In Poland, as in many other countries, BLM protests were organised in mid-2020. Even though the BLM mobilisation in Poland was small compared to many Western European societies, it is remarkable that it took place in spite of the unfavourable opportunity structures, including the regressive mainstream under the current right-wing government. The most important success of the mobilisation was the new initiation of a debate on racial discrimination against Black people in Poland. The article studies the question of how the protest diffused as well as the commonalities and differences amongst activists. Our analysis pays particular attention to the two major obstacles to mobilisation: (1) a relatively small minority of People of Color (PoC) and their lack of visibility, resulting in low public sensitivity to racial discrimination; (2) the traditional closed culture for debate on issues of racism. Consequently, the Polish BLM organisers adapted core problem definitions by de-racializing experiences of discrimination.

In the early summer of 2020, 17 Black Lives Matter demonstrations took place in eleven Polish cities with more than 7000 participants in total. All BLM protests in Poland took place between 31 May and 10 June, most of them in the largest cities. Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, and Poznań had more than one event each. The only protests recorded in small and medium-sized towns happened in Zielona Góra and Grudziądz. Street marches in city centres were the dominant form of action. In two cases, events involved a lie-in performance that enacted the death of George Floyd. When possible, events took place near the US embassy or consulate. Protesters wore black clothes, lit candles, and left their banners at symbolic places. The number of participants varied considerably: from small gatherings of a few dozen participants in Grudziądz to around 3000 in Poznań.

This turnout may seem low in comparison with other Western European countries. For example, in Italy, anti-racist activists organised nearly 150 protests, while in Germany, almost 200,000 people participated (Milman et al., 2021, p. 33). Nevertheless, it was the largest wave of protests in Poland’s history that focused on racial discrimination against Black people, taking place in spite of what we argue were a set of unfavourable political opportunity structures (Tarrow, 2005, p. 23). By unfavourable opportunity structures, we mean the Polish political context, historic experiences as well as discourse, and Poland’s social situation which differs significantly from that of Western Europe and the United States – at least from the majoritarian white perspective, Poland is often perceived as being ‘race and racism free’ (Nowicka, 2017, p. 824).

Poland has no tradition of reflecting on its colonial fantasies or interwar colonial aspirations (Balogun, 2017, p. 10-12; Grzechnik, 2020, p. 828; Omolo, 2017, p. 60). Racist novels, poems, or sayings are still widely used or even parts of the school curriculum, like Henryk Sienkiewicz’s W pustyni i puszczy (In Desert and Wilderness) in which the Nobel laureate in literature introduces and popularises typical Western racist images of Africa (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 6). But racist cultural products are not only still in use. There are no major debates on racism. If admitted, racism is identified with violent acts committed by the far right or hooligans and thus defined as an exceptional phenomenon on the margins of society. From this standpoint, racism appears not to be a Polish problem and structural racism is almost entirely neglected, despite its deep roots in the Polish ‘cultural repertoire’ (Nowicka, 2017, p. 835). Therefore, theoretical literature points to the conceptual framework of the ‘depth of whiteness’ and its consequences for defining ‘normality’ (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 12). Thus, the prevalent myth of Poland’s cultural homogeneity is still dominant, despite being a construct based on post-war major demographic changes and obscuring both historical and contemporary diversity (Balogun, 2020, p. 5). Polish nationalism ties nationality primarily to skin colour: ‘A Pole must be white like a Polish eagle’ (Bolugan & Joseph-Salisbury, 2020, p. 11). In this way, Polish racist prejudices are often built on biological grounds. Consequently, the Black community is stereotyped as being lazy, poor, malnourished, unhealthy, etc. Both school curricula and popular culture reinforce such negative stereotypes (Nowicka, 2017, p. 829). In recent years, social scientists have begun to engage with the racist components of Polish culture (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 5).

The prevailing lack of awareness for (traditional) racist stigmatisation can be partially explained by the low number of PoC in Poland. In 2011, Black people or those of African descent were estimated at only 2500 out of a population of 38 million (Kubicki, 2011). Although this number has certainly grown, this increase has been only modest in magnitude, with estimations ranging from 3000 (Nowicka, 2017, p. 828) to 5000 (Omeni, 2016, p. 3). Most seem to live in major cities where they study or work in foreign corporations as highly skilled experts. However, their status as migrants and specialists might prevent them from seeking community engagement (Jaskulowski & Pawlak, 2020).

