Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland by Paul Brykczynski

Abstract

Reviewed by: Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland by Paul Brykczynski Daniel Kupfert Heller Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland. By Paul Brykczynski. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. 240 pages. $19.95 (paper). On December 16, 1922, at approximately 12:10 pm, the Polish painter and art critic Eligiusz Niewiadomski pointed his gun towards Gabriel Narutowicz, Poland's first democratically-elected president. From the moment he was elected to office one week prior, Narutowicz faced a vicious public campaign calling for him to resign. At the helm of this campaign were the leaders of National Democracy, the immensely popular Polish right-wing ethno-nationalist political movement. Because Narutowicz's supporters included Jewish political parties, the National Democrats accused him of being a "Jewish president" beholden to the country's national minorities. Antisemitic riots accompanied the campaign against Narutowicz, forcing the government to impose martial law. After firing three shots at the new president in a Warsaw art gallery, Niewiadomski claimed that he murdered Narutowicz to prevent Poland from falling under Jewish domination. Although most surveys of interwar Polish history make brief mention of the "December Events," as they came to be known, historians tend to view Narutowicz's death as a relatively insignificant chapter in Poland's turbulent political history. In his compelling book Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland, Paul Brykczynski argues instead that the assassination was a watershed moment in Poland's political history, one that transformed the country's political discourse for years to come. Offering an in-depth investigation of the riots, assassination, and their aftermath, Brykczynski provides historians with a deeper understanding of the dynamics that propelled nationalist politics in interwar Poland. Reconstructing these events in vivid detail, he also offers his readers an insightful and largely persuasive analysis of the nature and function of antisemitism in interwar Polish politics. One of the most important contributions of Brykczynski's study is that it sheds new light on the dangerous role played by [End Page 395] electoral politics in the dissemination of antisemitism in interwar Poland. In addition to analyzing the rhetorical strategies deployed by the National Democracy movement's intelligentsia in newspapers to mobilize potential voters, Brykczynski also examines the political pamphlets and speeches they created for the "Polish street." In exploring this largely unexamined source base, he convincingly refutes the claim of some historians that the antisemitism of the Polish Right in the early 1920s was moderate in its tone and scope. Instead, Brykczynski reveals that nearly all of the election flyers produced by the National Democrats focused exclusively on the "Jewish threat" to Poles and Poland, and were saturated with anti-Jewish stereotypes. Brykczynski's analysis complements the work of other scholars of antisemitism who have illuminated the power of hatred to mobilize political support. By focusing on identity politics and deploying hateful rhetoric to play upon the emotions of voters, the National Democrats, according to Brykczynski, essentially freed themselves from having to present any concrete policies or programs to their potential supporters. He contrasts this strategy to the electoral messaging of the Polish Right's rivals in the Center and on the Left, many of whom called for the toleration of Poland's national minorities and their participation in Polish politics. Because these rivals simultaneously had to assure voters that they protected Polish interests, their political messaging, Brykczynski argues, was complex and at times convoluted. Their inability to reduce their party program to one simple message, he argues, was no match for the catchy slogans and simple solutions presented by the National Democrats. Thus, Brykczynski writes, the alternative to ethnic nationalism was presented much less forcefully, and stood little chance of attracting support among ordinary voters. While Brykczynski calls to task historians who have minimized the ferocity of the Polish Right's antisemitism in the early 1920s, he also challenges historians who insist that Polish nationalism was by its very nature antisemitic and violent. Carefully reconstructing the events that led to the antisemitic riots and assassination of 1922, he argues instead that a series of contingent events and individual choices played no small role in the...