Fascism Lives! 

"[The annual Polish Independence Day march this year represents] a dangerous march of extreme and racist elements."
"We hope that Polish authorities will act against the organizers. History teaches us that expressions of racist hate must be dealt with swiftly and decisively."
"[The march disproved] anyone who thinks that hatred of Muslims protects the Jews."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon

"[Polish government authority strongly condemns racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic ideas, but the  march represented an expression of patriotic values]."

"[The rally was misunderstood, it was] a great celebration of Poles, differing in their views, but united around the common values of freedom and loyalty to an independent homeland."
Poland’s Foreign Ministry 

"It's clear that these types of marginal voices are caught and send abroad by the Polish press, and this is an image problem."
"Poland is an oasis of security, peace and tolerance."
Deputy Prime Minister Mariusz Morawiecki

"[Poles must take the initiative to lead] sick Europe [to the path of] health, to fundamental values, to true freedom and to the strengthening of our civilization based on Christianity."
Law & Justice party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski

Demonstrators burn flares and wave Polish flags during the annual march to commemorate Poland’s National Independence Day in Warsaw on November 11, 2017. (AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI)

Protesters carrying poster pictures of Roman Dmowski, a leading Polish nationalist of the 1920s and 19302, a virulent anti-Semite, played homage to his vision of a Jew-free Poland, reprising his vision  to the present, where fewer than 10,000 Jews are left in Poland, after 90 percent of the three million Jews in pre-war Poland were exterminated during the Holocaust years.

Small assemblies of counter-protesters were kept separate from the main March, by police. But groups of women carrying signs saying "stop Fascism", were still kicked and pushed around by nationalists. Masked protesters shouted racist slogans, their banners reading Pure Blood, Europe will be white or uninhabited. Other expressions of pure unadulterated good will and Polish pride in patriotism read variously:

• Pure Poland, Jew-free Poland
• Jews out of Poland
• Refugees get out
• Clean Blood
• Pray for an Islamic Holocaust

Flags of Falanga, a historical nationalist group that advocated "Catholic totalitarianism" and removing civil rights from Jews were also in evidence. But the government was firm, accusing Polish media of fomenting problems for the country through its focus on "fringe incidents" and "provocateurs" among those in the 60,000-strong march whom one organizer described as 70% patriots, and 30% right-wing supremacists. Adding that it was the voice of the 70% that mattered; every country had its disgruntled 30%.

The ruling Law & Justice party has rallied Poles to the embrace of their national heritage. With that rallying came a vow that the country's traditional conservative Catholic roots were destined to be returned to their place of honour, and Poland was embarking on a path of "pride, independence and strength". Eastern Europe altogether has rejected diluting its culture and heritage by the acceptance, as the EU demands, of millions of Muslim refugees.

Life has been made dangerously intolerable for Jews in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden and Britain by the introduction of millions of Muslim immigrants, refugees and migrants bringing their special brand of Islamist anti-Semitism with them. The irony is that in Eastern Europe which has rejected the EU call for all member-states to acquiesce to the demands of acceptance of the Muslim refugees and migrants, right-wing nationalists have taken to openly decrying the presence of Jews who have traditionally lived there.

Demonstrators burn flares and wave Polish flags in Warsaw on November 11, 2017.

JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images