Furthermore, a right-wing populist government, which benefited from organising and mobilising conservative grassroots movements (Ekiert, 2022), has been in power since 2015 and pursued a political agenda directly targeting progressive social movements. On the one hand, the government has tried to restrict progressive activism, for example, by cutting funding or by organising public smear campaigns (Kocyba & Lewicki, 2020). On the other hand, its illiberal policies, such as attacks on the rights of women and sexual minorities, limited the resources available to such organisations (Piotrowski, 2020). All of this together made BLM mobilisation in Poland unlikely, yet as we shall show, the protests happened anyway.

Against this background, in the paper we will seek to reconstruct a diffusion process that occurred in an unfavourable political and cultural environment. Our aim is to show how diffusion occurs despite such difficulties – a case that Soule and Roggeband (2019) recently called for further investigation into – so as to better understand political mobilisation in times and places where it is particularly unlikely to occur (p. 246).

The growing literature on the diffusion of social movements and protests provides the theoretical framework for our analysis. Following the established logic in diffusion processes’ study, we will analyse our empirical material according to three main questions: (1) what diffuses, (2) how it diffuses, and (3) what are the consequences of diffusion (Givan et al., 2010, pp. 2–3).

First, we focus on BLM frames and repertoires transferred to the Polish context (Milman et al., 2021). Of particular interest is the question of whether and how early adopters in Poland adjusted the demands of the American BLM movement to their local context and what translation performance could be observed in the process. The research literature regularly emphasises that diffusion is not a simple transfer but always an active adaptation, a complex and dynamic process: ‘Tactics and frames are not simply transplanted from one site to another, but are often adapted and modified as they diffuse across movements and borders’ (Soule & Roggeband, 2019, p. 241).

In our case, a certain tension is to be expected. This has to do with two observations: (1) early adopters tend to follow the original literally (Roggeband 2007, p. 246–247); (2) a certain homogeneity between initiator and adopter movement facilitates diffusion, while differences hinder it (Chabot & Duyvendak, 2002, p. 702; Snow & Benford, 1999, p. 29). This means that the case of BLM must have been a challenge for Polish activists, as there are major differences in cultural and social settings between its country of origin and Poland. Central differences have already been mentioned, namely the absence of a considerable community of Black Poles and the lack of a pre-existing broad public reflection on anti-Black racism that turns regularly, even within the scientific discourse, to its denial (Nowicka, 2017, p. 828). Therefore, it can be assumed that the tension between the presumably close orientation of the Polish early adopters to the US movement, coupled with the major cultural and social differences, will hinder successful resonance and thus diffusion. Then the question is how successful the adoption of ‘non-resonant issues, frames or practices’ in Poland was (Roggeband, 2007, p. 248).

Second, we address the mechanisms of diffusion. We examine how ideas and repertoires are transferred in today’s globalised world, where a flow of information is observable even beyond personal networks through the dissemination of images and content, not only through classic media but also through social media. The focus will not be on whether traditional media or the internet are of greater importance, as is occasionally discussed in the research literature (Rane & Salem, 2012, p. 101). Our emphasis lies on how the specific Polish context, with its media landscape, affected the chances of successful diffusion. To some extent, Poland has two mutually-exclusive media perspectives: one pro-government and one pro-opposition. After the Law and Justice Party came to power in 2015, public broadcasters – like the largest Polish television network Telewizja Polska – were transformed into vehicles of pro-government messaging. Thus, the public and right-wing media adopted a collectively hostile perspective on the BLM campaign and anti-racism in general, reporting mostly on violent riots in the USA but not on the causes of those protests. This negative sentiment was partially shared by the liberal media (Milman et al., 2021, p. 28). We assume that such a media environment created an unfavourable climate for BLM protests in Poland.

Another dimension of the diffusion process concerns the nature and quality of relations between adaptors and the initial movement. As Soule & Roggeband (2019, p.238) argue, there are three basic models of diffusion: relational (also called direct), non-relational (also called indirect), and mediated. So far, most attention has been paid to the relational form of diffusion, as it is also considered to be the surest route to success. Roggeband notes: ‘Social relations are not only important for diffusion to occur but continue to shape the process in later stages’ (2007, p. 248). However, amongst the organisers of Polish BLM, there were no established contacts with the BLM movement, either in the US or Western Europe. Therefore, building up such direct contacts would have been central not only for the thickening of international solidarity but, more importantly, for the success of BLM protests in Poland, even if this process was to be initiated by a mediating third party.

