In a political twist that has unsettled much of Europe, Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian with no prior political experience, has been elected the president of Poland. Formerly the head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Nawrocki has pledged to obstruct the Centrist, pro-European government led by the prime minister, Donald Tusk. His rise to the presidency so recently after Poland voted out the far-Right Law and Justice party (PiS) in 2023 underscores how deeply ingrained historical revisionism has become in Polish political life — and how potent a weapon it
remains for the far-Right across the continent.
Nawrocki, often described as “Poland’s Trump”, is not an outlier. His ascension is the logical result of years of political efforts to reengineer national identity through selective memory. During its eight-year rule, the PiS built a platform not just on social conservatism and hostility toward Brussels but also on a concerted attempt to reshape how Poles understand their past. The IPN, under Nawrocki’s leadership, was central to this mission. It oversaw changes to school curricula, increased surveillance of dissenting historical research, and promoted commemorative events that reinforced a heroic, innocent narrative of Polish history, particularly in relation to the Holocaust and the communist era.
This revisionist turn was given legal teeth in 2018 when Poland passed a law making it a criminal offence to accuse “the Polish nation” of complicity in the Holocaust. While no one was prosecuted under the law, its symbolic value was immense. It sent a clear message — questioning national innocence was unpatriotic, even subversive. Historians who discussed Polish anti-Semitism or documented cases of collaboration with the Nazis found themselves under political and public pressure. The government labelled such work as being part of a “pedagogy of shame”, an allegedly foreign-backed agenda to divide and weaken Poland by imposing guilt for crimes the nation insisted it did not commit.
Nawrocki’s political appeal lies in this very refusal to accept collective moral ambiguity. He offers a version of Poland where the nation was always victimised, always noble, and never wrong. This historical self-image is not merely academic — it has become central to the country’s political identity. His victory represents the triumph of that narrative, and it poses an immediate challenge to the Tusk government’s efforts to undo the legal and institutional damage left by PiS. Judicial reforms crucial to restoring the rule of law, regaining access to frozen funds from the European Union, and re-establishing democratic norms will likely face vetoes from the new president. Effectively, Tusk, already leading a fragile coalition, may find his government paralysed.
But the deeper question that Nawrocki’s rise raises is why history, particularly a distorted version of it, holds such sway over electorates grappling with far more urgent material issues: inflation, housing, healthcare, and war on the continent’s doorstep. The answer is not simply nostalgia, but the far-Right’s mastery of history as emotional infrastructure. When a society is told that its past was heroic and unblemished, that it has always been unfairly maligned by others, and that to question this narrative is to betray the nation, it creates a powerful emotional bond between voters and leaders who promise to protect that myth. For many, that bond is stronger than trust in democratic processes or liberal institutions.
This is not a uniquely Polish phenomenon. Across Europe, the far-Right is turning the past into political capital. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has poured State resources into museums that equate Nazi and communist atrocities, downplaying the Hungarian collaboration with the Nazis while elevating narratives of Hungarian suffering. In Germany, the far-Right Alternative for Germany politician, Björn Höcke, has called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame”, advocating instead for a history that focuses on German heroism and suffering. Marine Le Pen in France has repeatedly sought to sanitise the record of Vichy collaboration and restore national pride by erasing complicity. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government encourages narratives that foreground Italian victimhood, casting fascist crimes as tragic but secondary to the violence Italians later suffered at the hands of partisans or occupiers.
In each case, the pattern is the same: national history is cleansed of guilt and filled instead with grievance. These narratives thrive on a refusal to reckon with complexity. They promise voters a moral simplicity that democratic politics often cannot. The far-Right does not merely rewrite history, it offers its own form of redemption, absolving entire nations of wrongdoing and recasting them as unjustly maligned heroes.
This is why historical revisionism is not only an academic concern but also a central pillar of contemporary far-Right governance. It allows parties to consolidate power while presenting themselves as defenders of national dignity. It reframes criticism as attack, and dissent as betrayal. And once the past is distorted, it becomes much easier to distort the present. A society that refuses to see its role in historical injustice is less likely to recognise or challenge injustice today.
Nawrocki’s presidency may not immediately undo Poland’s recent return to Centrist, democratic governance but it will likely erode this momentum. His win is both a cause and a consequence of a deeper cultural shift away from introspection and toward mythmaking. In a country that only recently appeared to turn the page on a fraught chapter of authoritarian drift, the page now risks being torn out entirely. The election of a historian-turned-politician on a platform of historical denial should alarm not only Poles but also Europeans at large.
History, after all, is never just about the past. It is a lens through which people and societies understand who they are and what they deserve. In the wrong hands, that lens distorts rather than clarifies. It fuels resentment rather than reconciliation. And, in doing so, it prepares the ground not for reckoning but for repetition. Poland’s new president does not just promise to block judicial reforms or stymie democratic recovery. He offers something more enduring: a comforting lie about what the nation is — and a dangerous blueprint for what it might become.
Carol Schaeffer is a journalist based in Berlin, Germany, and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.
