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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26363 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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Did anyone of you had Waffen SS fighter getting standing ovation in Canadian parliament for their 2023 bingo card?

Congratulations - you will be rich.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66908958

Canada's House Speaker apologises for praising Ukrainian who fought for Nazis

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, was sitting in the gallery and got a standing ovation in parliament after Mr Rota said he was a "hero" during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During World War Two, Mr Hunka served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division - a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command. Division members are accused of killing Polish and Jewish civilians, although the unit has not been found guilty of any war crimes by a tribunal.

Now I doubt that the svastika will be on the Canadian flag anytime soon. But the fact that the ideology blinded the people to make even a basic background check on the so called hero is troubling. And there seems to be some kind of full blown damage control operation going on.

Anyway a lot of Canadian politicians will have to figure out how to unsuck this dick. ADL seems to be silent as of now. Media try to bury the waffen ss part in the bottom of the articles, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more fanatical ex blue checkmarks try to write opinion piece explaining how this unit were somewhat different than the rest of the Waffen SS.

It seems like a dumb but honest mistake. Maybe they will learn to be more tolerant of much more understandable incidents like this one.

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier posed for a photo with members of an organization described as a hate group in Calgary Sunday.

Normally, when such things happen, the subject of the scandal is accused of being secretly far-right, but few people have that reaction to the Liberal Party when it does something much worse.

The reporting there is fascinating. I appreciate how long it takes for them to actually name the hand gesture in question. Uncharitably, because they know their readers would take it less seriously if they used the phrase "OK sign".

Update - it seems this story has some legs:

The Canadian Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota (no relation) has now resigned over this incident.

Meanwhile, Poland has reportedly "taken steps" towards extraditing Yaroslav Hunka for "crimes against Polish people of Jewish origin". That story doesn't seem to have the update of Mr. Rota's resignation.

I was amused by this follow-up article that refuses to call the guy a Nazi, or even a former Nazi. Many paragraphs deep they print that he was in the Waffen SS, but even then hedges by saying the unit was "under Nazi command" instead of itself Nazi, and they throw in a pseudo-exonerating line about his unit not being found guilty of war crimes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66919862

Trudeau calls praise for Nazi-linked veteran 'deeply embarrassing'

An invitation to parliament for a Ukrainian man who fought for a Nazi unit in World War Two is "deeply embarrassing" to Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, got a standing ovation after House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota called him a "hero" during a Friday visit by Ukraine's president.

Mr Rota has said he did not know of Mr Hunka's Nazi ties and made a mistake in inviting him to attend the event.

...

During World War Two, Mr Hunka served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command. Division members are accused of killing Polish and Jewish civilians, although the unit has not been found guilty of any war crimes by a tribunal.

The unit was renamed the First Ukrainian Division before surrendering to the Western Allies in 1945.

This seems to be just a regular mildly charitable interpretation to me?

Per Merriam-Webster, Hunka would be a Nazi if he was either a

1.Member of the Nazi party

2.Supported Nazi ideology.

He wasn't a party member, and superficial search doesn't give any indication of him being an ideological Nazi.

There's a small matter of him fighting under Nazi command but given the historical context, it's entirely plausible, indeed probable, that him volunteering had nothing to do with a sympathy toward Nazis, but rather hatred of communists

and superficial search doesn't give any indication of him being an ideological Nazi

What standard of evidence are you looking for? When someone volunteers to join the SS, which requires swearing an oath to Hitler and probably a bunch of other stuff, hosts Himmler, carries out a genocide against Poles to Himmler's approval, etc., I believe it's fair to say that they are a Nazi. I am not saying that he personally carried out a genocide, of course: just that he willingly joined and armed group whose primary accomplishments and motivation was killing Polish civilians, when he had every option not to.

I mean any standard of evidence that excludes literal SS members from being Nazis is ridiculous.

Perhaps an analogy might help: I have ancestors who fought in the Red Army, but I would never stoop to branding them communists just because they decided to take part in fighting off Nazi invasion

There are several things which are just astonishing to me. First, even if he didn't know he was a Nazi, shouldn't it have been enough of a problem that he fought against the Russians during WWII? He had to have known that the Russians were on our side.

But even more disappointing is that our Parliament, the most powerful institution in the country, is putting people forward as worthy of high praise without doing the most basic investigation into the person they're giving such an honour to.

Then you have the fact that he got a standing ovation from the other members of parliament, which indicates none clued in to the significance of his having fought against the Russians during WWII, and they were all eager to applaud him even though they should have recognized they didn't have a clue who he was.

This should prove once and for all the incompetence of Parliament as a deliberative body.

shouldn't it have been enough of a problem that he fought against the Russians during WWII?

