Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

A far-right Polish historian

“We want a Catholic Poland, not a Bolshevik one, not multicultural or gay!"

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, a nationalist Polish historian, sits on the Academic Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). He chairs the Polish studies department at the Institute of World Politics, a right-wing private graduate school dedicated to “statecraft, national security, intelligence, and international affairs.” This Institute is very close to the VOC, but more about that next month. Since 2020, Chodakiewicz has written over a hundred articles for the ultraconservative Newsmax. His portfolio includes: “Wokeism the Latest US Import in Poland,” “Reactionary Musings to Combat America's Woke Exports,” “Poland Armed to the Teeth, a Good Thing” and “Should America Gift Poland a Nuclear Weapon?”

According to Hope Not Hate, a British anti-racist organization, Chodakiewicz “is mostly known as a denier of Polish responsibility for acts of antisemitism, including the infamous Jedwabne pogrom of 1941. He has repeatedly claimed Jews themselves were chiefly responsible for the hostility of their Polish neighbors. Accusations of Jewish involvement with Communism have been present in many of Chodakiewicz's writings.” In 2005, George W. Bush appointed Chodakiewicz to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Four years later, he was removed from this position after the Southern Poverty Law Center published an exposé of Chodakiewicz’s “controversial views.”

Chodakiewicz, who describes himself as "a Christian conservative of Polish ancestry," has written favorably about Francisco Franco, the late anti-Communist dictator known for his brutal suppression of the Spanish left. He is an admirer of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, an autocratic leader who criticized American Jews for "controlling" U.S. media and finance. He sees gay rights as a threat to society, has linked President Barack Obama to communists and domestic terrorists, and is a voluble critic of what he sees as Western "political correctness."

But it is Poles' killing of Jews during and after the war, and Poland's image as a result, that commands much of Chodakiewicz's attention... "The guy is an ideologist of the radical right," says Jan T. Gross, a Princeton University history professor and the Polish-born author of two acclaimed books about the Poles' murder of Jews during and after World War II — books that sparked a political firestorm in Poland because they suggested a high level of Catholic anti-Semitism. "I don't have any doubts that he's anti-Semitic."

University of Toronto Polish history professor Piotr Wróbel is less blunt. Chodakiewicz, he says, "has spent almost 30 years in the states — he would never use a phrase or adjective that would clearly identify him as an anti-Semite." But, he adds, "There is no doubt whatsoever that he doesn't like the Jews." 

According to Foreign Policy magazine, “Chodakiewicz has further made a series of controversial comments, including endorsing the far-right claim of white genocide in South Africa, as well as accusing Sen. Bernie Sanders of being a ‘Jewish Bolshevik.’” He has also spoken to far-right, even white nationalist, audiences. “We want a Catholic Poland, not a Bolshevik one, not multicultural or gay!” he once declared.

Marek Chodakiewicz reportedly helped Donald Trump with his July 2017 speech in Poland, on the heels of a Three Seas Initiative (3SI) summit in Warsaw. The Southern Poverty Law Center called him “Trump’s Right-Wing Handler for the Polish Visit.” The 3SI describes itself as a “politically inspired, commercially driven platform for improving connectivity between twelve EU Member States allocated between Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas.” The political inspiration is the Intermarium, an anti-Russian geopolitical project envisioned by Józef Piłsudski, in turn inspired by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The year after flying to Poland with Trump on Air Force One, Marek Chodakiewicz joined the VOC’s Academic Council, and the Polish government donated $10 million for the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, where Chodakiewicz directs the Center for Intermarium Studies at the Institute of World Politics.

Eventually it came to light that Chodakiewicz was more or less a lobbyist for the government of Poland. In 2017, two years after the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party rose to power, the Polish state-funded Polish National Foundation signed a $45,000 per month contract with White House Writers Group (WHWG), a PR firm in Washington, which hired Anna Wellisz, Chodakiewicz's sister, as its senior director. She subsequently registered as a foreign agent for Poland. Previously, Wellisz wrote an article for Taki's Magazine, which “has been an important platform for many alt-right figures, including its former editor, Richard Spencer.” WHWG's founder said that the PR firm also hired Marek Chodakiewicz “because he was an obvious and inexpensive way of filling a slot at a conference.”

At last year’s “Captive Nations Summit” organized by the VOC, Marek Chodakiewicz described Angola, Mozambique, “and perhaps Ethiopia” as “victims of post-communism,” and said that he would “like to see the [Captive Nations] coalition restitched.” The VOC was founded by the National Captive Nations Committee, practically chaired for life by Lev Dobriansky, a sort of Ukrainian nationalist. A month later, Chodakiewicz wrote a sloppy article to debunk Nazism in Ukraine for “The European Conservative.” He conceded that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists “certainly did try to collaborate but they were rebuked by the Germans,” and admitted that the contemporary Azov movement “boasts of neo-Nazi symbols and spews racialist ideology.”

But Azov is an aberration, not the norm. The cult of the OUN and Bandera is mostly a regional phenomenon. Mainstream Ukrainian nationalism is a project still in the process of forming. What shape it will take remains unknown. One thing is certain, however; the current Russian invasion has breathed new life and strength into Ukrainian nationalism. It will probably serve as a catalyst to forge an all-Ukrainian national identity out of its regional manifestations.  Whether the Ukrainians lose this war, which is likely, or not, they will emerge much stronger: united in their hatred of Russia.

In October, reacting to recent elections in Sweden and Italy that the far-right capitalized on, Chodakiewicz wrote an op-ed for Fox News to the effect that “Europe’s rightward shift… could help form [a] pro-American, right-wing alliance in Europe.” But, he said, Washington’s future “rightist partners” need to clean up their act. Without naming it, Chodakiewicz appeared to make a reference to the World Anti-Communist League, which in fact was not really “purged.”

In putting together a pro-American, right-wing coalition, we would have to make wise choices predicated on, first, the knowledge of history, and second, the recent track record of our perspective rightist partners on the Old Continent. In the 1980s late General John Singlaub aided by Herbert Romerstein purged the American anti-Communist movement of neo-Nazis and their sympathizers. We must expect our prospective European right-wing allies to do the same in their ranks, if they have not done so.

Which brings us to next week’s Victim of Communism, General Singlaub…