Poland has been living out its own McCarthyism since shortly after democracy was restored in 1991 with a process called “lustration,” named after a Roman cleansing ritual. Communism provided a convenient foe for parties looking to definitively forge their own Polish identity after decades, and before that centuries, of oppression. PiS supercharged this when they were first in power in 2006, trying even to legally force civil servants, journalists, CEOs and lawyers to admit if they had worked with the Communist authorities, even when this was legal – this was deemed unconstitutional and helped usher them from power.