That’s the result at least in part of ongoing Russian propaganda to sow division.
Each of these incidents is a disaster for the affected individuals, but the number of hate crimes rose from 140 to 180. Using percentage (+30%) for such rare events is disingenuous.
I’ve experienced this, in a browser game (bonk.io) if I happen to join a room full of Polacks they would often call me a pig in Polish because I have “UA” in my username then kick me out after a round or two. I don’t understand Polish much but apparently just enough to read that (and also to read “LVIV JEST POLSKI”). One time, one of them had a(/the) swastika on their in-game skin, so now we know what demographic is doing the hate crime. Not at all impressed.
I wonder why Poles are pretty racists despite having experienced the same colonial and imperial struggles. The Poles who sided with former black Haitian slaves would be rolling on their graves.
The Poles were once a mini-empire, subjugating Ukraine. Evidently some of them want a historical revanche after the loss of this status. The same is true for Hungary, which also once was the metropoly of Austria-Hungary, with part of Ukraine subjugated to it.
It was a pseudo empire - big on the map but without actual power as demonstrated by Sweden and later partitions.
It’s interesting to note why exactly it lost to Sweden and Russian empires - largely because of the haughtiness of Polish nobility that wroke havoc on collective decision making. Apparently this haughtiness still survives and it will take more historical lessons to completely overcome it.
Imperial status, even for a short time, and even in failed empires, is quite an addictive drug for haughtiness that may take centuries to wear off.
Nobility was also resisting attempts on modernization of warfare - as result they did not had answer to Swedish riflemen or at best some half-assed solutions that they failed to implement in practice. Hard to tell as Polish historians love to obfuscate facts with euphemisms and wishful thinking. The fact remains that Swedish army was 3 times smaller than force Poland mobilized in total. Probably one of the most humiliating wars in Polish history.
I sincerely hope that gentle but steadfast efforts of the EU will allow for our Eastern European political culture to gradually grow up. In this regard, recent Hungarian events are an inspiring example.
Do you think this is realistic?
Time will tell. Region (Poland included) has it’s own local flavor with own specifics per country.
