Conservative Victory in Poland

Nawrocki’s victory was narrow, but unambiguous. Having come second in the first round, in the decisive phase of the contest he triumphed against the odds with 50.9% of the vote. He ran on an unapologetic platform of immigration restriction, the importance of prioritizing Polish sovereignty over EU dictates, and forging strong links with a Trump-run America. As much an historian as a pugilist, Nawrocki grasps the importance of heritage to a people’s flourishing. An admiring student of Poland’s anti-communist resistance under the Iron Curtain, he has also drawn attention to the way in which liberal globalism, like its communist predecessor, erodes the national character of a people and destroys their right to self-determination.

On immigration, Nawrocki has made a name for himself as a thoroughgoing demographic realist. Unlike Donald Tusk, who will remain Poland’s Prime Minister, Nawrocki is a staunch opponent of the elite project to replace the settled national cultures of Europe with hyper-diverse, metropolitan nowhere-lands. He has pledged to withdraw from the EU’s migrant quota schemes, to defend Poland’s right to close the door to immigrants from parts of the world deemed culturally incompatible or a security threat, and has singled out the special difficulties caused by immigration from Muslim countries. Given the Poles’ instinctive allergy to anything Russian, Nawrocki also made the clever move of linking the issue of immigration to Moscow’s “hybrid warfare” tactic to deploy third-world migrants, via Putin-aligned Belarus, as a geopolitical weapon against NATO countries. “We will save Poland”, exclaimed Nawrocki in his victory speech. “We will not allow the power of Donald Tusk to be absolute.”

The Polish President-to-be is no less vigilant when it comes to resisting ideological subversion at home. He has been a vocal critic of the “woke” indoctrination of Polish youngsters and, following Florida’s Ron DeSantis, has consistently defended the right of parents to shield their children from predatory ideological programming.

In the present context, Nawrocki’s victory is particularly encouraging. There can be no doubt that European populists now face a series of novel challenges. One of these challenges is escalating lawfare. Dirty tactics have seen the increasingly popular Marine Le Pen forbidden (pending appeal) from running to be President of France, and the Romanian elections cancelled altogether when Călin Georgescu, widely smeared as the “far-right” candidate by the West’s corporate media, won the first round in late 2024.

But perhaps even more of a liability to national populists is what we might call “the Trump problem”. Indeed, ever since Trump’s historic re-election late last year, the rest of the West’s right-wing parties have found themselves saddled with a serious strategic difficulty. On the one hand, they have wanted to campaign on an agenda that would seek to replicate some of Trump’s undoubted achievements. On the other, they have felt tremendous pressure to refrain from being so Trumpian in appearance that they succeed only in alienating their own MAGA-skeptical electorates. We must not forget that Trump is an acquired-enough taste in America. It follows that he is especially prone to disturbing the more sensitive palates of Europeans.

The Oval Office spat with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who remains popular across Europe and in the non-American anglosphere, will not have helped, but the problem long predates that viral bust-up. A sobering poll released amid the U.S. Presidential Election last year found that more or less every European population, if given the choice, would have voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.

There remains a risk that right-wing populists beyond the shores of the United States will be tainted by perceived association with America’s polarizing President. Whatever we make of Trump, it is an undeniable fact that most people still struggle to separate the man’s eccentric character from his political virtues. True, Nawrocki ran on a Trump-friendly ticket, but he also succeeded in distinguishing his Polish spin on MAGA from groveling subservience to America, let alone to Trump.

Any national movement intent on following Trump’s lead in putting their own country first, but in ways that do not grate against the peculiar temperaments of their own people, would do well to study Nawrocki’s victory.