Finally, we turn our attention to the impact of diffusion. Here we are concerned with the question of the lasting influence of a diffusion process. As already emphasised, we are dealing with unfavourable political opportunities, which may have hindered diffusion. Specifically, we ask the following questions: Did BLM protests initiate any institutional movement sedimentation? Did repertoires, frames, or other contents of the Western BLM initiators have a lasting influence on other movements in Poland in the sense of a spillover effect? What issues of racism and police violence against Black people have shaped Polish public debate? Were there other lasting effects from the organisers’ perspective? Or, despite the obstacles, can we speak of a successful diffusion in the Polish case?

We studied Poland’s 2020 BLM campaign by applying three mostly qualitative methodologies developed jointly within the comparative European research project that our case study is part of (Milman et al., 2021). First, we created a database of relevant events using protest event analysis (PEA) (Hutter, 2014). Here, we coded the events following a code book that included the organisers, the claims, the number of participants, counterprotests, etc. To identify smaller and less visible demonstrations that were not covered by the national press, we included regional press, online news portals, and social media channels in our analysis. Second, we studied media discourse on the BLM campaign in the Polish media. We found that the two most important Polish daily newspapers, the liberal ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ and the conservative ‘Rzeczpospolita,’ reported rarely and only briefly on anti-racist protests in Poland. In total, we identified only 14 articles on Polish BLM protests in both newspapers (eleven of them in local branches of ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’) by searching for all articles mentioning BLM during May, June, and July 2020. This validated our decision to study local and social media sources instead of solely national press. Third, we conducted structured interviews with organisers and activists. We reached out to the organisers of all protest events and conducted eight interviews with 13 people in total. The interviews were carried out in December 2020. Due to pandemic restrictions, they were conducted in an online-only format.

Both the press coverage and our interviews confirm that most BLM protests in Poland were organised by newcomers who had no prior experience as organisers or even as members of established social movements or NGOs. Roughly half of the organisers had participated in protests before – particularly in the Youth Climate Strikes, the Polish Women’s Strikes, or protests against LGBTIQ + discrimination – but had never organised protests themselves. Only two cases were different. The BLM protest in Zielona Góra was organised by a 38-year-old male representative of an NGO that promotes the rights of the LGBTIQ + community. The Warsaw protest of 6th June 2020, organised by an established movement organisation that fights racism, was represented in our interview by a 45-year-old male. What is remarkable in generational terms is that the organisers of the remaining eleven protest marches were mainly young women (9 out of 11), most of them under 25 years old, and many of them minors at the time of the protests. In two cases, the activists were members of a political party but organised their events independently.

In most cases, the motivation to organise a BLM protest had to do with our respondents’ backgrounds. This is evident in the case of one activist who belongs to a racialized minority. A young woman from Szczecin, who has studied in London, stated: ‘It was important to me because my dad is Black, my mom is white. It is an emotionally interesting topic for me. Even though I have no connection to the United States, the topic was important to me.’ All other activists we interviewed represented the white majority. However, there were PoC supporting the organisation of the protests, and there were Black speakers. In the case of the Zielona Góra demonstration mentioned above, the NGO leader was inspired by a Black Polish girl who spoke of her experiences online and who then recruited her as an organisation member. Nevertheless, most Polish protests were organised by white people, among whom were people belonging to other minorities (such as the LGBTIQ + community) and those personally connected to the USA. The parents of one organiser of the Szczecin protest live in the USA, the organiser of the first protest in Warsaw is a child of an American-Polish couple, and a whole series of BLM protests in different cities were organised by an American woman living in Wrocław.

In the transnational diffusion of BLM, the broad spectrum of organisers with varied backgrounds in Poland adapted, filtered, and translated different contents: some were adapted quite extensively to the Polish context, while others were consciously not adapted at all. The most important ones were: (1) expression of solidarity with the BLM protests in the USA, often with an ambition to correct the negative media image of these protests; (2) BLM as an opportunity to raise general awareness about racial discrimination and inequality; (3) reference to Poland-specific issues of racism and police violence.

Being close to the original – the Polish BLM protests as an expression of solidarity with the US movement

Our interview material shows that solidarity with the BLM movement protests in the US was the main and major motivation behind the demonstrations. This was true not only for American citizens (or Poles with American relatives) who, living abroad, felt connected to the struggle in their home country and sought a way to express their feelings and support. Solidarity with victims of racialized police violence in the United States was also central for most Polish organisers. The violent murder of George Floyd was, of course, the starting point here.

One organiser, who lived in the US, saw how a Black person was shot by a white man. This led to a strong sense of resonance with the murder of George Floyd: ‘This is incredibly important to me, and I don’t understand why this is happening. Even though I’m white, I think we can’t ignore it, even if it’s happening on the other side of the world.’

