ABSTRACT
Nevertheless, the bulk of these parties’ former electorate, and a big part of their former activist base, found a permanent political home in Jarosław Kaczyn´ski’s Law and Justice. Radio Maryja continued to provide the symbolic framework for the PiS political culture and the party, once considered centrist, established itself firmly at the far right end of the spectrum, with just occasional forays into the political middle ground. This point was brought home by Jarosław Kaczyn´ski, who stated in an interview given after one year in opposition, that the idea of ‘national integration’ must be a future strategic priority for his party:
There is a rule, first formulated I think by Konrad Adenauer, that for a right-wing party which wants to be in power, there must be only a wall to its right. You cannot treat this rule as absolute because, after all, we were in power having the LPR to our right. But it would not be good, from our point of view, and for Polish politics in general, if something along the lines of the LPR emerged again. Of course there is a price for it, which we would not pay. We don’t plan to leave the European Union and we do not intend to change the generally pro-Western character of Polish foreign policy. However, we are quite ready to take into account
the views of those circles that have a very traditionalist approach to reality. We treat it as a value. I am a traditionalist too, although probably slightly different than those proverbial ladies wearing mohair hats. (. . .) We say: the nation must be more integrated, the educational system must be focused on transmitting patriotic values through teaching of history, Polish language, different elements of cultural knowledge in school curriculum. It should be done in a unitary way, in one direction, and not each school doing what they want. In no way must those circles, that include disintegration [of the nation] among their goals, be allowed to have any say in that. Of course the integration applies also to other aspects of the state, the collective undertakings, the public media, etc. etc.1
