This article examines the tabloidization of Gazeta Polska, one of Poland's leading right-wing weeklies. An analysis of the contents of the issues published in 2020 shows that the magazine meets all five criteria of tabloidization, i.e. colloquialism, emotionalism, sensationalism, personalization and visualization. The findings of this article can be treated as a contribution to current debates about the ongoing tabloidization of opinion weeklies.

One of the most common and dangerous conflicts in contemporary democracies is related to cultural differences in understanding of the basic principles of social organization. Such conflict is developing also in Poland. Its most recent manifestation is the serious confrontation between the new appointed Minister of Education and Science of the Polish government and the large part of the Polish scientific community. In the first part of the paper, I analyze on the basis of his publication the minister’s socio-political worldview. I am implying that it may explain his conflict arousing policy. I am focusing on his concept of the natural law and his use of this concept, on his understandings of democracy and secular state, and on his interpretation of minority rights in democracy. I am concluding that he represents the ultraconservative (right-wing) version of the Roman Catholic worldview and is trying to impose its implications on the Polish education as well as scientific institutions. In the second part of the paper, I am analyzing sociopsychological preconditions of cultural conflicts and factors that may determine the radicalization of these conflicts.

The normative system of Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927–2017) can be subsumed under three categories: (1) pessimism (fatalism, or ‘tychism’ in Wolniewicz’s terms), (2) moral determinism (‘non-meliorism’), (3) conservatism (‘right-hand orientation’). Ad (1) Wolniewicz was pessimistic in two ways: he believed human life to be tragic (fatalism) and was also convinced that most people are guided by bad instincts (dualism). Ad (2) Wolniewicz believed that moral character was biologically determined and immutable. But his strong position on this subject ignores the classical view of Aristotle or the Stoics for whom moral character (or conscience) was acquired by habit and shaped deliberately. Ad (3) I suggest that a good historical example of conservative tendency was Critias of Athens. His famous fragment of the Sisyphus contains the idea of a supremacy of laws over human passions, and reduces religion to a supportive role with respect to ethics and politics. Wolniewicz’s dualism of right-hand and left-hand orientation encourages me to distinguish between a right-wing and a left-wing perception of value. For a leftist, value is intensity of a chosen feature (progressive value), whereas for a rightist, value is an area of freedom between inacceptable extremities (modular value). On these premises I propose a simple model of axiological conflict between left-wing and right-wing citizens.

This article presents a profile of the satirical weekly Szopka (A Puppet Show) published in Warsaw between 1922 and 1925 under the auspices of the National Democracy (ND). Committed to a nationalist ideology, Szopka published cartoons and satirical texts lampooning the alleged enemies of Poland and the Poles. Its favoured technique was to caricature and ridicule its targets, both individuals and institutions. Among them were Józef Piłsudski, his policies and his political associates, the Bolsheviks, the Germans and the Jews. To propagate their nationalist worldview the editors made use of a broad range of persuasion techniques.