A lot of people fought against Russians in that time period, and Canada has a large Ukrainian population with unfond memories of the Russia of that era.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone the schadenfreude of watching the other tribe beclowning themselves, and this is absolutely fucking hilarious for anyone with a functioning sense of humour even if they are basically pro-Ukraine and pro-Trudeau, but I don't think this means very much.

Legislatures get a lot of requests from members to do small favours for a constituent (see this Atlantic article about the plethora of bills to rename Post Offices for the US version) and generally operate an assumption of good faith as long as the request doesn't come across as partisan. The most famous example is the Texas Legislature being pranked into honouring a serial killer. The US Congress begrudgingly allocates a certain amount of staffer time to vetting post office renamings to make sure they don't honour anyone unsuitable, but the actual legislators wave requests through as long as the home-state delegation are onside. Other legislatures have less staff support than Congress, so they can't even do that level of vetting.

This is a case where you shouldn't have needed to do the vetting - anyone with a clue should know that "Ukrainian patriot fighting Soviets in WW2" implies "Nazi collaborator", but the only person I would expect to do even the bare minimum is Speaker Rota as the constituency MP honouring a constituent. So I think he deserves to go. But I don't think the Canadian Parliament as an institution is more blameworthy than the Texas Legislature was in 1971.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone the schadenfreude of watching the other tribe beclowning themselves, and this is absolutely fucking hilarious for anyone with a functioning sense of humour even if they are basically pro-Ukraine and pro-Trudeau, but I don't think this means very much.

Like with the blackface it matters only because we all know the Liberals would be calling for nuking the CPC from space if they even approached anything like this.

And it wouldn't be seen as an honest mistake but a reflection of real issues within the party (it clearly is a reflection of credulity on the part of Liberals since, as you say, this shouldn't have even passed the sniff test but good luck getting that standard applied equally)

But it's the Liberals so they'll get a pass , like the time they did both a misinformation and a stoking stochastic terrorism while pushing for ever greater censorship and control to fight such things.

like the time they did both a misinformation and a stoking stochastic terrorism while pushing for ever greater censorship and control to fight such things.

It's always fucking DARVO with these people. Whatever it is they are complaining about the other side doing its exactly what they are doing. Like that whole "fake news" and "disinformation" shit they where whining about at the same time as they were coordinating literal conspiracy theories worse than the wet dream of a schizophrenic. (Russia-gate/pee-tape)

ADL seems to be silent as of now.

The mother organization, however, has played it absolutely straight. The Times of Israel:

B’nai Brith Canada’s CEO, Michael Mostyn, said it was outrageous that Parliament honored a former member of a Nazi unit, saying Ukrainian “ultra-nationalist ideologues” who volunteered for the Galicia Division “dreamed of an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.”

“We understand an apology is forthcoming. We expect a meaningful apology. Parliament owes an apology to all Canadians for this outrage, and a detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place at the center of Canadian democracy,” Mostyn said before Rota issued his statement.

Gotta say, it's heartening to see that some things don't change. B’nai Brith doing some NAFO "oh shush, what Nazis, Zelensky is literally Jewish so all's well, and who really knows, maybe SS volunteers really had a point, after all, you see, those Russians…" routine would be a total clown world event. I don't much like those guys but can appreciate anyone sticking to their bit.

The thing about Ukrainian patriots is they're quite straightforward. They had a bog standard Eastern European/Balkan ethnonationalist movement with all the classical knuckledragger tropes about $ingroup being Aryans/Greeks/Amazons/Huns/werewolves (the account belongs to some grifter but I've ran the list by Ukrainian acquaintances and they say it is "common knowledge" or school program to a greater or lesser extent) and $outgroup being racially inferior nonhuman pig dog creatures (rural prejudices, a haughty Moscal urbanite would certainly say); they still have it; many naively buy it as literally true (eg their famous auteur with a "cult following among Kyiv intellectuals" theorizing on Moskals' descent from some separate, evil species of ape… ah, the video is private now) and often do not expect reproach; their imagemakers will dress it up as merely «standing up to Moskal Asiatic Imperialists», and obvious geopolitics as well as the nature of the conflict force polite people to keep awkwardly smiling and pretending that's some cute exotic custom or whatever. It really is refreshingly attractive, the way Remove Kebab memes were, I imagine it speaks to the suppressed music in the blood of those whose ancestors went on Crusades; and they have better music than Serbs. Better lyrics too.

Canadian foreign politics has become a lot more riveting lately. Trudeau giving a MCU era impression of a Churchill speech was not in my bingo card either.

