The “policy of harm” by the Law and Justice party (PiS)

Abstract

_{Answering the question of why the ruling party in Poland (PiS) maintains such strong support, we refer to various arguments and disciplines, from sociology, discourse analysis, and social psychology to cultural philosophy. We maintain that PiS consistently conducts populist politics, building on strong collective antagonisms and fuelling the social sense of harm. The concept of “harm” has a unique and exceptional power that affects the feelings and the imagination of people. This means that evoking this feeling of harm recalling it proves to be a particularly convenient tool to manage people’s consciences and beliefs. In this spirit, we consider how “harm” and its related concepts (resentment) are bound with populist politics, and how the “discourse of harm” is actually present in the recent memory of politics in Poland, and how it can give some social groups “perverse” satisfaction. However, what we see in this semi-conscious tactic, which we describe as the “policy of harm”, is long-term destructive consequences.}