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A popular TikTok content creator sounds the alarm for women, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.
As it becomes clear that Republicans have made significant strides in convincing the American people to vote for them, some are warning of what the country may have in store. In a viral video, London-based content creator Sebastian Sochan warns that former President Donald Trump’s reelection could bring the United States dangerously close to authoritarianism. Drawing on the example of his native Poland under the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed the nation from 2015 to 2023, Sochan suggests that an unchecked U.S. government could lead to restrictions on civil liberties, government control of the judiciary, and systematic exclusion of marginalized communities. The video has been viewed more than 4.5 million times.
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In his video, Sochan highlights PiS’s 2020 ban on nearly all abortions, which led to tragedy and upheaval. “Women are not allowed to take abortions,” Sochan says, recounting how the law banned the procedure even when it risked the mother’s health. In a notable case, a woman died after being forced to carry a stillborn child, sparking nationwide outrage and what Sochan called a “Black Monday” of protests, where women across Poland wore black and boycotted work and school. Despite the outpouring of anger from hundreds of thousands of protesters, PiS refused to back down.
@imnotustudio What happened in Poland can happen in America #election #poland #womensrights #lgbtrights
“People often think, ‘this can’t happen here,’ but that’s exactly what many in Poland believed before PiS took power,” Sochan cautions. His fears resonate as reproductive rights advocates in the United States note the recent erosion of access to abortion following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, which reversed Roe v. Wade. Over 20 U.S. states have since restricted abortion access. For Sochan, this stands as a chilling reminder of what happens when one party seizes control of national policy without restraint.
Sochan’s video also describes how PiS fostered intolerance toward LGBTQ+ people. The PiS government-backed local measures to create “LGBT-free zones,” symbolic areas of exclusion declared by nearly 100 municipalities, covering almost half of Poland’s provinces at their peak. “Our president actually said that gay people are not people, that they are an ideology,” Sochan says, explaining that businesses and towns displayed signs marking themselves as “LGBT-free.” Poland’s sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ stance prompted the European Union to take the unusual step of suspending hundreds of millions of euros in funding for affected municipalities.
“This would be fearless in the U.S.,” Sochan warns, noting that, unlike Poland, the United States would not face EU sanctions. Advocates in the United States are seeing increasing opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, including anti-trans bills and policies limiting gender-affirming care and barring discussions of gender in schools. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 530 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide in 2024.
“Imagine a place where they tell you, ‘You don’t belong,’” Sochan says, capturing the harm these policies can cause.
Under PiS, Poland’s judicial independence was severely compromised, an outcome Sochan describes as “a judicial system handpicked by the ruling party.” PiS rewrote judicial laws to ensure judges were appointed by party loyalists, enabling PiS to pass any law it desired without judicial pushback. “The judges were basically pawns in their game,” Sochan says, pointing out that this lack of oversight allowed corruption to flourish, with party members skirting accountability for embezzlement and other crimes, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis.
He explains that this concentration of judicial power left PiS unchallenged and allowed abuses to go unchecked. Trump’s first term saw more than 200 federal judges appointed, with three added to the Supreme Court, leaving a lasting conservative imprint on American jurisprudence. Sochan’s fears are shared by many American legal scholars who believe a second Trump term could further erode judicial independence and increase the influence of partisan politics on the courts.
In the video, Sochan describes how PiS took control of Poland’s largest public television broadcaster, TVP, transforming it into a mouthpiece for government propaganda. “They wanted to brainwash even more people,” he says, comparing TVP to Britain’s BBC, except that PiS installed pro-government anchors who constantly criticized the opposition. PiS also attempted to shut down Poland’s leading independent news network, TVN, owned by American company Discovery, labeling it a threat to national sovereignty.
“Think about this – they wanted to ban the most liberal channel,” Sochan says, adding that this attempt to silence dissent led to a €1 million daily fine by the EU, which ruled that Poland was undermining press freedom. While the United States has a robust tradition of media independence, Sochan’s comparison is resonant. Trust in media in the U.S. is at an all-time low, and Trump has called the free press the “enemy of the people,” vowing to come after broadcasters like ABC and CBS, who he sees as not covering him in enough of a positive light.
According to Sochan, PiS’s nationalist agenda extended to immigration. PiS constructed a border wall along the Belarusian border, leaving thousands of refugees trapped in freezing conditions between the Polish and Belarusian militaries. In the video, Sochan explains how many refugees died waiting for humanitarian aid that was barred by PiS policy. “They were denied humanitarian aid. No one was allowed to help them,” he says.
PiS pushed for a national referendum on halting immigration, but the vote fell short of the required 50 percent threshold, rendering it invalid. Sochan says that anti-immigrant sentiment is a hallmark of the PiS agenda, one that could find renewed support in the U.S., where Trump’s hardline stance on immigration fueled policies such as the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and travel bans on Muslim-majority countries in Trump’s first term. Trump has promised mass deportations in his second term. For Sochan, the alignment is clear: unchecked power in the hands of nationalists often results in policies that dehumanize those who are seen as outsiders.
Sochan closes his video with a cautionary note, arguing that Poland’s experience under PiS demonstrates what can happen when a single party consolidates power without accountability. “Unless you are a Polish white man living in Poland, your life was probably hell,” he says.
“America has a lot of influence on the world and the politics of other countries,” Sochan warns. “A lot of these things happened in Poland after Trump won last time.”
He adds, “So just imagine the things that will happen after he just won.”
