Politics

Having been excluded for decades from the rewards of worldly advancement, our friends [in the post-Soviet Bloc] had failed to cultivate those arts - hypocrisy, treachery, and Realpolitik - without which it is impossible to stay in government. They sat in their offices for a while, pityingly observed by their staff of former secret policemen, while affable and much traveled rivals, of the kind with whom German Social Democrats and French Gaullists could both "do business", carefully groomed themselves for the next elections. Not since 1945 had so many records of communist party membership disappeared, or so many dissident biographies been invented. Within two years the real dissidents had returned to their studies, while the world outside was racing on, led by a new political class that had learned to add a record of outspoken dissidence to all its other dissimulations. We were witnessing what [Czechoslovak Communist Alexander] Dubcek had promised, socialism with a human face. The most urgent preoccupation of this new political class was to climb on to the European Union gravy train, which promised rewards of a kind that had been enjoyed in previous years only by the inner circle of the secret police.  
-Roger Scruton >>more...

The author has examined numerous WWII-era Hollywood films, evaluated them for their content on Poland (usually absent, seldom neutral or positive, and frequently negative), compared them with portrayals of other Allied nationalities, and diagnosed the reasons for these developments. It all boiled down to how Poles were seen, who had an interest in belittling Poland, and what little capability the Poles had for getting the truth out. >>more...