Organisers without connections to the US, and even those with a history of local anti-racism activism, put solidarity with the movement abroad first. The Warsaw activist of an anti-racist organisation emphasised: ‘Naturally, it was an expression of solidarity with the US’. The identification with events in the US went so far that one of the activists in Łódź explained that the protest was organised in a way that the domestic context would not overshadow the original topic: ‘[We wanted to ensure] that the Polish theme does not dominate the initial idea, that is the solidarity with the victims in the United States.’ The focus on the events in the US was so intense that the experienced organiser from Warsaw noted that the protesters had great knowledge of what was happening in the US and spontaneously used slogans known to them from the media.

Consequently, the situation of the Black population in the US was perceived as a crucial theme. In Zielona Góra, organisers played a recording of a well-known Black American basketball player who had played in the local team some time before. In Szczecin a left-wing member of the Polish assembly reported her personal experiences of living in the US. In Poznań, organisers highlighted the speech of a Black American who works as a teacher in Poland: ‘It was very moving, he talked about how from a young age he learned [what to do] when the police are coming, how to lie down on the ground, how to show that you are unarmed and how to show that you are not doing anything wrong. It was actually the most moving speech.’

This extract reveals the second function of the protests beyond an expression of solidarity: to learn and teach about the original movement and its issues. Statements of other activists also confirm such an aim of the demonstrations. Another organiser from Poznań made this explicit: ‘In Poland, at this time, the most important thing is to inform people and tell them what BLM is really about.’ This is central in the organisers’ perception because Polish society is prejudiced and exposed to a media narrative that needs to be corrected: ‘The media, e.g. television, portrays these [American BLM] protests in a negative light […]. I saw that – speaking of protests in the U.S. – Black people were shown horribly.’ Thus, the expression of solidarity with the protests in the US was not completely detached from the Polish context. On the contrary, the negative media coverage of the initial movement led white Poles to take action. The expression of solidarity initiated a criticism of political developments in Poland and the insensitivity of large parts of society towards discriminatory practices against other minoritized groups.

BLM as a reference point for discrimination in general

In addition to the clearly central role of solidarity with the US movement, there were also cautious attempts at recontextualizing and bridging between BLM issues and domestic ones. Some of those attempts were related to the personal backgrounds of the activists. The organiser of the NGO from Zielona Góra, who advocates for the rights of the LGBTIQ + people on a daily basis, expressed how difficult it was to mobilise on behalf of BLM in Poland. He pushed for a bridge between racism against Black people to discrimination in general: ‘I had to use a lot of energy on how to organise this, and the key idea was to focus on the rights of people living in Poland and different forms of discrimination [against them].’ This kind of shift from BLM to local issues was important for an activist from Wrocław, who considered herself a member of a sexual minority: ‘We started with the very fact that each of us has a reason [for protesting]. Because someday you might get hurt, and the people around you should know that you protested, and they will want to help you too.’ Indeed, this perspective was also adopted by organisers who do not belong to any minoritized group.

The need for bridging came from the situation of progressive activism in Poland in recent years. Around the time of the BLM mobilisation in May and June 2020, two significant struggles with the conservative government had been fought out, and those struggles were carried out by movements that were already established, well organised, and, in some cases, deeply rooted in society. The first was the struggle against a hate campaign towards so-called LGBT ideology, which reached a peak in the second half of June when the president incited against sexual minorities during the final phase of his election campaign (the protests were called ‘the Polish Stonewall’, Associated Press, 2020). The second was the struggle of the feminist movement against subsequent attempts to further tighten the Polish abortion law. In autumn 2020, a decision by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal to ban abortion was followed by a massive wave of protests. In both cases, police violence against demonstrators was observed and widely discussed (Bujara, 2021).

It is against this background that the organisers had to mobilise the BLM protests. One organiser from Łódź expressed that he saw the BLM movement as part of a wider struggle against discrimination, inextricably linked to this broader context: ‘What I think about BLM is that it can happen to any social group, not just because of ethnic reasons, but it can also happen to LGBTIQ + people or now, for example, the women’s strike, that police violence, it doesn’t have one reason, that it’s not black skin colour, it’s just that it’s present for different reasons, and that such violence and discrimination can affect really anyone, any citizen.’ Such a redefinition of the core problem from racism to discrimination on other grounds sometimes had far-reaching consequences on the claims or framing: e.g. considerations of focusing on inequality or general hatred led the Poznan organisers to refer to this broader understanding already with the naming of their group: ‘We decided that we would call our project “Youth Against Hate” because we also wanted to touch on other topics.’ Looking at the developments around women’s rights and democracy in Poland, the Warsaw Polish-American renamed his organisation’s Facebook page from ‘Black Lives Matter Poland’ to just ‘Freedom’ and commented: ‘I think at this stage there are a lot of things in Poland happening that are extreme, so I think I’ll probably focus on some of those, whether it’s women’s rights or, you know, the government in my view definitely taking steps towards kind of breaking down democracy. I think there are plenty of things like that to focus on.’

