"Yet the marchers in Warsaw seem to feel that their country is being overwhelmed. “We don’t want Muslims here,” they cried. “No to Islam.” And “refugees get out.”

Until very recently Poles had never given much thought to Islam beyond occasionally expressing a sense of historical pride that a Polish king, Jan Sobieski, defeated the Turks in a 17th-century battle near Vienna, thus saving Christian Europe from the infidels. This fits a recurrent theme in Polish national mythology: Poland as a rampart of Christianity, the Christ of Nations. Poland, according to this trope, has repeatedly, and heroically, suffered for the sake of others, especially the rest of Christian Europe.

While the Warsaw demonstrators paraded with burning torches, Mr. Kaczynski gave a speech in Krakow expressing a new twist on this familiar narrative: The Poles’ mission now is to save a “sick Europe” from itself. The neo-fascist marchers in Warsaw suggested, as if on cue, how it could be done: “Pure Blood,” read one banner. “White Europe,” another said."