The Disturbing Campaign Against Poland’s Judges
Last summer, a very unusual scandal unfolded in Poland—or rather, a very ordinary scandal, but with some unusual protagonists. A journalist at a Polish news website, Onet.pl, exposed the existence of an organized online trolling campaign designed to discredit public figures. An everyday occurrence, of course. Except that this time, the smear campaign was aimed at a group of judges, and the organizers were based inside Poland’s Ministry of Justice.
One of the professional trolls—the news site identified her only as Emilia—had been regularly posting material on Twitter about judges whose rulings and public comments were critical of government policy. (An example of her oeuvre: “Fuck off! You are bringing shame on honest judges and dishonor to Poland.”) Emilia also organized a campaign to send vulgar postcards to the chief justice of Poland’s Supreme Court. (These were eloquent in their brevity: “Fuck off!”) She anonymously sent defamatory information about another judge to all of his colleagues, as well as to the judge himself at his home address. She obtained this address from Poland’s deputy minister of justice, who was helping coordinate her smear campaign.
Emilia, who told Onet.pl that she’d had a change of heart, allowed her text conversations with this same deputy minister to be published. He resigned the next day. But his boss, Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, did not resign. And the government-sponsored campaign against Polish judges continues, expanding into a
