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Comrade Ragball and a Slimeball as Unigue Visions of the Other in Postwar Poland
Komorowski (2010-2015) being politically involved in a bankrupt and corrupt
financial institution.'° The term slimeball was also used in reference to an actor,
a Law and Justice supporter, who had fallen prey to a media provocation, as he was
called on the phone by a journalist who introduced himself as a staffer in the Presi¬
dential Office and asked the actor to confidentially provide the names of his fellow
actors who had been critical of the president so that they could be sent to an earlier
retirement. Unfortunately for the actor, he indeed did provide a few names and as
a result was labelled a slimeball.’” Still another blog entry quotes the Civic Platform
politician known for his strong, colourful language, who claims that “with the ad¬
vent of Law and Justice, a golden period has arrived for the slimeballs”. Further he
argues, very much in line with Wierzbicki, “Slimeballs have always given support
and always pointed out they did not belong to the party” and then lists the names
of journalists who support the Law and Justice and thus are slimeballs.'*
Perhaps the most remarkable application of the term gnida can be found in the
poster (see Fig. 11) prepared as part of the right-wing-inspired boycott campaign
launched against the allegedly anti-Polish film /da after it had won an Oscar. The
poster plays on the film title, implying that someone in the film or maybe the direc¬
tor himself is a slimeball. The poster says:
I will not go for/watch GnIDA. Ida is a film which falsifies Polish history. Ida is
a film from which we will not find out that in the years 1939-1945 Poland was
occupied by Germany. Ida is a film from which we will find out that it is not
Germans, but Poles who were guilty of the Jewish Holocaust, that Poles of their
own will murder Jews for material gain, that the Stalinist prosecutor Helena
Wolitiska-Brus was not a murderess, but a victim of the communist system.
Overall, it could be briefly concluded that both terms for the familiar Other,
originally introduced by Szpotariski and Wierzbicki in their works, have developed
and have recently been used much more flexibly than originally, sometimes as gen¬
eral terms of abuse. Thus the labelling strategy (Demski 2013) seems to have lost its
initial purpose of keeping distance to those who have strayed but instead has been
used indiscriminately to express dissatisfaction.
16 http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/w,28,157173274,157173274, Sad_oddalil zazalenie_ politycznej_
gnidy_.html (last accessed on: July 15, 2016).
7 http://www.pudelek.pl/artykul/84828/aktorzy_i_dziennikarze_o_zelniku_kapus klamca_i_gnida_
czy_ofiara_mistyfikacji_s/foto_4#s1 (last accessed on: July 15, 2016).
18
http://blogpublika.com/2016/02/20/prof-niesiolowski-o-przeciwnikach-politycznych-gnidy-wszy¬
nada-sie-do-hejtstop/ (last accessed on: July 15, 2016).
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