present and between historical and current heroes and traitors. Consequently, already in the first year of appearance, W Sieci was sued by Tomasz Lis, a well-known Polish liberal journalist, for showing him as Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels with blood on his hands.

From 2013 to 2015, 24% of W Sieci and 15% of Do Rzeczy covers depicted motifs of national history (Saryusz-Wolska, 2020, 68). Their openly nationalistic (visual) discourse contributed significantly to the election victory of PiS, as I argued elsewhere (ibid.). Today, they still play an important role on the Polish media market with a circulation of about 130,000 copies in total, plus online users.⁷ The last publicly available data from W Sieci is from November 2020 when 1.5 million users viewed their website 28 million times.⁸ Do Rzeczy is even among the leaders of the online media in Poland; in January 2022 (last available data), they had 4 million users.⁹ However, both magazines print about twice as many copies as they sell, due to indirect public funding obtained through ads by state-owned companies. According to a recent report, W Sieci received 4.6 million Euros of public funding and Do Rzeczy 3.1 million Euros in 2020 alone—sums incomparable to any other title of the Polish press (Dąbrowska-Cydzik, 2021). This also allows them to maintain their cover pages on display and in the public iconosphere for entire weeks instead of 2 or 3 days per week, as long as it takes until the circulation is sold.

3 Montage on Magazine Covers

How can magazine covers “abuse” history and contribute to falsifying historical facts? As the two examples above illustrate, by assembling and editing images. The technique may be referred to as collage, assemblage, or (photo)montage, with different artistic and intellectual traditions behind each term. Since nothing indicates a sophisticated usage of traditions by the editors of the magazines at hand, I remain with the broadest term, “montage.” Another reason for using this term is the fact that different motifs interact with each other not only within single covers, but also between them; new meanings then form by assembling various images that appear in a temporal order, usually weekly or monthly. In such cases, the crucial relation is between and not within particular images.

Obviously, putting together incompatible motifs has a very long history, as the ancient examples of a sphinx (animal, usually lion, with a human head) and the Medusa (human with hair replaced by snakes) prove. Yet, the invention of modern media, mainly photography and film, opened up much more opportunities. From the 1850s onwards, the montage became an avant-garde technique used by activist artists (Kreibel & Zervignón, 2019); later, it became indispensable for filmmakers who created consistent sequences with individual shots. Ever since the rise of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1910s, film editors have employed the so-called continuity principle, according to which the viewer should not recognize cuts and individual shots but have the impression of a continuous narrative.¹⁰ Visible editing, in turn, has been a typical trait of avant-garde cinema. In the 1920s, Soviet filmmakers—among them Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, or Sergei Eisenstein—developed a theory (Eisenstein called it a “method”) of assembling contradictory images in order to create new meanings. Different from Hollywood cinema, which presented consistent stories, Soviet films juxtaposed contradictory images and “sought to transcend ordinary storytelling in favor of a thesis-oriented narration of battling ideological concepts” (Lövgren, 2021, 173). The technique of montage has further developed throughout the twentieth century and eventually became the rule rather than exception in the iconosphere of the digital age (Kreibel & Zervignón, 2019, 119).

Despite its origin, the montage is currently among the most popular cultural techniques and, due to its omnipresence, lost its unique and critical character. Montage today shapes visual discourses at all ideological fronts; the replacement of the golden stars with golden swastikas (see Fig. 3.1) serves as an example of how this originally leftist and avant-garde technique has been adopted and manipulated by contemporary right-wing media. Interesting in this context is the fact that in Nazi Germany montage, or more specifically collage, was considered an element of “degenerate” (entartet) art (Zuschlag, 1997, 229). Suggesting a connection between the EU and Nazi Germany obviously is a false assumption of the EU being a totalitarian and criminal organization that threatens Europe’s safety. In fact, the European Community was established to “preserve and strengthen peace and liberty,” as the preamble of the Treaty Establishing the European Community reads.¹¹ Editing the faces of leading European politicians into a Nazi propaganda photo follows the same abusive strategy (see Fig. 3.2).

