The crisis of the public debate in Polish democracy and pop politics

Abstract

_{This article discusses the symptoms of the crisis in public debate in Poland as an aggressive confrontation of liberal and conservative power elites. The language practices of stigmatising and excluding opponents express the change in the rules of political communication as a result of digital imaging and the replication of new forms of communication. The author expresses the hypothesis of pop politics as a network “profiling of political orientations” in the public discourse through cyber communication and social media. It defines its features as a competitive media spectacle aimed at neutralising political images; discrediting social resistance; and discouraging participation in protests against the authorities. He analyses pop politics as a set of communication practices arising from the contradictions of globalisation processes, neo-liberal economics and the structural decomposition of civic public opinion. It combines the rules of ritualising discourses, seducing the audience with the strength of social resentments, and imitative rivalry and the search for “scapegoats”. Political rivals build symbolic domains to identify participants of a cultural community. Polish conservatism has dominated the discourses of pop politics with codes of ethnic patriotism, the affirmation of national traditions and the paternalism of power, which organises the community and provides shelter against multicultural threats.}