In the Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa,
Ontario, on Friday, September 22, 2023:
“Canadian lawmakers cheered and Zelensky raised his fist in
acknowledgement as Hunka saluted from the gallery during two separate standing
ovations. Rota called him a “Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero, and we thank
him for all his service.”
Zelensky was in Ottawa to bolster support from Western allies
for Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion.”
From <https://www.timesofisrael.com/canadas-parliament-trudeau-and-zelensky-give-inadvertent-ovation-to-nazi-war-veteran/>
“The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies
issued a statement Sunday saying the speaker’s adulatory remarks ignored “the
horrific fact that Hunka served in the 14th
Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Nazi military unit whose crimes against
humanity during the Holocaust are well-documented… [It] was responsible for the
mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is
unimaginable”. “
From <https://www.timesofisrael.com/canadas-parliament-trudeau-and-zelensky-give-inadvertent-ovation-to-nazi-war-veteran/>
Yaroslaw Hunka’s adulation happened while the Speaker of the
Canadian Parliament was making introductory remarks before the address of the
Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky, with him in attendance. This was
obviously a sensational event for the mainstream media to cover, but, apart
from The Times of Israel, it generally decided not to emphasize his
presence, or that Zelensky “raised his fist” to salute Hunka, who in fact
received two standing ovations during Zelinsky’s state visit.
So, there it was: the sudden collective amnesia of the
western ‘free press’. The praise of Hunka was to be passed off later as an
oversight by the Canadian authorities and particularly the Speaker, who later resigned.
Is that all it was?
As far as I can tell, there was no official response made to
this astonishing event by Israel’s government, although anti-fascist Jewish
groups in Israel (and of course elsewhere) remarked on it.
In February 2022, a full-scale conflict had started in
Europe, between Russia and Ukraine, when Russia invaded Ukraine, although there
had been ongoing fighting at least since 2014 and the Euromaidan protests.
Russia called it a “special operation’ and ‘de-Nazification’. The western media
said repeatedly that this was ‘Russia’s war in Ukraine’, solely instigated by
the Russian president, for “no reason” or because he was simply ‘evil’.
On the surface it was simple, Russia had invaded Ukraine, the
underdog to giant Russia, and this was against international law, which was
technically correct.
But the reasons for the conflict between Russian and Ukraine
were multiple, and of course there was a historical context:
1) The west/US sought expansion into Ukraine via NATO, which
is a military alliance that Russia opposes, thus in the end, militarily,
2) Russia sought to keep Ukraine in its orbit for its own profits
and strategic interests,
3) Some Ukrainians have a deep enmity towards its large
Russian neighbour and its exploitation of its country, including some (like
Hunka), and their descendants, who fought alongside the Nazis during WWII
against Russia as the then Soviet Union,
4) Russia and Ukraine are ethnically intermixed to a high
degree, and Russian sympathisers were being discriminated against and ethnically
cleansed with the help of the corrupt Ukrainian state. There was violence
particularly in the breakaway Donbas region, which did not support the western
movement, its resistance in Ukraine favoured Russia.
In the past, there was the 1918 invasion of the Soviet Union
by Poland through Ukraine, and the soon to follow invasion by the German Nazis
via Poland and Ukraine, both with some assistance by significant Ukrainian far-right
nationalist groups. Given the SU/Russia, the then ally of the west, lost over
22 million people in WWII, there is obviously a lot of sensitivity regarding
the perceived push by the west and NATO to bring Ukraine into its fold, no
matter what the current political reality of this is. Being completely ringed
by the military alliance of NATO member nations whose principle is ‘an attack
on one is an attack on all’ is not welcomed by Russia from its historic and strategic
point of view. To boot, the major
western participants in the conflict have been unable or unwilling to divest
themselves from their Cold War perceptions of Russia, probably the advanced
capitalist democracies needed to continue their profit-making from their security
industries, just like Russia, and thus to retain a large, obvious enemy to
generate fear into their possibly rebellious social classes, as well as an ogre
to blame for all of its own capitalist economic shortcomings, such as the
current second bout of austerity and rampant inflation, and the so-called ‘cost
of living’ crisis.
Thus, western capitalism sought to expand its capital via
Ukraine, it has resources such as vast grain production, and an educated, exploitable
white working class. It does not matter to capital whether the resources are
large or small (for instance, Ukraine’s trade in surrogate mothers, troll
farming, etc.), any expansion is the rule. Additionally, two big recent global
crises, the 2008 financial crisis, and the global pandemic, seriously disrupted
the processes of capital expansion for a while, and capitalists, globally,
desired some form of compensation for their apparent losses, as well as a
scapegoat for the economic problems.
