In July, the political party of Law and Justice attempted to dismantle checks and balances in the Polish political system by appointing its own people to the judiciary. In defiance of that, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens took to the streets to protest, resulting in a brief halt of the forward movement of the far-right party. To discuss the rise of the party and the reaction throughout Poland, Allen Ruff is joined by David Ost.

David Ost is a political scientist at Hobart-Williams Smith College and specialist on Eastern Europe. A frequent visiting professor in eastern Europe, he has written widely on the region’s politics and society. He’s written several books on communist and post-communist society, including the award-winning The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Society, which has played a significant role in Polish political debates. Hist essays have been published in a number of scholarly and popular journals, among them Politics and Society, The Nation, Dissent, Telos, and Tikkun.