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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I analyze the antagonistic articulation towards the current Polish government and more broadly the state. By analyzing the consequences of the distrust in the state and the emergence of new political identities I discuss the possibilities of transforming the government's responses.

Paper long abstract:

The attempts to narrow down the circumstances under which one can have an abortion sparked a series of protests in Poland. The protests were not organized by one coherent environment, but rather they were a spontaneous reaction to the events on the political and administrative levels. Those protests, similar to the protests against scapegoating the LGBTQ+ community during the presidential electoral campaign in Poland in 2020, faced a rather violent response from the state. That response to the protests, which were tolerated and welcomed as a sign of vital civil society before conservative-authoritarian party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość came to power, not only meant exclusion from the public debate but also complete loss of the little trust in the state bureaucracy and its representatives, polish society had.

In this paper, I look closer at the Laclauian concept of populism, and by reconstructing the protests discourse I am mapping the emergence of the chain of equivalence; the formulation of the empty signifier, and I analyze the antagonistic articulation towards the current Polish government and more broadly to the state. Populism is often described as irrational, heavily based on the emotions of fear and anger, and I, in this paper, try to go beyond that, showing that the initial mobilization based on fear and anger can lead to the emergence of radically empathetic and inclusive political articulations. By analyzing the consequences of the distrust in the state and the emergence of new political identities I discuss the possibilities of transforming the government's responses.