Witold Szabłowski

“The guy with the wacky hair and the crazed look in his eyes did not appear out of nowhere. He was already known to them. Sometimes he said how great they were, and told them to go back to their roots; if need be, he threw in some highly unlikely but madly alluring conspiracy theory. Just to get them to listen. And to give them a fright. Because he'd noticed that if he scared them, they paid him more attention.

They'd gotten used to him being there, and to the fact that now and then, with a totally straight face, he said something unintentionally hilarious. Sometimes he hovered on the fringes of political life, sometimes closer to the mainstream, but he was generally regarded as a mild eccentric.

Until one fine day they rubbed their eyes in amazement. Because the guy with the wacky hair had entered the race for one of the highest offices in the land. And just as before, here he was, trying to scare them again - with talk of refugees, war, and unprecedent disaster. With anything at all. He was also trying to pump up the national ego. In the process - in the eyes of the so-called elite - he was making a bit of a fool of himself. But he was also making big promises. Above all, he promised to turn back time, and make things the way they used to be. In other words, better.

And he won.

You know where this happened? Yes, you're right. In our part of the world. In post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. In Regime-Change Land.

"And he won."
"....In post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. In Regime-Change Land.”
― Witold Szabłowski, Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny