Novelist Charged After Calling Poland’s President ‘Moron’ on Fb

Jakub Żulczyk, a TV author and novelist in Poland, has been charged with calling Poland’s President Andrzej Duda a “moron” on Fb. Żulczyk faces as much as three years in jail over the insult.

Żulczyk, a 37-year-old author whose 2014 novel Blinded by the Lights was tailored for TV and aired on HBO Europe in 2018, wrote the offending put up on November 7 of final yr, in line with the Guardian, however the fees had been solely introduced by the Polish authorities this month.

Żulczyk was reportedly responding to President Duda’s feedback following the November 3 presidential election within the U.S., an election received by President Joe Biden. Duda had refused to acknowledge Biden because the duly elected president of the nation and stated that he was still waiting for Biden’s “nomination by the Electoral Faculty.”

“Joe Biden is the forty sixth president of the USA,” Żulczyk wrote on Fb on November 7, in line with the BBC. “Andrzej Duda is a moron.”

President Duda, a harmful neo-fascist, was an ally of President Donald Trump, as nearly each wannabe dictator around the globe gave the impression to be. Duda, a member of Poland’s Legislation and Justice Occasion, ran for a second time period in 2020 on an anti-gay platform the place he stated LGBT equality was “worse than communism.” One other slogan, “LGBT usually are not individuals” was additionally tremendously common with supporters of the Legislation and Justice Occasion in 2020.

Poland has 9 completely different legal guidelines protecting insults, in line with the BBC, and other people might be imprisoned for not simply insulting authorities leaders, however for offensive speech in opposition to nationwide symbols similar to flags. Polish prosecutors known as Żulczyk’s Fb put up “offensive,” although acknowledge he hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing.

“I’m, I believe, the primary author on this nation in a really very long time to be tried for what he wrote,” Żulczyk wrote on Fb on Monday.