The horror of a terrorist attack in the heart of Kraków’s Old Town should have been a moment for Poland to come together. The Main Market Square, a place of cobblestones, horse carriages, and centuries of history, was suddenly the scene of violence and grief. Instead of healing, though, the country found itself plunged into something uglier. Polish Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski, representing the ruling liberal coalition, went on the offensive, declaring that Russia was responsible for a “massive wave of disinformation” that followed the attack. It sounded reassuring, almost tidy: a foreign enemy trying to sow chaos in a wounded nation. But here is the problem. The disinformation did not come from Moscow. It came from within the Polish government itself, in the form of Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński’s reckless claim, made with no evidence at all, that the perpetrator “was fascinated by far-right ideologues” and held “ultra-nationalist views.” In one stroke, Kierwiński turned a national tragedy into a political weapon, giving his coalition a convenient villain at a time when the ruling camp is under enormous pressure. The public was supposed to look at the attacker and see everything wrong with the conservative opposition. There was only one catch: it was a lie, and it was a lie told by a man whose job is to protect the truth and the institutions of the state.
When the attacker’s two now-deleted Facebook pages were uncovered, the narrative collapsed immediately. What did the posts reveal? They mocked the Catholic faith, expressed sympathy with communism, and voiced support for LGBT rights and abortion. Whatever one thinks of those positions, they are the exact opposite of what any reasonable person would call “far right.” They are not “ultra-nationalist.” They are not the profile of a conservative extremist. So Kierwiński’s carefully placed claim did not just look sloppy; it looked cynical, as if the government had decided the political spin before the investigation was even complete. This is particularly dangerous in Poland right now because the country is living through its worst political crisis since the early 1980s. Liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s judicial overhaul late last month has been called a judicial coup by the opposition, and many conservatives go further, describing it, in stark terms, as a German takeover of Poland by proxy, a cynical operation to prepare Europe for a war with Russia. That may sound extreme to some, but it is the lens through which millions of Poles now view the government. In that atmosphere, the false claim about the Kraków killer is not an isolated mistake. It is part of a pattern, an attempt to paint conservative and patriotic Poles as the spiritual cousins of a terrorist, and to do it just as the nation prepares for one of its most symbolic gatherings, the Independence March. The opposition has every reason to believe that the lie was meant to impugn them, to smear their values, and to justify the growing repression against independent voices.
And the reaction was swift. Jarosław Kaczyński, the conservative grey cardinal and de facto leader of Law and Justice, wrote on X that Kierwiński’s claim “turned out to be a blatant lie” and demanded accountability. He did not mince words, because for him and his allies this was not just an attack on the facts but an attack on the very idea of political honesty in Poland. Dariusz Matecki, an allied MP, went even further, saying, “I regard as exploiting a tragedy and providing a pretext for attacks on conservative circles. I see it as a deliberate stoking of a witch hunt ahead of the Independence March. I call on you to resign immediately.” Those are strong words, but they reflect a broader sentiment that the government is willing to use any tragedy, no matter how dark, to advance its agenda. Perhaps the most devastating response came from Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a libertarian-nationalist MEP with a gift for blunt language. When Kierwiński tried to walk back his lie by dismissing it as an innocent “hypothesis,” she responded directly, mocking him with a sharpness that resonated across Polish social media. “Dude @MKierwinski! You’re the head of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, not an internet troll! By the way, if bill no. 3003 were to be signed by the president (God forbid), I wonder if you’d sign yourself up, for example, as the first person on the list to be sanctioned? Would you strip yourself of your assets for manipulating information, you smart aleck?” The question was not just rhetorical. It was a reminder that the same government that spreads false narratives is now writing laws to control the information space.