Yet, the usage of montage in the illustrated press seems under-researched, even though magazine covers used collage techniques long before the emergence of digital media and graphic software. In Poland, the illustrated press was a scarce commodity until the 1980s, when the political transformation into post-communism began. Only towards the end of the communist regime, a couple of new and almost uncensored magazines appeared, among them the abovementioned weekly Wprost, starting locally in 1983 and published nationwide in 1988. Since the earliest issues, their covers presented easy recognizable collages. Around the year 1989, for example, they combined the communist visual style (portraits of Stalin or Marx) with symbols of western and neoliberal values that were about to dominate the Polish public soon after (images of US-banknotes or logos of well-known western brands). Back then, black and white collage was the main technique used by Wprost, which changed slightly in the early 1990s when color print was introduced. However, in the late 1980s, cover design was not just an instrument of corporate identity but also an effect of scarcity; having access to low-quality and two-color printers only, graphic designers were very limited in their work.¹² And yet, they presented critical images that addressed the changing realities. By juxtaposing elements of the old and the new, they emphasized social and political conflicts and pointed at the raise of neoliberal values in Poland. Just as the early covers of Wprost belonged to the iconosphere of the transformation around 1989, the current right-wing magazines have been part of the (visual) discourse during the nationalistic shift in the 2010s. To illustrate their techniques of abusing history for political purposes, I am now referring to selected examples from W Sieci and Do Rzeczy. Most important in this context is the montage of archival and contemporary images, both within one cover and between multiple covers.

4 Montage Within Covers

In early September each year, around the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, W Sieci and Do Rzeczy display respective motifs on their covers (Fig. 3.3).¹³ In September 2014, the cover of the history supplement to W Sieci depicted three Wehrmacht soldiers behind a red and white gate, one of them holding the Polish national emblem, with the caption: “Barbarians: unknown motifs of the German invasion of Poland.” Exactly one year later, during the parliamentary election campaign in Poland, W Sieci—this time the regular weekly magazine—appeared with a strikingly similar cover but the Wehrmacht soldiers now replaced by three seemingly Muslim men with stereotypical appearance. One of the men holds a weapon. The caption warns: “September 2015: they’re coming. The Germans are pushing through a suicidal plan—Tusk and Kopacz yield to it.”¹⁴ The image with the alleged refugees is obviously an edited version of the previous cover as the emblem, the gate, the hands, and the plants in the background are the same. Reusing the picture surely is a cost- and time-saving measure; more importantly, however, replacing the Wehrmacht soldiers with stereotypical Muslim characters reinforces the intended message of refugees posing a threat to Poland’s sovereignty. As with the image of golden swastikas or the manipulated propaganda photo of Hitler and Mussolini mentioned above (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2), the covers again are supposed to provoke with Nazi iconography. In Poland, using Nazi rhetoric is even more provoking than in many other countries, due to Germany’s brutal occupation of Poland during World War II and the painful memories still present today. Taken literally, any comparison to Nazism implies accusations of war crimes such as Genocide, torture, or expropriations. Paradoxically, Polish right-wing media accuse refugees, many escaping authoritarian regimes and torture themselves, of being “invaders.”

Fig. 3.3

Covers of W Sieci Historii 9 (2014), W Sieci 37 (2015) and the propaganda photograph depicting Wehrmacht soldiers at the Polish-German boarder in September 1939, National Digital Archive, sign. 2–16, Creative Commons

