Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz
Rafał Aleksander Ziemkiewicz is a Polish political and science fiction author and right-wing publicist. Winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award. Recipient of the ESFS award for Best Author for 1997.
Biography
Science-fiction writer
In 1984, during his studies at the University of Warsaw, he joined SFAN science fiction fan association and started writing short stories. His first science-fiction short story was Z palcem na spuście, followed by his book debut Władca szczurów . He also worked for two Polish science-fiction magazines: Fantastyka and as a chief editor for Fenix. For his novels Pieprzony los kataryniarza and Walc stulecia, as well as his short story , he was awarded the Zajdel Award, the most prestigious Polish award for science fiction and fantasy literature. He was also awarded Śląkfa for Writer of a Year in 1990 and 1998.A popular theme in his works is the fate of Poland and more broadly, Europe, in the near future. His books often paint the future in dark colors, showing the Commonwealth of Independent States disintegrate into a civil war, European Union becoming powerless in the face of Islamic terrorism, and predatory capitalism and political correctness taken ad absurdum leading to the erosion of morality and ethics. Thus his books are often classified as political fiction and social science fiction, although they are not seen as dystopian fiction.
Journalist and publicist
After the fall of communism, Ziemkiewicz became a conservative journalist and essayist. He began this career in the early 1990s as a publicist for Najwyższy Czas! weekly magazine. Until February 1997, Ziemkiewicz wrote political and socio-economical essays for Gazeta Polska. He was also a columnist of the Polish magazine Wprost and the Polish edition of Newsweek, and occasionally published essays in Polityka. Currently his columns are being published in Rzeczpospolita, Uważam Rze, Gazeta Polska, Niezależna Gazeta Polska and Interia.pl webportal. Many of his essays have been collected and published in book format. In 2001 he won the Kisiel Prize.Ziemkiewicz has worked as a radio journalist, working for Radio WAWA and Polskie Radio Program IV in the 1990s, Radio TOK FM in the early 2000s, later with Radio VOX FM and Program 1 Polskiego Radia. He hosts a television talkshow on TVP Info and a program on TVP Historia.
He was a spokesman for the Real Politics Union party. In 1995, as a stipendiary of the National Forum Foundation he worked for the Republican Party in United States.
In September 2006, Ziemkiewicz published an article in the Polish edition of Newsweek criticizing the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam Michnik; Michnik brought a civil suit against Ziemkiewicz, which was settled in 2007 after Ziemkiewicz agreed to publish an apology.
In 2018, he cancelled a planned speaking tour in the UK following appeals by activists and politicians to the Home Office to block his entry due to hate speech concerns. In the wake of the event, Ziemkiewicz tweeted that he would no longer be coming to the UK, describing Britain as “fascist”.
The same year, the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University published an annual report on antisemitism, which included, among others, Ziemkiewicz's statements. According to Ziemkiewicz, he was being regularly included on “Jewish lists”, and from his perspective it was a “professional success - something like winning the "crown of Sinai”. At the same time, he stated that the content of the report that concerned him was untrue. Ziemkiwiecz also attacked Rafał Pankowski, a Polish sociologist and political scientist, by calling him a “snitch”, as he was the one who stood for the Polish part of the report. He also attacked Pankowski on public TV in 2019.
In 2019 during a talk show his statements were judged to be defamatory, but his conviction was overturned by presidential pardon in 2023.
In 2020, he published Cham niezbuntowany which some considered antisemitic and instigating hatred. The anti-racist watchdog said that the book contained examples of criminal hate speech, such as when it describes Israeli children as being molded into "killing machines" by "Holocaust, or rather myth of Holocaust" which they interpreted as Holocaust denial. Ziemkiewicz denied the accusations and said that the main themes of his books are completely different. Addressing the accusations, he further stated that he never denied the Holocaust, and that he simply wrote that, in addition to the Holocaust, there is also a myth of the Holocaust. He argued that, if he writes about the myth of the Polish Warsaw Uprising, he is not denying the fact of the Uprising.