The extreme right-wing Polish party Konfederacja is up to 14 percent in polls. Your shooting star Slawomir Mentzen is mainly active on TikTok. The party could become a kingmaker in the autumn elections.
They are bursting with strength, the many young men and few women who have come to the Konfederacja meeting in Warsaw. The hall is full, the mood is combative, illuminated portraits of the party leaders hang on the sides. The speakers are announced like boxers stepping into the ring.
Slawomir Mentzen is the shooting star of the party, which was long considered a group of right-wing extremists. At the age of 36, Mentzen presents himself as a young anti-politician, his party as an alternative to the establishment.
Slawomir Mentzen from the Konfederacja party promises a radically liberal market program.
Radically market-liberal program
With short, ironic videos, he reaches hundreds of thousands on TikTok – and for the Konfederacja in surveys, sometimes up to 14 percent. The party is now seen by many as a possible kingmaker after the fall elections.
Mentzen’s memes and online videos will also be shown during his Warsaw speech. It’s not about right-wing extremist ideology at all. Mentzen talks about taxes: “Remember, the taxes will be low and simple. Because it works. You just have to want to and be able to – and we want that very much. We can lower them and simplify them.”
Simple, flat tax rates, the end of expensive social programs. Mentzen promises a radically market-liberal program that will be implemented quickly – “like Elon Musk,” he says. His party preaches a worldview according to which every person is responsible for their own fate, regardless of the poor and the weak.
“We’re not going to these elections to sit down at a table with them. We’re going to topple that table,” he exclaims. “And then every working Pole will be able to afford a house with a barbecue and a lawn, two cars and vacations. That’s how we want to live.”
“Against Jews, homosexuals, EU”
As recently as 2019, Mentzen had declared that Konfederacja was against “Jews, homosexuals, abortions, taxes and the European Union”. The hatred hasn’t disappeared, it’s now only articulated by another member of the party leadership, Grzegorz Braun.
“Neither Germans nor Jews will teach us history,” says Braun, one of three party leaders alongside Mentzen. “No perverts will educate our children and teach them tolerance. And no Eurokolkhoz of people’s commissars will tell us how to run our own country.”
Konfederacja is attacking the ruling national-conservative PiS party from the right – but without its distinctive social programs. And it is the only party in Poland that refuses to accept refugees from Ukraine. The PiS is still ignoring the new competitor.
Ready for coalition?
But if after the elections it can only remain in power with a coalition partner, the far-right party would suddenly be at the table, says political scientist Rafal Chwedoruk.
“If the PiS were the strongest force in the new Sejm, they would 100% make an offer.” However, it is not clear whether Konfederacja would be willing to accept that, says Chwedoruk. “In recent years, Konfederacja has targeted its voters primarily at the PiS. If they went into a coalition, they could lose some of their supporters.”
After his appearance in Warsaw, Slawomir Mentzen said that all parties would be spoken to – provided they agreed to the Konfederacja program.