Both W Sieci covers are at the same time visual quotes from a well-known German propaganda photo that depicts Wehrmacht soldiers removing the barrier at the Polish-German border in September 1939. Looking at the composition of the picture, the reference is clear: The bar, the emblem, the men holding them and the ivy in the background. The name of the photographer who took the original picture in 1939 remains unknown, but the caption on the backside informs us that the picture was taken on September 1. Since police officers from the Free City of Danzig are among the men depicted, the whole scene must have been staged, since the German troops had not yet arrived at this place.¹⁵ Soon after the war, the picture became an icon of the German invasion of Poland and was reprinted in countless Polish textbooks. Among the reasons for its popularity is the immanent contrast between its elements: We see fifteen uniformed and armed men struggling with a simple and probably rather flimsy turnpike. In contrast to the actual events during the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the soldiers make no use of their guns, and we see no victims. In 2003, the artist Zbigniew Libera reenacted the photograph, reducing it ad absurdum: He replaced the soldiers with colorfully dressed cyclists pushing the turnpike. Today, the 1939-photograph is part of the collection of the National Digital Archive; the license is free and the image may be used almost without limitations. Consequently, it often reoccurs in the Polish iconosphere, both in the original and in manipulated versions.

Apparently, the editors of W Sieci relied on the fact that the historical picture is widely recognized. The cover from 2014 was a quite simple photographic reenactment of the original image from 1939: Both depicted Wehrmacht soldiers at a border gate. The cover from 2015, with refugees instead of soldiers, included an additional semantic layer: By reusing a Nazi propaganda photo, the image suggested that the refugee crisis in 2015 was somehow comparable to the beginning of World War II in 1939. Just as the abovementioned covers of Uważam Rze (see Fig. 3.1, swastikas replacing stars) and Wprost (see Fig. 3.2., Merkel replacing Hitler), W Sieci’s technique of montage is replacement: Symbolic figures of the Nazi occupation of Poland (Wehrmacht soldiers) are replaced by symbolic figures of the refugee crisis in 2015 (Muslims). While the threat in 1939 turned out to be real (the Nazi occupation of Poland resulted in approximately 6 million Polish victims during World War II), the alleged threat in 2015 was mainly Islamophobic propaganda. Interestingly enough, the replacement of Wehrmacht soldiers with refugees happened in Poland, the ethnically most homogeneous country in the EU, with a vanishingly small Muslim minority (Balcer, 2019, 209). Furthermore, the editors seem not to have considered another paradox: The reenactment of Nazi propaganda to warn about an alleged threat from Germany.

Considering the main goal of spreading panic among the population, the captions are no less important than the images. In 2014, the word Barbarzyńcy (Barbarians) clearly referred to the Wehrmacht soldiers and the Nazi occupation of Poland. The word Nadchodzą! (in yellow with exclamation mark) used in 2015 means “they’re coming!” Above (in white letters against black background) we read Wrzesień 2015, meaning “September 2015.” This time, the allusion is multilayered: The suggestion obviously is that the refugees are on their way to Europe, but it is also a reference to the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939. Put next to each other, the largest words on the magazine covers result in the sentence Barbarzyńcy nadchodzą! (Barbarians are coming!). In connection with the seemingly traditional appearance of the refugees, the sentence sends the message of uncivilized hordes threatening Poland’s safety.

The two magazine covers abuse history in multiple ways: They use a Nazi propaganda photo as if it was an authentic historical source (otherwise, we could read the covers as a self-ironic statement on doing propaganda, which—given the overall context—is not the case); at the same time, they put a stereotypical image of refugees into the place of the occupiers—a strategy aimed at causing fear and helping PiS win the elections shortly after. While from a logical point of view the montage of a well-known propaganda photo with motifs of current events seems unproductive, the strategy becomes politically comprehensive when considering the emotions it provoked.

5 Montage Between Covers

The two magazine covers restaging the 1939-propaganda photo, both discussed above, show how illustrated magazines can create meanings between different covers, constructing sequential, ideologically consistent discourses. Obviously, magazines build on a recognizable corporate design, including logo, font, or visual style and illustration. For instance, the history supplement of Do Rzeczy usually displays comic style illustrations, the supplement of W Sieci scenes resembling high-resolution video games. Despite the differences in visual style, the content is often similar. First and foremost, both usually contain images of uniformed men easily recognizable as Poles and Germans or Soviets. The Poles represent the “heroes” and the “good,” the Germans and Soviets the “invaders” and the “bad.” Just as in comics or video games (as well as other popular media), the repeated appearance allows to treat the uniformed men as protagonists and antagonists of national myths about Poles heroically fighting against the two powerful neighbors. According to this visual narrative, people who are not part of this fight, mainly women, are also excluded from the national community.