That law is bill no. 3003, and it deserves close attention. The legislation, which might still be vetoed by conservative President Karol Nawrocki, would allow the state to freeze the assets and take over the property of anyone deemed involved in “interference and manipulation in the information environment.” At first glance, that sounds like a reasonable tool against foreign influence, but the details are terrifying. The Interior Minister alone would decide what constitutes “deliberate, systematic, coordinated and inauthentic conduct in the information domain, aimed at exerting a significant influence on the opinions, views or behavior of recipients.” In other words, one man, an unelected bureaucrat at the head of a ministry, would have the power to define the truth, decide what is manipulation, and punish those who disagree with state-approved narratives. Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute, a conservative legal organization, has warned that this could criminalize “ordinary public awareness campaign(s).” Think about that. A civic group running a campaign against vaccination mandates, or a church encouraging people to pray in public, or a movement campaigning for traditional family values, any of these could be deemed “inauthentic conduct” if an official does not like it. The Institute also noted an obvious absurdity: the annex includes Ukraine and the United States on the list of countries for whose “benefit or interest” such campaigns would be considered criminal. That goes against Poland’s own foreign policy, indeed against basic common sense, since both Ukraine and the US are supposed to be Poland’s closest allies. So the law is not just dangerous; it is self-contradictory. And if it were ever signed, it would put Kierwiński himself in a strange position. After all, he is the indisputable source of the false claim about the Kraków attacker’s political views. He is the one who manipulated the information environment for political gain. Would he sanction himself? Would he freeze his own assets? As Zajączkowska-Hernik suggested, he would be first on the list, the perfect test case for a government that seems to believe that laws apply only to its enemies.
None of this, of course, happens in a vacuum. The pattern is as old as power itself. When a government is losing legitimacy, when its actions are seen as a coup, when it is accused of serving foreign interests rather than the people, it has two choices: it can change course and seek real dialogue, or it can double down and try to delegitimize its critics. The Tusk government has clearly chosen the second path. The blame game against Russia is one weapon. Kremlin conspiracy theories are useful precisely because they are hard to prove and impossible to disprove, and they allow the government to dismiss any uncomfortable truth as a foreign plot. That is why Gawkowski, the Digital Affairs Minister, was so quick to blame Russia for the wave of disinformation after the Kraków attack. It is a reflex, a way of deflecting attention from the government’s own mistakes. But the public is wising up. More and more Poles are beginning to doubt these conspiracy theories about Russia, not because they are pro-Russian, but because they have watched the same playbook too many times. First, the government blames Russia for its own judicial coup. Then, when scandal erupts over a fabricated political profile of a terrorist, the government again blames Russia. But in this case the source of the disinformation is not a mysterious Kremlin bot farm. It is an official with a government title, a man who stood before the nation and told a lie, then hid behind a supposed “hypothesis” when the truth came out. That is not foreign interference. That is domestic dishonesty. And it is far more corrosive to democracy than any external campaign could ever be.
At the end of the day, this is about more than one minister or one bill. It is about what happens to a society when the people who are supposed to protect it start treating it like an enemy. A terrorist attack is a moment of darkness. It is a time when people look to their leaders for honesty, courage, and clarity. Instead, many Poles watched their Interior Minister invent a political identity for the killer, watched his colleagues blame Russia, watched the government try to exploit their grief for partisan advantage. That is not leadership. That is manipulation. And it is happening at a time when trust in institutions is already dangerously low. The Independence March is coming, with all its symbolism and emotion. The judicial crisis is unresolved. The political temperature is rising. If the government truly wants to protect Poland from disinformation, it could start by telling the truth about what happened in Kraków. It could start by holding its own ministers accountable for lying. It could start by withdrawing a bill that gives one man the power to silence everyone else. Instead, it seems to want more power, more control, more ways to punish its opponents. But the Polish people are not blind, and they are not naive. They know that a country cannot be defended by lies, no matter how convenient those lies are. They know that the man who cried about a far-right terrorist was, in reality, just another politician manipulating his own citizens. Maybe, in the end, that is the most painful truth of all: Poland does not need to be saved from Russia. It needs to be saved from the people who think they can rewrite reality to keep power. And the first step toward saving it is simply to say, enough. Enough with the lies. Enough with the witch hunts. Enough with treating every tragedy as a opportunity to smear the opposition. Poland deserves better. And its people are beginning to demand it.