History policy of the Law and Justice party

It is also argued that at its core it is an effort to accomplish extracting money from Poland (a victim of Nazi Germany), by Jewish people and/or the State of Israel, which is labelled as an absurd proposition.

[4][12][13] Jo Harper wrote in 2010 that "the PiS agenda has been clear: Poland will stand up for itself, will look at and raise arguments about things that affected Poles, but will defend against any criticism of Poles in relation to (Polish) Jews, Ukrainians, and other minorities... A central collective theme in this version of the national narrative—one that PiS attempts to exploit—is again of a morally clean nation that witnessed horror but was not an active collaborator in it.

"[14] Adam Leszczyński states that, "according to PiS, the source of the profound rift in Polish politics is historical, and dates back at least to the birth of the democratic opposition in the 1970s.

The movement is therefore revolutionary, conservative and emancipatory, all at the same time..." He clarifies that while "PiS's opponents see this vision of history as proof that the party is obsessed with conspiracies...

[18] The issue of history politics have risen further when in 2015 it was announced that the works had started on the "Strategy of Polish Historical Policy" ("Strategia Polskiej Polityki Historycznej").

[10][24] In 2018, the Polish Teachers' Union stated that the term "pedagogy of shame" has no scholarly basis and should not be used, as it "justif[ies] the denial of parts of historical knowledge".

[27] In 2016, members of PiS called for the reexamination of the Jedwabne and Kielce pogroms, stating that the current understanding underestimated the role of Nazi and Communist perpetrators respectively.

[25] According to Piotr Żuk [pl], the changes to the curriculum "in effect reduce education to the process of internalization of major national myths and transfer a simplified vision of reality".

"[39] Jörg Hackmann concludes that "a major interest of [the] current histor[y] policy [of] the government led by the PiS party is to put Poles and Jews upon an equal level of victimization...

In internal politics... the main goal is [for PiS to] tak[e] control of institutions... and marginaliz[e] opponents [by] shaping a monolithic view of the ethnic Polish nation, which [comes to] appear... as the first victim of Nazi and Soviet rule... From such a perspective the impact of the Jedwabne debate... has to be [oppos]ed... because it has been motivated by an aspiration for “disgrace”...

In addition, it has been assumed that the government’s memory [and history] poli[cie]s serve as auxiliary means for securing majorities [i]n other fields of politics..." Hackmann further concludes that "internal as well as international polarization is a major driving force behind the current official Polish memory policy... it seems that the general goal behind this histor[y] policy is not so much [to] turn... the wheel of time back and to revive an antisemitic discourse... [as] to establish a new national vision that equa[te]s the Holocaust with the genocide of Poles, or [in] other words aims at “de-Judaizing the Holocaust”.

[42] President of the Polish PEN International chapter, Adam Pomorski [pl], stated that "for the first time since totalitarianism, the rulers want to change people's consciousness".

[35] According to David Cadier and Kacper Szulecki, "the historical discourse of the PiS government is a reflection of the party’s reliance on populism as a political mode of articulation in that it seeks to promote a Manichean, dichotomic and totalizing re-definition of the categories of victim, hero and perpetrator".