RADOM: A blast of music and Poland’s far-right presidential candidate takes the stage. The crowd feverishly chants his name -- “Slawomir, Slawomir, Slawomir” -- welcoming the lawmaker and entrepreneur like a TikTok star.
With 1.6 million followers on the social network, Slawomir Mentzen, 38, knows how to rouse the hundreds of teenagers and others gathered in the main square of the central city of Radom. His sentences are short and cutting.
Ahead of the first round on May 18, the founder of an accounting firm and microbrewery has targeted young voters tired of polarisation. For two decades the EU and NATO country has been governed by turns by the centrists and nationalists.
Polling third in opinion surveys with 11 to 15 percent of votes, Mentzen trails the frontrunner, pro-European Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski (32 percent), and conservative historian Karol Nawrocki (27 percent).
While Mentzen’s chances of making the runoff on June 1 are slim, his voters could play kingmaker. His opponents have already picked up some of his slogans.
Mentzen believes Poland is subservient to Brussels, the state is destroying entrepreneurs, today’s politicians are incompetent, abortion is a crime and migrants threaten women and children.
Agata Dudnik, 35, owner of an online German language school, said at the rally in Radom she shared Mentzen’s views on abortion and migrants.
Claiming that migrants posed a threat, she told AFP: “I’m concerned about my daughter’s safety, as well as my own and that of other women”.
‘Thumb his nose’
Mentzen also sees Ukrainian refugees as taking advantage of Poland, which welcomed them with open arms after Russia invaded their country in 2022.
Piotr Wiatr, who attended another Mentzen rally in the south-central town of Szydlowiec, claimed Ukrainian refugees have not been sufficiently grateful for Poland’s help.
“It’s unacceptable. Everyone’s felt it. In their pockets, their minds, everywhere,“ said the construction specialist who works in Belgium.
“I hope Mentzen will do something about it,“ the 41-year-old told AFP.
In 2019, Mentzen said, “we don’t want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union”.
He now claims he was only repeating the most radical views online, and he no longer mentions Jews nor the gay community.
But he still speaks of reforming the EU, and his programme includes opposition to migrants, Ukrainians and abortion.
“It’s wrong to kill innocent children, even if the child is associated with something disagreeable,“ he said when asked whether he would accept abortion in cases of rape.
For Maciej Strozik, who attended the campaign rally in Radom with his family, Mentzen offers a breath of fresh air.
In Poland’s political landscape dominated by the governing centrist Civic Platform (PO) and the Law and Justice (PiS) nationalists, Strozik hopes Mentzen “can thumb his nose at the main parties”.
“He’s in opposition to a kind of duopoly that’s run the country for years,“ the 30-year-old told AFP.
‘Dopamine hits’
According to analyst Jaroslaw Kuisz, supporters of Mentzen and his Confederation party “are above all tired of the political ritual of now this camp, now the other”.
Political scientist Anna Materska-Sosnowska said Mentzen’s electorate “is mainly made up of young men, entrepreneurs, from towns and smaller cities”, adding that he is also backed by those not yet of voting age.
“Parties like Confederation, or candidates like Mentzen -- and we see them in Western Europe too -- have very simple slogans and solutions for almost everything,“ she told AFP.
The message “is perfectly tailored to TikTok, where videos of a few dozen seconds show the revealed truth,“ she said. “It’s not for nothing that Mentzen is a TikTok star”.
For Kuisz, Confederation is a party “of the era of digital politics... which calls for quick dopamine hits and insists on breaking from the predictability” of politics.
After posing for photos with supporters, Mentzen hopped on his scooter to reach the car waiting to take him to his next rally.
He answered no questions.
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