10 Thoughts on Poland, and Warm Blooded Nationalism
Get ready for some unfair comparisons to Russia
I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks on the selection of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate. He was the only person in contention with whom I’ve ever had a conversation, so that’s worth noting. At the same time, while our circles overlap, and his selection may be considered a triumph of what I’ve called the “tech right,” I think there are contradictions and tensions in his career that are worth exploring and have important implications for the future of conservatism.
But again, all that will have to wait. For now, I want to share some thoughts on Poland. I came back from the country last week, having spent a few days in Warsaw and then five more in a rural region in the East where I hung out with fellow Zionists. While in Warsaw, I got to meet three fans, two of them locals and one who splits his time between the US and Poland.
The closest I ever got to Poland before this trip is when I studied in St Petersburg as an undergrad in 2009. Although Russia is not Poland and these two visits were 15 years apart, I kept using what I saw in St Petersburg as a kind of reference point throughout the recent trip, even if that didn’t make much logical sense. Here are my impressions.
Warsaw is not beautiful. In St Petersburg, I was awestruck by the Russian Orthodox churches and the majestic enormity of the roads and buildings. There’s nothing like that in Poland. Old Warsaw was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt by the Bolsheviks to look like it did before, though I don’t understand what the point even was since it doesn’t look great. Also, when I went to St Petersburg in 2009, all the talk among the guys in my program was about how in every direction you looked there were incredibly beautiful women. Ukraine was spoken of as a legendary far away land of irresistible blondes that everyone knew about but few had seen. Polish women are less naturally beautiful than their Russian counterparts, but the real difference is they’re not trying that hard to look nice. I saw a few instances of the type of woman, so familiar to us Americans, who has completely given up on being a sexual being as shown by her obesity and unnatural hair color. When I posed the Russia versus Poland question to Twitter, someone presented the hypothesis that women will do much more to please men in less developed countries because they are looking for a way out of poverty. If this is the case, it implies a tragic tradeoff between two of the things I love most, higher GDP and beautiful women. It may be unfair to Poland to compare it to 2009 Russia, but those were my expectations going in. Had I only had American women as a reference, I would’ve been very impressed. This reminds me that I need to go back to Russia again, though for now others will have to tell me if things are still the same there. Maybe there’s something to Putinism after all.
Poland is Central European, not Eastern European. Poles are reserved and follow rules. While I was with one of my fans, a Frenchman working in Warsaw, he pointed out that on the streets around us you could see no one was jaywalking. He said that Poland is more German than Russian in culture, which seems correct. To take one statistical measure of this, the murder rate in Russia is 3.7 per 100,000, compared to well below 1 for Germany and Poland. In 2009 St Petersburg, the streets were full of stumbling and passed out drunks, which is something that I never saw in Warsaw. Russian alcoholism has gotten more under control over the decades, so this picture might be a bit dated, but the point remains. I was fooled by the Slavic language family and history of the region, yet going forward I will not classify Russia and Poland as civilizational siblings anymore.
The same guy I was talking to mentioned that he liked my article on overcoming anxiety, and had taken to cold approaching Polish girls. He says he’s had an extremely high success rate, and thinks this is because approaching strangers is so rare in Poland that women are willing to date random men they meet on the streets. This led me to wonder why, if women are so open, local men don’t take advantage of this fact until a new equilibrium is reached. He said he had no idea, but to solve this puzzle all we need to do is refer to the aforementioned article, where I pointed out that most humans are for evolutionary reasons pathologically risk-averse under modern conditions. Humanity’s failures provide opportunities for those who aspire to be better. This is especially true in more introverted cultures, which is why East Asia can be a kind of paradise for men who would otherwise be incels at home.
Polish children don’t like me that much. In America, kids point, smile, and laugh whenever they see me. When I’m out with my kids at the mall or on a beach, children will pick me out as the most amusing adult around and before long I’ll be surrounded by a gaggle of toddlers I can’t get rid of. Polish children, in contrast, are not nearly as open to adult strangers. If you smile at one or say hello, they keep a dour expression on their face and look down. Near the end of the trip in a hotel one small boy finally acknowledged my presence. He looked at me with an intrigued expression and sheepishly waved, and I was happy to have made contact with at least one child before I went home. It wasn’t just how they interacted with adults, as I passed by school aged kids who seemed to be on a trip and they were quieter than would have been the norm even among upper class American children, much less prole and more vibrant youths.
Apple Pay is literally everywhere. I didn’t have to pull out a credit card once, and I never even touched the local currency, which I learned isn’t the Euro. We do not spend enough time praising big tech for how much easier it has made our lives in very basic ways. Before, you’d have to go to a currency exchange and make sure you got enough money for your trip, but not too much or else you’d have to do it again at the end, all the while hoping nothing gets lost or stolen. Now, I carry my phone, and it’s all I need to pay for anything, in addition to being a device that carries my book collection and podcasts and serves as a portal to the rest of the world. Truly amazing.
Crime and dysfunction are practically non-existent. As mentioned, no drunks anywhere, and people are polite and follow the rules. You can go out any time day or night in any part of the capital and be safe. The only sign of criminality I saw was graffiti. I really hate this stuff, and wish society would crack down on it.
Soon after arriving in Poland, I read an article about which flags were visible in Finland and the Baltics. I was therefore on the lookout for signs of LGBT, and the only time I saw a Pride flag was at the Museum of Warsaw (see here and here for other thoughts on the museum). Maybe this was because I arrived in the beginning of July rather than June. I saw some Ukrainian and Polish flags, but the concentration of the national flag wasn’t nearly as high as you would see in most American cities. Overall, there’s a theme here of lack of expressiveness. Poles have sullen looks on their faces and don’t feel like showing too much pride or excitement about any particular thing. There’s a functionality to the culture, which explains the successful transition to liberal democracy.
Warsaw is still very white. I saw a few Indians and Muslims, and they may have been tourists. Did not see a single black person throughout my trip, and only a few East Asians. White people are featured in all advertisements and do the menial labor jobs.
Their crows look less dignified and intelligent than the beautiful all-black American crow.
Poland is very outward looking. As already mentioned, you could see Ukrainian flags everywhere, and people told me there were a lot of Ukrainian refugees around even though I couldn’t tell them apart from locals. I walked by a bookstore, and in the window they were advertising many books and even a journal on international politics. In America, you don’t see nearly as much interest in this subject. Because of history, the successful integration into Europe, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a consciousness of existing within a geopolitical context and a resulting focus on world affairs. Despite Polish politics being quite acrimonious when it comes to questions like abortion and LGBT, all sides are united in favor of taking a hard stance towards Russia.
Traveling is sometimes a good way to learn about yourself. My big realization on this trip is that I am something of a “warm blooded nationalist.” Immigration restrictionists tend to be the type of people who love order and hate chaos, which is why they sometimes hold up places like Korea and Japan as ideal. I tend to like cultures where people are more outgoing and find the kind of bland conformity one sees in East Asia, Scandinavia, and apparently Poland somewhat boring. My people are more Americans, Arabs, and Jews. And Russians maybe? They don’t smile enough but random people would ask you to drink when I was there. I like quiet where I work and sleep but otherwise I’m comfortable in an environment where people are yelling, haggling, laughing, and otherwise having fun. Not that I love crime and dysfunction, or want a world of Jordan Neelys being allowed to inhabit public spaces. But getting the murder rate as low as possible isn’t the only thing society should be optimizing for. Places are like people, in that there are often tradeoffs between different characteristics we might find desirable.
As you correctly note, it's invalid to compare 2009!Russia with 2024!Poland.
Re-1. Correct. For beauty you should go to Krakow. FWIW, yes, Russian women have advanced closer to the Polish/Western archetype over the past two decades.
Re-2. This is the one point I disagree on, and quite profoundly. During my three weeks in Poland (2020), I found it to be the country with the people closest in character to Russians (much more so than, say, Serbs, who are outspoken Russophiles - it's one of the few countries in the world where something like "Russian privilege" can be said to exist - but feel just as "foreign" as Romanians). Both peoples will seethe at this claim, especially Poles, but that just confirms the point - puffed up exceptionalist complexes, albeit by force of circumstances, channeled through different ideological avenues (derzhavnost/national greatness in Russia's case; promethean messianism/Christ-like national suffering to redeem humanity in Poland's).
One way of looking at this is to imagine an alt history in which Poland became big while Russia remained small, and the Church played a major role in its liberation struggles. It would then be a mirror image. (The Church x liberation nexus no longer being in play, Poland is probably the world's most rapidly secularizing country, having gone from a culture in which people would make the sign of the Cross when passing a church on a bus, to one where young people are no less secular than Hungarians or Russians).
Re-5. Standard throughout Eastern Europe, including in Russia, for almost a decade now.
Re-6. First night I was in Poland (Krakow) I saw two buckos after a night out fighting each other, with one knocking the other out. Not to say that it is typical, of course.
There is less alcoholism in Poland than in Russia. However, its incidence has plummeted in Russia, and will likely converge fully in another 1-2 decades. Its provenance in Russia is a matter of pretty concrete historical contingency (role of vodka as tax revenue generator).
Re-8. Accurate. Though when I was there The Witcher show (with its Black actors) was being extensively advertised. I'd say subcons are at 1-2% in Warsaw.
Richard, I have never been to Russia, but I have a personal story that speaks to the beauty of Russian women. For five years I was involved with a Russian woman, “D,” who had immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager after the fall of communism. D was in her 30s when I was with her, and moving forward in her career as a medical doctor. She was smart and a brilliant conversationalist with a sexy Russian accent. She was also a big fan of Putin, about which we agreed to disagree: “You Americans don’t understand! Ukraine is southern Russia, and Kiev is where our nation was born!”
Though D had been in America for 20 years, she still thought of herself as Russian more than American. She was focused, sometimes obsessively, on what she called her “aesthetics.” She always dressed exquisitely in fashionable outfits, perfectly applied makeup, and high heels. D was once late for a dinner date claiming she had “an eyelash malfunction.” In her 20s D was a blonde, but when I knew her, she had gone back to her natural brunette hair color. Being with D led me to upgrade my own style of dress to bring it up to her level. And D was quite critical of American women who she thought did not pay enough attention to their appearance: she thought American women “dressed like crap.”
Though I often told D that she was aesthetically perfect, she was never satisfied with her appearance. She would check in the mirror everyday for gray hairs and wrinkles, and would go on a water diet for days whenever she gained a pound, crying “I’m fat!” In truth she was quite slim, worked out, and was in shape. She always talked about getting botox, a facelift, or a butt lift, though she did not need any of them. D said her greatest fear was getting old and fat, losing her beauty, and turning into a stereotypical babushka.
Anyway, D and I broke up four years ago, our relationship a casualty, in part, of the COVID crisis. D was treating a lot of COVID patients which took a heavy emotional toll on her. She has since gotten married and is now a mother, something far more important than aesthetics.