There were thus several reasons in Poland for shifting the focus away from racism against Blacks. The personal experience of belonging to a different stigmatised minority, a background in another movement (such as opposing discrimination against LGBTIQ+), or the escalation of conflict between the conservative government and progressive movements. However, the shift to a broader understanding of discrimination is also connected with the strong presence of the far right in Poland. For example, the organisers in Szczecin wanted to change BLM graffiti (painted over by radical right-wingers) to graffiti dedicated to the equality of people in general – due to the criticism of radical right-wing activists: ‘Because someone wrote […] that we are going to do graffiti with Floyd specifically, that we want to commemorate only this person. It was obviously a bad idea, but we agreed: because of what happened in Poland with rights of the LGBT, we wanted to do a more general graffiti because we think it would make much more sense.’ In this case, it was the political climate, partially hostile to BLM, that led to a change in the core message of the original movement. In reaction to right-wing criticism of the emphasis on the violent death of George Floyd, the framing was de-racialized. Notably, the argumentation just cited emerged within the only organising group with a PoC in our sample.

References to local issues with racism and police violence

Such considerations of shifting the scope away from racism towards discrimination in general do not mean that the organisers were either unfamiliar with racism in Poland or that they did not seek to address it. Even though all of our interviewees were aware of the obvious differences between the situations in the US and in Poland, they pointed out the prevalence of racism in Poland. Some of them stressed that it regularly takes violent forms. One of the Łódź organisers pointed out: ‘Racism in Poland is certainly different than in the United States because it is not so systemically visible. But you can see it in the attacks on Black people all over Poland, things like that happen all the time.’ Such a statement may sound like an attempt to reduce racism to physical aggressions alone – typical for the Polish discourse – which are then often attributed to the hooligan scene or the far right. Arguments like that express the intention of attributing racism to ‘deviant’ social fringe groups on the one hand and denying the systemic character of Polish racism on the other (Nowicka, 2017, p. 828). This shows that the Polish ‘cultural script’ (often denying racism) is influential even among the organisers of the BLM protests.

However, it must also be acknowledged that there was indeed awareness around forms of everyday and, thus, systemic racism in Poland. Much our interview material was taken up by references to non-physical forms of racism. Here, experiences from the organisers’ own personal environment, such as school, were discussed. An activist from Wrocław spoke about a friend whose skin colour was the cause of regular inquiries into his origins – despite being born in Poland. Another organiser talked about a case of a Black pupil who, as an elected representative of the school student body, was exposed to racist hate speech on the internet. The only PoC organiser in our sample also experienced this kind of discrimination and labelled it as microaggression: ‘Racism is not just manifested by people who want to beat me up every day, it is just regular comments like “Where did you learn to speak Polish so well?” or “Where are you from?” When I say I am from Poland, from Szczecin, they say “But where are you really from?” These are such stupid comments, showing a lack of awareness – this is the kind of racism that I experience.’

In the context of raising awareness around forms of racism other than open violence, discriminatory language received most attention. The use of the M-word was the main topic of discussion. ‘Murzyn’ was for a long time perceived as a common and neutral word for Black people, but the awareness for its negative connotation grew and can no longer be negated (Ohia-Nowak, 2020). During the first demonstration in Warsaw, a young Black Polish woman carried a sign reading, ‘Don’t call me Murzyn’ (Mecking & Terry, 2020). This led to great media attention (even The Times reported on it) and a debate about sensitive usage of language and discriminatory experiences of Black Poles.

In general, the BLM protests were understood as an opportunity to bring Polish racism into the public debate. The adaptation strategy followed the attempt to clarify, on the one hand, that, contrary to popular belief, there is a severe problem with racism in Poland. BLM protests were organised, according to an activist from Poznań, ‘to make people hear us and to emphasize that racism is not just a thing that occurs in the US’ On the other hand, the intention was to reveal concrete examples of racist structures and incidents. References to physical assaults of the radical right, microaggressions, or insensitive language usage have already been mentioned. However, an equally frequent argument for our interviewees was the deadly use of firearms by a police officer against Maxwell Itoya, a street vendor from Nigeria, in 2010 in Warsaw. This fatal incident, which occurred during a raid, was prominently mentioned at each demonstration. The experienced anti-racist organiser from Warsaw stressed: ‘The Maxwell Itoya murder case itself confirms this [existence of police violence against PoC]. I doubt that if it were a Polish sock salesman, a police officer would use a firearm against me selling clothing illegally. I find that hard to imagine.’