Broadly speaking, the sequential appearance of related motifs shows similarities to a montage. “Serials generally appear as popular-cultural montages,” says Ilka Brasch (2018, 15). New meanings created by serial media like the illustrated press rely on association and repetition, thus also on memory (Sielkie, 2015, 90–92). Yet the question is if the readers remember older issues which they read/saw week(s) earlier. Do they recognize the repetitions? In the digital era, this question seems to play a minor role, as previous issues and especially their covers are easily available online. E-kiosks display current covers next to archived ones, and social media users comment on both extensively. A Polish Facebook page devoted to the critical discussion of magazine covers, for instance, currently has about 9000 followers;¹⁶ bloggers even create rankings of the covers.¹⁷ Apparently, the Internet has extended the life cycle of media products, with consequences for the coexistence of older and newer titles and covers. The historical person most present on the covers of Polish right-wing media is Adolf Hitler—so far he appeared twelve times on the cover images of W Sieci and Do Rzeczy directly and several other times indirectly, for instance by means of allusions or symbols such as the characteristic moustache. Some pictures of the Führer are taken from archival material (black and white or colored), others are computer-generated or reenacted. The images support various rhetorical goals: Hitler is juxtaposed with the political opponents of PiS, he illustrates anti-German resentments, and his image helps raising objections against the alleged re-writing of Polish history. In any case, the reasons for depicting Hitler on the magazine covers are current political issues and conflicts. In order to reinforce the message, his face (or figure) is often presented together with other motifs or persons, such as other Nazis or dictators (PiS insinuates that the former Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, was authoritarian, which is why he is often montaged with Hitler, Stalin, and Putin). Hitler also appears in front of Warsaw on fire and/or in ruins. Two covers of W Sieci, published in 2014 and 2017, are supposed to remind of compensations Germany allegedly owes Poland for war damages. On the 2014 cover,¹⁸ we see Hitler edited next to the Warsaw Castle on fire; the caption says that Poland may sue Germany for compensations up to 845 billion dollars. In 2017,¹⁹ more motifs appeared on the cover: Apart from the Warsaw Castle, we see two bombers in the skies above the city, a colored photo from the Warsaw Ghetto, and German soldiers putting something on fire. The caption also changed: Now, the number says six trillion dollars “for the horror of war.” Anti-German resentments like these were among the main themes of the PiS electoral campaign, as the right accused their main opponent, Donald Tusk’s PO party, of supporting Germany. It was not without a reason that the W Sieci cover demanding six trillion dollars in war reparations was published 1 week before the parliamentary elections in Poland.

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the depiction of Hitler is not unusual in contemporary European media; even on the cover pages of the German center-left magazine Der Spiegel, Hitler has appeared more often than any other person throughout the magazine’s publishing history. The exhibition Hitler and the Germans at the German Historical Museum in 2010 presented an impressive collage of 46 issues of Der Spiegel from 1964 to 2010, all with Hitler on the front cover. The art historian Stefanie Endlich commented on their complex role and critical character:

Those cover pictures have definitely contributed to reproducing the Hitler myth in the post war era and transferring it into the present and future. Only since the mid-1990s, the depiction of Hitler has become more ironical, due to parodistic movies, comedies, comics, and later to the World Wide Web, its networks and its YouTube distribution. In the 1980s and 1990s, you could get the impression that Germany was seized by a kind of Hitler mania, meant with critical subtitle. (Endlich, 2017)

Beyond the critical and parodistic depiction of Hitler, there is also a commercial context. “Yes, Hitler sells!” Endlich writes. The 46 (today probably more) Spiegel-covers depicting Hitler combine the two aspects. They advertise critical contributions on Nazi history through provocative images. Presented together on one collage in the German Historical Museum, they illustrate the serial character of magazine covers; while each cover addresses a current event, together they refer to each other and create a series.

