Polish journalist and political figure Jerzy Urban died at 89. His legacy remains highly divisive. His life has been one of constant scandals and offences. Certainly, he was a major figure in Poland’s media landscape.
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Jerzy Urban (also known as Jerzy Kibic, Jan Rem, or Klakson) launched a journalistic career in the aftermath of WWII with the journal „Nowa Wieś”. Throughout the 1950s, he worked as a reporter and commentator for different Communist newspapers. His vulgar and offensive writing style caused him to be fired several times.
In 1961, he joined the renowned Polityka, signing his opinion pieces with pseudonyms. As he did not soften his style, he was eventually forbidden from working as a journalist.
It is in the 1980s that Urban became a key figure in Poland’s media landscape. While most Poles eventually organised themselves to break free from communist rule, the left-wing writer took charge of the propaganda machine of Wojciech Jaruzelski.
It would be an understatement to say that “Klakson” put himself on the wrong side of history by endorsing the bloody repressions of the Martial law of the first half of the 1980s. Urban vividly criticised the Solidarity movement and Polish patriots such as the late priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, who was brutally murdered by Communist intelligence in 1984.
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After the regime change in 1989, Urban tried his chance as a politician and was a candidate for the first semi-free presidential elections of that same year. His landslide defeat made him step back from politics and focus on the media.
In 1990, he launched his own satirical and anti-clerical weekly “NIE”, which remains quite popular in Poland. The newspaper consists of turning Poland’s political elite into derision, with a particular emphasis on the leading Law and Justice party and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński. It also does not lack edgy graphics and jokes about the Catholic Church and Christians in general.
Some will miss his specific humour. Others will agree with the undersigned that vulgarity and repugnance are words that quickly pop into the mind when remembering this – to say the least – controversial individual.
Image: Twitter (@TygodnikNIE)
Author: Sébastien Meuwissen
