Some blog updates and the end of Agitka

I wanted to freshen up this blog, which had been neglected for quite a while. From the start, I was stuck with GitHub Pages and let’s face it, highly impractical for my daily workflow Jekyll (Ruby). Since I didn’t want to waste time learning an ecosystem I don’t use on a daily basis, I finally decided to make a change. Everything is now built on SvelteKit, brilliantly documented technology that I know inside out.

Starting July 2026, I plan to publish more frequently, though I have no intention of falling into the trap of artificial productivity. I have always tried to write only when working on something truly engaging and innovative. And that is the rule I intend to stick to.

The end of ‘Agitka’

Recently, I made the decision to shut down the “Agitka” editorial project, which operated for about five months. From the very beginning, I served as its editor-in-chief. It was a strictly Marxist space where we prioritized in-depth, high-quality commentary. The project was born after the collapse of the previous publication, “Facts and Analyses” (Fakty i Analizy), which most people left due to conflicts tied to an editor named Rafał. The breakup of that outlet occurred in March 2025. For a while after that, we tried to find the right operational formula, which took a relatively long time. The group was anxious that the launch was being delayed, despite my promises that we would move quickly. Multiple factors contributed to this—the aforementioned lack of a defined formula, the sluggish process of formalizing the association, as well as my own lack of time, burnout from the previous project, and a lack of optimism about launching a new media outlet. Personally, I believe we planned to start the new publication solely to “get back” at Rafał.

Throughout this time, I spoke with various people in the community about the planned project, discussing it with the PPS (Polish Socialist Party) on Warsaw meeting and other socialist organizations, among others. They were hyped about its creation, but in the end, it amounted to nothing more than empty declarations, and we received no real support. Despite the hurdles, we finally launched on January 20, 2026. Although I was skeptical from day one, I decided to give it a shot. The beginnings were quiet—we imported a few articles we had authored for the previous publication.

From the very start, our main advantage was technology and a completely fresh approach to ideology. In contrast to the archaic methods of “Facts and Analyses,” we bet on a modern, in-house portal and artificial intelligence, which supported tasks like automated article translation. However, before the final format of the platform took shape, we spent November and December 2025 developing an entirely different formula. “Agitka” was supposed to be an advanced web and mobile application delivering knowledge in a feed-based (vertical scroll) format, where swiping left revealed a condensed, synthetic version of the text with an option to preview the full content. The architecture also planned for a Large Language Model (LLM) integration, allowing the user to interactively engage with the text and ask questions like, “To what extent does this phenomenon affect me personally?”

Although I completed a fully functional prototype, I still felt a deep uncertainty regarding this format. Ultimately, we transitioned to a standard, static publishing form, while retaining a radical paradigm shift: our goal became the promotion of a highly analytical “21st-century socialism.” By fusing Marxist theories with advancements in technology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, we firmly rejected archaic dogmas attempting to plant the seeds for a phenomenon we unofficially dubbed the “Polish school of Marxism” or the “engineering left.”

Unfortunately, our substantive development quickly began to drown in an absurd and debilitating feud with the old leftist structures. Our primary opponent became the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and the affiliated “Red History” Association (Stowarzyszenie Historia Czerwona). Back in November 2025, we published a now-infamous “open letter” right on their own website, calling out the party leadership for nationalist deviations and sheer uselessness, among other things. In retaliation, in mid-January 2026, Red History issued an official resolution expelling me and Damian—with whom I was closely collaborating at the time—from their structures, accusing us of sabotage. We, however, played hardball: when the prosecutor’s office successfully had the KPP removed from the official registry, we seized “their” web domain kom-pol.org and set up a direct redirect to our new Agitka. We despised them, treating their structures not as a political organization, but as a LARPing circus where dinosaurs play at politics.

Yet it wasn’t external enemies, but rather the toxic environment and internal pathologies that ultimately clipped our wings. From the very beginning, our editorial team struggled with disloyalty. First, we had to deal with comrade Rysiek, who stepped back from politics under the pretext of building an academic career, but secretly leaked our plans (including the open letter) to people siding with the KPP.

The case of editor Karol proved even more grotesque. On one hand, he declared loyalty to Agitka; on the other, he couldn’t cut ties with the KPP, regularly attending their party meetings. Fearing ostracism and the reaction of the former KPP leadership, he insisted on operating under aliases—a fictional identity of a Turkish waitress named Emine Çeli was chosen for him. The peak of absurdity came after we gave him an ultimatum regarding his writing output. Instead of the comprehensive, high-quality analysis we expected, he sent us a “ballad,” completely ignoring the serious profile of our portal.

As the months rolled by, the project began to drain me physically and mentally. Our ambitions were immense. Analyzing the collapse of Agitka provides hard, universal lessons for any future organizational structures. The greatest sin of a young project is when execution rests entirely on a single person’s shoulders: unfortunately, the entire operational burden fell almost exclusively on me. I tried to delegate and expand responsibilities, but my collaborators struggled even with quickly handling electronic signatures in the mObywatel app—making it impossible to hand over power of attorney for bureaucratic matters.

The final crisis that sealed the publication’s fate was not external pressure, however, but a total breakdown of trust within the team. On this matter, I will limit myself to a single statement: the ultimate catalyst for the collapse was the fact that one of our editors chose a path similar to Rysiek’s.

This event caused me to gradually lose any sense of purpose in continuing the project. Around the same time, I decided to remove articles radically critical of Israel from the portal. Not because the topic is off-limits — it isn’t — but because the quality of that commentary was poor. Emotional, conspiratorial, low on analysis. Articles implying that Jews control Washington or that Trump is Netanyahu’s puppet are not political commentary — they’re low-effort provocation dressed up as critique. That’s not what Agitka was supposed to be. I support a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, but that’s a separate matter from what I’m willing to publish. This triggered a sharp conflict with Damian, who forced a confrontation and ultimately left the editorial team, accusing me of violating the platform’s core program line.

I realized that further investing energy, time, and private capital into this project was entirely unsustainable and unprofitable. The Polish leftist micro-scene is largely a toxic, echo-chamber bubble that, instead of doing real work, busies itself with mutual destruction, intrigue, and gossip.

Bringing the “Agitka” editorial project to an end was a painful but necessary step. We built a platform with enormous potential that technically outperformed anything the old left had created over the past decade. Yet we broke our backs on the exact same hurdle that broke earlier initiatives: the lack of reliable, stable, and loyal cadres. The Polish radical left community proved simply too unambitious to cope with building or supporting such a framework.