Polish Online TV Channel Promotes Hate but YouTube Takes No Action
A worrying YouTube channel continues to publish hateful content in Poland. Wrealu24 is a popular far-right TV-style channel, which hosts content on both its own site as well as on YouTube, where the channel has 523,000 subscribers. This month, Polish partner Never Again Association highlighted two particularly troubling cases on the channel.
On September 23rd, a broadcast was published titled: “URGENT! Is it Poland or already Polin? Attack on Sumlinski! Cancelled shows, intimidation!”. The segment included an interview between Piotr Szlachtowicz and Wojciech Sumlinski, who discussed anti-Jewish violence in Poland during WWII. Sumlinski, who is the author of popular books and films denying the facts of the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, and Szlachtowicz promote a conspiracy theory claiming that Jews want compensation in order to take over Polish territory. In response to the question “Is Poland already Polin”, Sumlinksi answers: “I tend to say: yes Poland has already become Polin. (…) [The Jews] strive for colonization in order to achieve ownership changes, in order to have their Polin here. And when it comes to government, to the issue of who has the biggest influence, the biggest power here, then Poland is Polin already.” ‘Polin’ is the Hebrew word for Poland and it is used by the far right as a warning against a supposed threat of Jewish domination of Poland. In the broadcast they also refer to an antisemitic conspiracy theory on COVID-19.
The video received over 45,000 views on YouTube and sparked many hateful comments, with one individual stating: "They [Jews] have nothing to look for here, blood will flow if this is what they want". This broadcast comes at a time where tensions continue to be high in Poland as a draft bill to limit WW2 property restitution claims in the country was passed in June, leading to an increase in antisemitic incidents.
Also in September, Wrealu24 shared a video with the title: “A shocking testimony of Maria, how she managed to escape from Muslim slavery? A warning to Polish women!”. In the broadcast, a woman called Maria is interviewed by host Pawel Jaworski about a past relationship she claims to have had with a Muslim man. During the segment, Jaworski says: “In a beautiful way you told the young people, all of us, about the threats coming from Islam, it is no joke, these are not refugees, but these are people who fully realize they want to conquer this continent and they want to conquer this continent for the devil. One has to talk about it openly.” In response, Maria says: “Yes, exactly, I speak about it openly and I have no problem with speaking about the fact that Islam is a religion of Satan, that means a cult of Satan, not a religion.” Without dismissing any traumatic relationship Maria might have endured, this is a clear case on an interview being used to push a very specific agenda. Besides Maria’s claims, there is no context given and no space for counterargument. Wrealu24’s aim of sparking fear and hate around Islam is clearly successful, as the comments show: "We must sensitize our daughters so that they never enter in a relationship with Muslims," one viewer states.
The content, and subsequent comments, on the Wrealu24 YouTube channel is clearly hateful and so we have to ask: why is this content still hosted on the platform? This is not the first time that Never Again Association has come across alarming content on the Wrealu24 channel and when they have found it, they have reported it to YouTube. Yet, it is still live. When it comes to hate speech, the YouTube policy clearly states that they will remove content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on a variety of attributes, which includes religion. The Wrealu24 channel promotes hatred against Jewish and Muslim individuals (as well as other minorities), as can clearly be seen through the comments left in response to their content, and thus YouTube must take appropriate action on the case. We will continue to monitor the situation and finds ways to engage with YouTube on this matter.