But attempts were also made to adapt the frame of police violence to the Polish context by de-racializing it – even if this means that the core of the problem definition of racism was abandoned. The strategy was to refer to police violence in general and not only to racially motivated violence. The most prominent example raised during the protests was the death of Igor Stachowiak, who was tortured with Tasers and died in police custody in 2016 – an incident that is still widely discussed in Poland.

This thematic shift to police violence in general had two reasons. First, it was possible to point out that the major issue of BLM protests – police violence – could also affect white Poles. Second, in 2020, several cases came to light in which white men (not only Poles) died in police custody under dubious circumstances. Thus, police violence was hotly debated during the summer of 2020 and organisers felt that they could refer to these controversial events. An organiser from Łódź stressed here: ‘The police like to abuse violence not only in the US, these two themes overlapped at our protest: solidarity with Black people in the US, and the events [police killings] in Poland.’ The recontextualization of police violence was thus aimed at seeing white people in the (potential) role of victims as well in order to mobilise supporters beyond the group of PoC in Poland.

There have been no prior BLM movement structures in Poland. It is not surprising, therefore, that among the Polish organisers even the experienced activists from Warsaw and Zielona Góra had no contact with established BLM structures in the West. Interestingly, none were established during or after the protest wave. In fact, activists have hardly built up networks, even within Poland. Only the two organisers from Warsaw spoke briefly on the phone before their protests but did not coordinate their actions. Some activists interviewed had no knowledge about other BLM events in Poland. Therefore, we are dealing with a non-relational diffusion, which, according to the research literature, has little chance of success (Soule and Roggeband, 2019, p. 239). Thus, diffusion was thin, as information about the original movement was received primarily via news coverage or social media (Della Porta, Lavizzari & Reiter, 2022, p. 702). Online sources of the initial protests in the US were consumed quite intensively. Instagram, in particular, was a major channel of diffusion of frames, issues, and slogans. As a consequence, the protest repertoire from the US was well known among Polish demonstrators. The experienced activist from Warsaw explains here: ‘People were highly oriented about the chanted slogans. They took up the slogans themselves regardless of what we were chanting. [They knew] slogans chanted at protests in the US. There were also names of other victims, not only Floyd. This level of orientation was shared … I won’t say by 100%, but by a significant part of the demonstrators. It was surprising. People were evidently seeing all this stuff on the internet.’

In times of global online networking, the protest repertoire and frames can effectively spread beyond national borders. However, a personal exchange would be indispensable for thorough involvement with the subject matter, especially when forming movement structures. Yet, this was not pursued in Poland, either with the US-based pioneer movement, its followers in Western European countries, or other BLM or anti-racist organisers within the country – at least not by the organisers of the protests at the time of the interviews in late 2020.

The BLM protests of May and June 2020 represent the first broader mobilisation of this kind in Poland. Even if the number of events and demonstrators seems small compared to the mobilisation in Western Europe, one can certainly speak of success. However, there was no lasting sedimentation in the sense of establishing a Polish BLM movement. Meanwhile, most of the newcomer organisers have become involved in other structures or have been more generally concerned with the issue of discrimination.

Nonetheless, all of our interviewees indicate that the protests triggered a further step toward a change of thinking in Poland. The American, who organised several demonstrations, argued: ‘I think that’s a first step in having conversations about racism. It did raise, I think, awareness about this and hopefully raised awareness about talking about Poland’s own issues with this stuff.’ It is precisely this initiation of a debate, even if it could not have a broad impact on the media public (Milman et al., 2021, 28), that is perceived by our interviewees as the greatest success of the mobilisation. In the aftermath of the Polish and international BLM protests, experiences of racism were publicly discussed – before, this was mostly a topic raised by relevant NGOs and in scientific papers (Balogun, 2020; Omeni, 2016). There were several online debates, where Black Poles shared their experiences of racist discrimination. These included discussions between five Black Polish women later published under the title ‘#DontCallMeMurzyn’ or the debate ‘Czarne jest Polskie. Doświadczenia Afropolaków’ (‘Black is Polish. Experiences of Afro-Poles’), organised by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. These debates led to a public redefinition of the M-word – even though the controversy about the M-Word was not new (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 5-7). Despite strong criticism from the Polish right, the Polish Language Council, a scientific advisory body, recommended in an official statement that the term should not be used (Łaziński, 2020).

