Riot police in Warsaw used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up violent gangs of right-wing nationalists who for the third year in a row, rampaged through the commemoration of Poland’s National Independence Day. 

“There is no justification for hooliganism,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski said.

Several thousand right-wing protesters began their march peacefully, under a close eye of their own leaders and Warsaw Police.  But it didn’t take long for the black balaclavas to come out and the fires to start.  Some youths burned cars and threw fireworks. 

Others set fire to a rainbow arch meant to symbolize tolerance located in the usually-Bohemian Zbawiciela Square, on any other day a place where students gather in outdoor cafes to discuss higher ideas.  On Monday, firefighters were unable to do their job through the unruly mob.

Some threw firebombs and rocks at an “Antifa Squat” a group of Left Wing antifascists occupying a vacant building, and anything associated with the left became targets of the morons.  The Antifa blamed police for failing to control the mob.  Another group broke off and headed for the Russian Embassy, but were stopped by police before they could provoke an international incident.

Although Poland is one of the most successful nations to emerge from the ruins of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Bloc after the 1990s, prosperity has not come to all.  Some of those left behind feel their hard-line values on things such as marriage, abortion, and the church have been swept aside are being erased as a growing nation slowly adopts more tolerance.