Unlike Spiegel-covers, none of the Hitler images on the Polish right-wing magazines contributes to a critical reflection on the past or an ironic reflection on the present. Rather, the repeated reprinting of Hitler detached from actual Nazi crimes raises the question about the fascination with Nazism, especially since W Sieci and Do Rzeczy support a party with a nationalistic and social program. In 2002, Wprost used the reductio ad Hitlerum rhetoric (Laurelle, 2019, 308) for the first time and depicted the leader of the Polish farmers’ party Samoobrona (Self-defense) with a Hitler moustache; the image was widely commented. As mentioned above, W Sieci and Do Rzeczy have showcased Hitler on their front covers at least twelve times since 2013, yet in most of the cases they did not provoke any public reactions. Apparently, the repeated appearance of Hitler and Nazi images in the Polish iconosphere reduced their scandalous potential. Instead, the magazine covers abuse history by reducing one of the most painful epochs in Europe’s past to a mere collection of insults against current political opponents. The juxtaposition of Hitler with ruined Warsaw further suggests that the political opponents act against Poland’s security. In contrast to the common use of archival imagery providing an impression of authenticity (Krämer & Lobinger, 2018; Banks, 2013),²⁰ the images of the ruined Warsaw are obvious references to national memory. Using motifs from Polish history, and especially from World War II, moves the distinction between perpetrators and victims into contemporary politics.

6 Conclusion

Montage is a powerful tool to abuse history. The magazine covers discussed in this chapter falsify historical facts, contextualize them improperly, or reduce them to slogans in current political conflicts. Seen from a visual perspective with a strong emphasis on the agency of images, the covers shape nationalistic discourses rather than just illustrating them, either by assembling easily recognizable historical motifs or by constructing visual discourses through series of images. The covers of W Sieci and Do Rzeczy contribute to Manichean views on history, in which nations can be either victims or perpetrators, noble or brutal, heroic or coward, good or bad. These distinctive bipolar categories correspond with De Baets’ idea of a “deceptive usage” of history. Furthermore, assembling generally true images can result in false messages; the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini did take place, just as Angela Merkel or Jean-Claude Junker indeed were powerful European politicians. It is only a certain combination of true motifs that leads to the historically false conclusion of the EU being a totalitarian organization, while in fact founded to prevent totalitarianism in Europe.

Unlike many far-right movements in contemporary Europe acting within transnational networks and sharing transnationally recognizable contents (Hermansson et al., 2020), the right-wing magazines in Poland usually refer to national themes. Perceiving them requires basic knowledge about Polish history—as, for example, the cover with the soldiers on the Polish border in 1939 shows (see Fig. 3.3). At the same time, transnationally readable icons are framed nationally: Hitler, for instance, is presented next to the Warsaw Castle on fire—one of the main symbols of war-damaged Poland. Notably, the material for this chapter comes from traditional media, while research on the transnational discourse of the European far-right mainly focuses on digital media. Being de facto party magazines, W Sieci and Do Rzeczy direct their content at the electorate of PiS, hence readers from older generations, rural areas and small towns, and with lower education.²¹ It seems as if the national framing and the references to history are particularly relevant for those groups.

Although initially invented by left-wing artists who assembled contrasting images to ironically comment, criticize, and point out paradoxes and inequalities, montage is now as well characteristic of the right-wing iconosphere. However, the covers of W Sieci and Do Rzeczy are by no means elements of the extreme discourse in Poland. Quite the contrary: They are visible in bookstores, in kiosks, at gas stations, or in post offices; hence they represent Polish mainstream. The examples mentioned above are from the 7 years between 2013 and 2019, when Poland and other East-Central European countries (most notably Hungary, but also the Czech Republic, Austria or Croatia) experienced a significant nationalistic shift. The study of how right-wing media abuse history therefore contributes to our understanding of the current political developments in the region.