Even if the response in the public debate was not very large, and despite the vigorous resistance of the right against anti-discriminatory language usage recommendations, the initiation of public discussions on the experiences of Black Poles had great significance, especially for those affected by racism themselves. The interviewed PoC activist emphasised: ‘Actually now they [Black Poles] feel that they are finding some kind of community of their own and talking about it publicly. I remember that YT video [‘#DontCallMeMurzyn’] that came out, which is the best thing for me. I’ve always missed that in Poland, to talk with someone with similar experiences. […] This discussion unites people experiencing racism, [creates] spaces where we can talk, and thanks to this, we feel more comfortable with going to people with education. This is what I missed in Poland.’ It remains to be seen to what extent this opening for narratives of Black Poles will persist and have a lasting effect, particularly if we consider the traditional absence of public debates on race and racism in Poland (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 2).

Despite the importance of BLM mobilisation for PoC in Poland, the protests had limited resonance beyond the Black community and the activists directly involved. This can be understood from a transnational comparative perspective to broader BLM mobilisations in Western Europe (Milman et al. 2021) and through the aforementioned unfavourable opportunity structures. Moreover, our findings based on interviews with organisers suggest two central hindering conditions: (1) the whiteness and (2) the conservatism of Polish society, which are co-related and which reduced the outreach, visibility, and political significance of the protests.

The first condition, the fact that Poland remains a homogeneous white majority society, means, amongst other things, that there are not more than a few thousand PoC living in Poland (Kubicki, 2011). Interviewed activists considered this to be a major problem, which reduced the scale of the mobilisation. For example, the experienced activist from Warsaw compared Poland to the US and France and concluded: ‘there just aren’t that many of those people’ in Poland, so the protests could not be larger.’ The issue of low numbers of PoC in Poland was a regular theme in organisers’ interviews. Namely, if some Black people were observed among the demonstrators, organisers expressed their surprise at their number. This was the case in Szczecin, where a handful of Black people participated, or Wrocław, where the event counted around 500 participants. Organisers commented: ‘A lot of Black people and people from national minorities, ethnic minorities. A lot. I estimate one in fifteen people in the crowd.’

Consequently, organisers questioned whether there are enough PoC in Poland to establish a movement. The American responsible for the second protest in Wrocław brought this issue up: ‘I know 3 or 4 Syrians in Wrocław, that’s not enough for a movement.’ Others considered this to be the main reason for the low visibility of narratives about racism against Blacks in Poland. The Zielona Góra organiser compared the situation of Black Poles with the LGBTIQ + community and concluded: ‘It’s not easy to give publicity to these issues. It is not talked about because it affects too few people for them to be able to bring it to the public.’ However, this does not only mean that PoC find it difficult to generate publicity for testimonies about their experiences of racism in Poland.

Organisers understood that for Poles, due to their everyday life experience in a majority white society and right-wing populist media discourse, issues of racism are abstract – especially regarding the Polish ‘cultural repertoire’ denying racism at all (Nowicka, 2017, p. 837). The American expat, who compared the situation in Poland and the US, came to the following conclusion: ‘Whereas in Poland, I think a lot of it comes from just a lack of contact, […] Poland is 98–99% ethnic Poles, and so, […] a lot of people’s reactions will just be, you know, “Why are you bringing up this issue? I’ve never even seen someone of another race in Poland.” You know, I think that’s kind of the biggest issue, because the populations of other races might be small in Poland, a lot of people might think it’s not an issue worth bringing up.’ According to our interviewees, the consequence is a widespread lack of understanding that racism remains a painful experience for PoC in Poland, even if there are few people affected. This perception is sometimes accompanied by a conviction that accusations of racism are ‘invented’ and thus unjustified (see, for a detailed discussion e.g. Balogun, 2020). The only PoC in our sample shared her observation: ‘When it comes to anti-Black racism in Poland, this is what people don’t want to call racism, this lack of awareness, ignorance, the vocabulary we use, and so on. It’s hard to point out these mistakes to someone, to say that this is racist because then these persons explain that “I’m not racist at all”.’

This strategy of denial and the resulting conviction that there is no racism in Poland at all made it easier for the right to mobilise against awareness-raising campaigns such as BLM – especially given the government’s anti-refugee campaigns or the negative news coverage of the American BLM protests. All of our interlocutors reported online hostility from the radical right or from local members of the ruling party. The Zielona Góra organiser complained: ‘We were criticized because there is no racism at all in Poland, of course, why get involved at all, there are no phobias, there is nothing. According to some people, there are no problems, and this is how it should be.’ However, despite the heated atmosphere created by the pro-government media, only online attacks on the organisers were reported. There were no violent interactions or noteworthy counter-protests during the BLM events.