Meanwhile, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was in a
similar position as other leaders of big capitalist nations with similar
economic problems, and he obliged the western powers by openly attacking and
invading Ukraine. Ukraine’s ruling class had provided enough provocations by
their ethnic attacks on Russian sympathisers and suppressions of the Russian
language. The Euromaidan uprising in 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine, was a part of this
movement, and this uprising had many populist far-right elements who were
either in power or gained power following this. Thus, when Russia caricatured
the Ukrainian nationalists of this general movement as fascists, they could
easily point to some salient facts. There were indeed neo-Nazi movements in
power in Ukraine, even entire Nazi battalions associated with its armed forces,
such as the Azov. These were things the western media tended to ignore or
commented on only in passing, framing it as not essential to the just “struggle
for freedom” of Ukraine from Russian imperialism and, as they supposed, its socialism.
The latter was a fiction, because what was being imposed by Russia had been and
was still Russian capitalism, but the west seemingly found it impossible to
forget that Russia had been the Soviet Union, and still hankered for old Cold
War terms of engagement.
That the president of Ukraine regards some neo-Nazi troops to
be his heroes, as well as names new brigades, governed by the interior
ministry, ‘storm troopers’ (this name was at first repeated in the western
press gleefully, as if it automatically predicated a successful
counteroffensive), tells us something about the Ukrainian state, as well as the
psychological condition of the global bourgeois classes who support its defence.
There were very few concerns expressed about the rising Nazi phenomenon in the
western media. The Russian bourgeoisie meanwhile exploited some nostalgic
fondness for its Soviet past to expand on the theme of them heroically fighting
the same war against the Nazis. From the beginning the western media was not
interested in the perception of Russians about its borders, so we heard little
about Putin’s complaints and the discussions between Russia and the EU prior to
the ‘hot’ conflict.
Western capitalism achieved one aim with Russia, it rid
itself of the Soviet Union and its socialist economy (such as it was), and
replaced it with a capitalist economy, and a democratic parliament, of sorts.
But this victory of capital inevitably led to the rise of a very well-armed,
but raw, capitalist competitor nation. On the surface, there was a moment that
you might have thought the new ‘free’ Russia could join Europe, the EU, and
form a bloc that could easily compete economically with the US and China, and
provide balance, stability, and therefore peace to the globe. Of course, US
capital could not allow this to happen, it threatened its hegemony, so it acted
against it.
Thus, this conflict was to a large part the result of this
economic competition. Russia represented a threat to the US because it was a
militarily powerful force that could potentially be part of Europe. The US
bourgeoisie understood that the only way Russia could be constrained was by
neutering its threat somehow.
Some of the opportunist Ukrainian ruling class, for their part
in this conflict, do not look inwards to Ukraine to solve their problems, they
instead look to the west, to the US, to Europe, but some remain loyal to Russia,
their neighbour. Some openly invited imperialist military interventions by the
US and Europe. But it is not the intention of the west to win this war in any
way that could help the working-class people of Ukraine. They say that victory
for Ukraine must mean it regains all its lost territory and Russia must be
obviously defeated and lose all confidence in its military. But this completely
ignores that Russia is a nuclear power. And in any case, how could this be an
end? And what would a humiliated Russia be likely to do? Ukraine’s far-right
have the aim of destroying Russia as such. The president of Ukraine repeatedly
asked early on for ‘closing the skies’ by the west, thus an escalation to a
level that openly invited NATO involvement (perhaps this was the expectation of
the president of Ukraine, that such an intervention could be along the lines of
the US actions in Libya, but Libya was not an historic associate of Russia, nor
a close neighbour, or in NATO). This was widely treated as justified and
sensible in the jingoistic western media, but it would mean WWIII and global annihilation,
thus we saw some death cult aspects of the Ukrainian Nazism. In any case, there
was a constant gradual escalation of the conflict and the stakes in it, so that
you could be forgiven for thinking that the conflict was an end-in-itself for
both the US and Russia, they were so deaf to any other course of action.
The former Labour Party leader and MP Jeremy Corbyn dared to
disagree with the political consensus in the west and called for peace-making
rather than giving arms to Ukraine. But the real argument against arming
Ukraine was not primarily for peace: Ukraine has its own rich businessmen and
billionaires, yet the Ukrainian state asks the western powers for armaments to
be given, and it must because the Ukrainian state hardly taxes its own businesses
and the rich. And gifting arms to Ukraine is to also give them to this class, who
are not trustworthy, and the arms will fall into the hands of the far-right.
