The Politicisation of historical memory on Twitter. “Positive antisemitism” in the Holocaust debate in Poland

Abstract

ABSTRACTPolitical controversies concerning the memory of historical events have adapted to the digital specificity of Twitter and are currently growing in significance. This study investigates the sentiment bias of a memory war between two major Polish political parties, the currently ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and Civic Platform (PO), the main opposition party, concerning Polish-Jewish relations, and especially the Holocaust. Totally, 23699 PO Tweets and 29,441 PiS Tweets from 2015 to 2019 were collected, out of which, 241 concerning memory war were sampled with a lexicon-based approach. Sentiment was analysed using tweet-based consensual coding with an ordinal five-point scale and automated word-based coding with a three-point scale. PiS tweets had more positive sentiment regarding the memory of the Holocaust and Jewish legacy in Poland. The final hermeneutical analysis showed that the rulling party narratives were aimed appropriation of collective memory and “Polonizing” the Holocaust, and that the positive sentiment was a function of ‘positive anti-Semitism’.KEYWORDS: TwitterHolocaustantisemitismmemory warhistorical narrativessentiment bias AcknowledgementsThe research was funded by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) under grant title “Historical narratives in Web 2.0 as a functional element of national identities in Central and Eastern Europe” (2020/39/B/HS3/01237). The computational component was performed with the cooperation of the Centre of Informatics Tricity Academic Supercomputer and Network (TASK) in Gdańsk using the computing cloud TASKcloud. Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-Moskalewicz was supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). Marcin Moskalewicz was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. In 1983, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who headed the Polish People’s Republic, going along with the Catholic Church, authorized the construction of a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz. Jewish circles protested against the appropriation of the territory. Despite the multilateral agreements reached on the matter and the pressure of international public opinion, the Carmelites did not move to a new off-site location until 1993. However, the so-called “Auschwitz cross” remained on the gravel site at the monastery, sparking a new round of conflict over the presence and hegemony of Catholic symbolism at the death camp. In late 1998 and early 1999, more than 300 crosses were set up on the grounds next to the camp at the call of the national-Catholic activist Kazimierz Switon. They were eventually removed amid an international scandal.2. See: https://www.president.pl/president-komorowski/news/president-on-barack-obamas-letter,385943. For the last two centuries, Polish history was marked by constant failed uprisings, lost defensive wars, and occupation by Nazis, Soviets and later communist regime; thus the topos of “martyrisation” in appeared Polish historical narratives. This symbolises the heroic sacrifice of Polish independence actions against enemies and occupational authorities, which for the most part, ended with the execution of Polish freedom fighters.4. “Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation” is a Polish State institution responsible for both historical education and prosecuting Nazi and communist crimes on the Polish People during the World War II and soviet times. An infamous 2018 amendment referred to in media as “ustawaipn” was a point of a broader national and international debate on whether Poles were actively responsible for the Holocaust. In its original version, the 2018 amendment, later re-visioned and dropped, aimed at penalising public attribution of Holocaust responsibility to Poland or Poles. The origin of the amendment comes from the “Polish death camps” controversy; the bill was meant to be a tool in a fight against this false and simplified phrase.5. In the case of the phrase “Oświęcim”, we found some Tweets unrelated to the Holocaust and related to the local issues like Oświęcim Hospital or a political incident involving a car crash of the then Polish PM Beata Szydło in Oświęcim. We chose only Tweets coinciding with the dates of the Holocaust events (National Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the German Nazi Concentration and Death Camps, Liberation of Auschwitz Death Camp).6. The phrase “Holocaust in Poland” is generally taken to refer to the set of individual or group decisions, actions, and processes that catalysed or contributed to the deaths of nearly three million of the approximately 3.5 million Jewish citizens of the Second Polish Republic between the years 1939 and 1945. By extension, it is also employed to refer to a similar set of decisions, actions, and processes that contributed to the survival of the remainder.In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the government of Poland protested the use of the phrase, objecting to what it considers the implication that Poles were primarily responsible for the Jewish deaths.It has preferred to speak of the “Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland”.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Narodowe Centrum Nauki [2020/39/B/HS3/01237]; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Centre of Informatics Tricity Academic Supercomputer and Network in Gdańsk.Notes on contributorsAdrian TrzossAdrian Trzoss, PhD student, Adam Mickiewicz University. His research interests include digital history and historical narratives in social media. Lately, he investigated the gender gap in historical narrativies on Polish YouTube. ORCID: 0000-0002-6287-418XWiktor WernerWiktor Werner, PhD (with habilitation) associate professor at Adam Mickiewicz University (Faculty of History). Research interests: digital history, history of mass culture. ORCID: 0000-0002-3004-6021Cyprian KleistCyprian Kleist, MSc at Gdańsk University of Technology, PhD scholarship Adam Mickiewicz University. His research interests include information theory, statistical mechanics and cloud computing.Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-MoskalewiczCyprian Kleist, MSc at Gdańsk University of Technology, PhD scholarship Adam Mickiewicz University. His research interests include information theory, statistical mechanics and cloud computing.Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-Moskalewicz, PhD student, Adam Mickiewicz University. Her research focuses on Polish-Jewish relations in the recent history of Poland. Currently, she is the Bekker NAWA Programme fellow at the University of Heidelberg. ORCID: 0000-0002-4744-4413Marcin MoskalewiczMarcin Moskalewicz is Associate Professor of Philosophy and team leader at IDEAS NCBR in Warsaw, a research and development centre operating in the field of artificial intelligence and digital economy; currently a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Heidelberg.