Given the low visibility of and attention to racism, the resulting (partially aggressive) strategies of denial, and the government’s hostility towards progressive movements, spaces for Black activism in Poland appear small. Asked how she felt about having organised several BLM events as a white woman, the American organiser said: ‘If I were a Black person in Poland, I don’t know how comfortable I would feel organizing an event like this.’ This is why she, as a white American woman, wanted to stand for Blacks in Poland and create safe spaces for them.

The BLM protests in Poland can be considered a success with limited lasting effects for a potential establishment of a corresponding movement. On the one hand, BLM mobilisation, which was impressive by Polish standards, has encouraged Black Poles to speak out in public about their experiences of racist discrimination. The debate on sensitive language use had an impact, the Polish Language Council recommended abandoning the usage of the M-word (Balogun & Pędziwiatr, 2023, p. 13). On the other hand, no sedimentation of BLM structures can be observed. The organisers we interviewed have, in the meantime, become involved in other areas of progressive activism, whether it be the Polish pro-democracy movement, the All-Polish Women’s Strike, or the LGBTQI + movement.

The fact that no BLM movement could develop despite the mobilisation has, in our opinion, a few major causes: (1) The first and most important reason is the small number of PoC in Poland. They are mostly highly skilled workers or in training. As such, they tend to pursue individual strategies for dealing with their problems instead of reaching out to community (Jaskulowski & Pawlak, 2020, p. 19). Still, the question is not only whether there is a critical mass large enough to establish a movement. After all, white Poles could also be active in this area, as was the case during the mobilisation wave in the summer of 2020. However, public visibility seems to be insufficient for establishing a movement. (2) This leads to the second most important reason, the ordinariness of racism, which leaves little public space for testimonies about the racist experiences of Black Poles. Therefore, unlike in many Western societies, the dominance of white majority representatives among the organisers of the BLM protests was not questioned. On the contrary, white activists consciously acted as organisers to – from their perspective – protect the PoC minority.

Both, the smallness of the minority and the pervasive racism, explain (3) the low visibility of Black Poles’ experiences of racism. This lack of awareness of racial discrimination is not only due to the small number of people affected. The white majority society, at least according to all our interviewees, also has great problems empathissing with this issue. The argument here is that as white Poles hardly ever come into contact with other Black citizens, they rarely witness such situations and assume that racism is not a genuinely Polish problem. If traditional Polish racism and the negative media coverage of the American BLM events in public and pro-government media are also taken into account, it explains why it was easy for the right wing to use this sentiment for their own benefit and to agitate against the organisers. Thus, (4) the culturally coded denial of racism is clearly hindering the establishment of a BLM movement in Poland.

Those unfavourable political and cultural opportunities help to explain diffusion strategies, some of which appear unusual against the state of research and other cases of diffusion of BLM outside of the US Polish early adopters faced great challenges in this process. According to the literature, it could be expected that they would stay close to the original movement’s claims, frames, etc. At the same time, the very limited homogeneity between the organisers in the so-called West and Poland and the very different states of debate surrounding racism hindered a literal translation. Thus, we could observe two different approaches applied at the same time. On the one hand, there was great emphasis on the expression of solidarity with the American BLM movement, which aimed to correct the negative image of these demonstrations as conveyed by the media in Poland. An expected recontextualization then concerned references to racism in Poland, whether to microaggressions, language use, or acts of violence.

On the other hand, despite being early adopters, the organisers also made extensive efforts to recontextualize and bridge issues. Surprisingly, they were concerned with questions about the fundamental definition of the problem, which are – according to research – rarely adapted in early phases of diffusion (Roggeband, 2007, p. 252). Polish BLM organisers attempted to broaden the understanding of discrimination and police violence beyond the experiences of racialized minorities. Against the backdrop of a dominant whiteness in Poland, it seemed reasonable for the interviewed organisers to counter right-wing hostility and make the issue accessible to the majority by ‘softening’ the anti-racist core of BLM. This allows one to speak of discrimination against other minorities, such as the LGBTQI + community, or refer to police violence that was committed against whites and not racially motivated. Regardless of the assessment of this decontextualization, this approach reveals the greatest challenge in the attempt to initiate a BLM movement in such a white and racism-denying society as Poland: the problem of creating adequate resonance for the issues of a racialized minority group. Here, we are observing the dilemma of trying to mobilise against racism with non-racist arguments.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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