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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 Presidential 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 advent 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 director 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 general 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-wszynada-sie-do-hejtstop/ (last accessed on: July 15, 2016). 391
