Old Poland, New Nationalism - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In July 2011, a government inquiry found that the causes of the crash were complex but mundane: organizational negligence, poor pilot training, bad weather and the shoddy state of the airport at Smolensk. In short, the presidential plane should never have taken off that day.
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Yet wild theories abounded: The Russians had produced the fog; a “vacuum bomb” had been set off; the plane had been dragged to the ground by magnets; several passengers had survived the crash but been finished off on the ground.
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Poland’s liberal intelligentsia coined a phrase for this overheated paranoia: the “Smolensk religion.” Its doctrine was a singular, explosive mixture of Polish messianism and religious fundamentalism, xenophobia and a love of martyrdom. For followers of the faith, any rational argument about the crash was instantly transubstantiated into further proof of the assassins’ cunning.
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