Going nowhere: Europe’s right-wing populists will survive the end of Trump

Any hope that the defeat of the US president might mean the political end for the central European populists does not match the reality on the ground, reports Rima Marrouch in Warsaw

Anti-government protesters hold up images of the ruling party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, in Warsaw, earlier this month (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) (AP)

Julia Holewińska, 37, a Polish playwright and a mother of a 13-year-old daughter, still doesn’t like talking about what happened on 22 October. 

It was around midnight. She was standing with a group of women in front of the house of Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party, the deputy prime minister in charge of police and security forces, and the man widely considered the most powerful politician in the country.

They were protesting the newly passed law that places a near-total ban on abortion, even in cases of congenitally damaged fetuses. The police reacted quickly, and brutally, when they arrested her and 16 others.