Independence March in Warsaw

Last year, 30,000 people marched through Warsaw on Poland’s independence day, November 11.

The Polish MSM did not report on the thousands of peaceful demonstrators. They focused solely on a handful of violent hooligans and leftist provocateurs.

Below is a video of what really happened, with translated titles and a first-hand report by Green Infidel. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for subtitling and uploading this video:

The original 20-minute Polish video is here.

A translation of the Polish titles at the beginning of the video:

00:00		The material is a recording of the “Independence march” which took place on the streets of Warsaw
00:04		on November 11 2011.
00:06		Reporting the events, major TV stations did not show even 1 minute of a recording from the march.
00:10		Why?
00:14		Was their only objective to play an active role in an organised provocation?
00:19		Remind yourself, what the media were showing
00:22		…and look.
00:27		Regardless of how often you use the word “fascist”
00:33		you will not stop us.
00:39		It’s already happening.

Below is an account of the march by Green Infidel, on which the subtitles in the video were based:

It was a march through Warsaw on the day of independence that was widely advertised by patriotic and nationalistic groups. Some of my friends advertised it on their Facebook accounts, but I wasn’t sure what it was about, so wasn’t decided on going.

Only after I heard that the “anti-fascists” against the march were urging German Antifa to come and help the “blockade” against the march did I decide that I’d be going (I had special memories of Antifa from my time studying in Germany).

I turned up and met a few friends at the march and was surprised that most of the people there seemed to be students (with some combatants — one of whom personally thanked me for coming), although a good few soccer hooligans were hanging about the edges, holding fireworks and other objects. Around 100-200 of them, wearing white balaclavas, were involved in confrontations with police, and a couple of cars belonging to TV outfits were burnt.

We proceeded to march, chant anti-government slogans and sing patriotic songs until the end.

But when I got in my car and made my way home, I had family calling to see if I was OK, because on TV it looked like “all of Warsaw was destroyed”. When I got home and turned on the TV, looped footage was being shown of the disturbances.

Strange, I thought, since I was near the exact same place 30 minutes earlier and, if not for my radio and mobile, I wouldn’t have known anything was happening! However, as it turns out, the same scenes of a damaged bus stop or a burnt TV car looped 50 times can make quite an impression!

Later on, one of the “far-right” marchers in white balaclavas attacking police was found to have (in a moment when he was caught on camera putting on the balaclava) seemingly exactly the same face as a leftist demonstrator from 4 years earlier. So the whole thing was beginning to look like a deliberate provocation, as suspected (in Communist days this was a well-known tactic). Later, video emerged of police agents kicking someone from the march repeatedly in the head. The victim had not been caught doing anything.

As for the “anti-fascists”, they found themselves in the unfamiliar situation of being outnumbered by about ten to one, and, in the “blockade” they made, surrounded by police for their own protection!

An added side-note: the number of attending the actual march was 30,000, not 300,000. I estimated this from this video (based on breadth, and speed at which they were walking) — in line with other estimates. However this was still far above the 11,000 marchers that were expected — the slogan was “11,000 for November 11!”

This year, 60,000 are expected!

Below are some further links provided by Green Infidel, which may be of interest:

• An aerial view of the riots from a robocopter (from 1:00)
  
• German antifa in action in Warsaw (n.b., at 1:43 one of the “Anti-fascists” raises his arm in a straight salute and shouts what I, and many commenters, could only make out to be “Auschwitz Heil!”… so maybe closer to being fascists than they imagine themselves to be?)
  
• “I saw a Nazi” — a compilation (in Polish, although containing a lot of interesting scenes) by a blogger who was both at the “anti-fascist” blockade, and the march — and in a side-street came across police kicking an innocent marcher in the head (starting at 10:30). The first scene reads: “After I uploaded, immediately after the events, part of the material of police banditism from 11.11.11, I received threats. I was threatened with court cases for publishing these materials, the next day in the morning someone was knocking at my door; however, when I came to look, no-one was there…”