What is Russia’s extra special threat to the west that seems
to be underlying all this? Russia once had a working-class socialist revolution,
in 1917, which ushered in years of Soviet rule. Putin fights this legacy almost
as much as the western bourgeois classes. Yet, no matter how far from socialism
the Russian bourgeoisie goes, with all its billionaires rivalling western ones,
it will never be enough punishment for western capitalism. Western capital
interests will never trust it, as a giant power, so the push against Russia is always
towards its eventual complete dismemberment. Putin understands this, and he
uses old Soviet imagery and styles for a kitsch version of its WWII heroism to
resist this movement. Hence, we may know that the Soviet Union must still be remembered
at least to some extent fondly in the Russian Federation.
So, under the thin veil of western rhetoric about freedom
and democracy there is another agenda than winning the conflict for the benefit
of the local people: the war must be won or lost but both according to the aims
of capital. This means that the bottom-line is that no working-class interests will
be served by either winning or losing in such a war. The outcome that is
desired by the external imperialists for Ukraine is not a truly free Ukrainian
working class or people, but one that is in debt and beholden to giant external
capital interests, whichever it is. Such a fight therefore is not a true
struggle for self-determination. And this is why the west supports the
Ukrainian fascists - because fascists can be relied upon to be selfish,
profiteering, mercenary, corrupt, etc. and will sell out their own working
class and people, while not really being interested in self-determination for
Ukraine.
As for the Ukrainian bourgeois class, the president and his
advisors rule the roost, but in the style of running a TV series in which they
direct a storyline, while parliament is very quiet. The president, elected by
the Ukrainians for his TV image fighting against the prevailing corrupt elite,
had been an actor in a series where he played the president, he was thus made
to order, the perfect candidate for the starring role he was to play in the
west’s global media, since he could stick to the script. Just before the
invasion by Russia, he had nevertheless become very unpopular at home,
according to some Ukrainian polls. Even so, as we cannot fail to witness, since
the war he has been seen all over the globe, and onto Zelenski’s shoulders has
been placed all the hopes and interests of the global bourgeois classes. In him
they had an archetype hero of the ‘free world’ to prove that the complaints of
their own working-classes were selfish and unpatriotic.
Zelenskiy is an indefatigable performer, and this is how he
ended up in the Canadian parliament, participating in giving two standing
ovations to a Nazi war veteran.
Ukraine should indeed defend its sovereignty, but not in a
way that only succeeds in getting Ukraine further into debt to foreign interests,
and betting on the far-right in this struggle, as the west is now doing, is
foolish and dangerous, as it has always been. More arms should not be sent to
Ukraine because it escalates the conflict, in which the working classes of both
Ukraine and Russia should stop killing each other, because it only serves ruling
class interests on both sides. There needs to be a ceasefire and negotiations
for peace. To achieve this, the imperialist struggle must be converted into a
class struggle.
The shocking event in the Canadian parliament happened in
September 2023, shortly after, on October 7th of the same year, Hamas,
the elected rulers of the Gaza Strip, the coastal Palestinian territory fenced-in
by the Israeli occupation forces, broke out and attacked and killed Israeli
citizens and others. About 1200 were killed and others were taken as captives
back into Gaza, including soldiers and civilians. There followed an Israeli
retaliation that killed thousands, mainly Palestinian children. The western
media had been always insistent on pointing up, even without the normal corroboration,
the war crimes of Russia during its attacks, for instance on a village in
Ukraine where evidence was allegedly found, but the very same media was now noticeably
blind to the killing of over 30,000 fenced-in Palestinians by bombing,
invasion, and siege, by the far-right Israeli government of its ruling class. Note
that foreign journalists were forbidden to enter Gaza, by Israel. The glaring
difference in the framing and reporting of the two conflicts became stark. The
hitherto pouncing on any infraction by Russia, could now be set against the open
vocal support of an Israeli far-right government regime intent (as they often boasted
themselves), upon genocide, no matter how strenuously this was disguised by
supposed humanitarian concerns.
Was this why there was no apparent official response by
Israel to Canada’s praise of a Nazi? Was not Israel supposed to be the
protector of all Jews worldwide? Could it not in this circumstance have said
something condemning? But there was at least this in The Jerusalem Post:
“Resignation
of Canada’s speaker of the House of Commons lower chamber is a “first
step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong," Israel's new Special
Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh told The Jerusalem Post
this week. She added that Canada needs to acknowledge its historic sin of not
allowing enough Jews into the country during the Holocaust and immediately
afterward while allowing Nazis to immigrate.”
By ZVIKA KLEINOCTOBER 3, 2023
00:15Updated: OCTOBER 3, 2023 16:28
From <https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-761391>