“We understand an apology is forthcoming. We expect a meaningful apology. Parliament owes an apology to all Canadians for this outrage, and a detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place at the center of Canadian democracy,” Mostyn said before Rota issued his statement.

If I am holding official position and someone evens thinks of daring of holding this tone to me I will throw everything in the state possession to ruin him. Every piece of dirt the intelligence agencies have for him, his relatives and anything he holds dear.

This is not antisemitism btw - just anti obnoxious cuntism. This level of entitlement just has no place in a civilized world, no matter if it is this, PETA, or PMRC

B’nai Brith are not PETA but, in our crude gentile terms, something between a Masonic organization and an ethnic mafia. If you were holding an official position and "threw anything in the state position" to ruin them, you'd have had bad luck on the road, or were revealed as a violent pedophile, or something to this effect (but these days probably just your Antisemitic utterances from 20 years ago suddenly surfacing). I believe this is generally understood by people who matter; though, seeing as they fail to anticipate the side a Ukrainian who fought Russians in the WWII stood on, it may be an issue those historically illiterate people still need to be reminded of. Thus the uncouth tone is necessary to deter future transgressions.

From Podervianskyi's Wikipedia article:

Podervianskyi's works have often been criticized because of his use of vulgar unprintable language. They are written mostly in Surzhyk and include much swearing and obscenities, which make them appear as if they were composed by an uneducated person. Often it seems that the only reason one would read the works is for their comic impact and to hear creative swearing. But this is not the case. The numerous citations from Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Taoism and dzen buddhism philosophers give the idea of several intellectual layers in his works. Although a number of Podervianskyi's expressions have entered Ukrainian slang, he uses crude language to show the flaws and grotesqueness of his characters. Podervianskyi carefully matches up language with his characters. Thus a self-made intellectual spouts scientific-sounding nonsense, while more "straightforward" characters use simple words to express complex things.

"To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Les Podervianskyi. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics..."

I'm sure that the Canadian government would have preferred a veteran of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to present in front of the parliament instead. It's true that the UPA, among other atrocities, committed ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Volyn region of Ukraine, but what is more important is that it was an organization of Ukrainian origin, not German, which fought both the Germans and the Soviets, and obviously has much better potential PR as a result compared to any SS unit, obviously. (Potential Polish complaints notwithstanding.)

The issue, I guess, is that while thousands of Ukrainian SS men managed to immigrate to the West after the war, as they surrendered to the British in present-day Austria, the UPA was largely wiped out by Soviet internal troops after the war, and I'd be surprised if even a dozen of them managed to flee to the West. And certainly not one of them survive to this day.

Edit: I was replaying to other comment in the thread from DaseindustriesLtd . You can find it under there.

I'm surprised that people are surprised. The West will back anyone from a radical jihadist or in this case praising a former (?) Nazi if it suits its geopolitical interest. Ultimately, the rhetoric of "human rights" is reserved for the large domestic audience of midwits even as the de facto foreign policy is far more ruthless.

Yeah, this is where I am on most things. It’s not even just foreign policy, but most things to do with government— the official version is not really believed by anyone educated above 5th grade civics. The powerful rule for their own sake, not the public’s.

the official version is not really believed by anyone educated above 5th grade civics

Unfortunately, this is not my experience. Some of the most conformist people I've met have had higher education degrees. I think Chomsky wrote something about this some years ago, how the primary function of universities is to increase compliance with the system. Interesting thought.

Self-selection for compliance/conformity to managerial authority.

Did Chomsky write this specifically about universities? Looking at the summary of Manufacturing Consent (written as an MIT professor, co-authored with a U. Penn. professor), you can see all sorts of complaints about profit, advertising, anti-communism ... "government and corporate news sources" is probably the closest category to "universities" but it sure doesn't sound like they had their employers specifically in mind.

I've seen complaints about this before. Let's see ... Moldbug had:

If anyone is in an obvious position to manufacture consent, it is (as Walter Lippmann openly proposed) first the journalists themselves, and next the universities which they regard as authoritative. Yet, strangely, the leftist has no interest whatsoever in this security hole. This can only be because it is already plugged with his worm. The complaint of the Chomskian, in other words, always occurs when the other team is impudent enough to try to manufacture a bit of its own consent.

I may never be a huge Chomsky fan, but I haven't read the primary sources and I wouldn't trust Moldbug as a charitable paraphraser; I'd definitely like to know if I fell for a misrepresentation.

I caught the daughter's Facebook page before she deleted. She and her father were so incredibly proud and excited about this, and her father was over the moon at the chance to meet Zelensky. (there is a lot of boring stupidity around "but Zelensky's jewish!", but I think this is sufficient disproof of at least "currently a joins-the-SS-to-cleanse-Ukraine-of-jews-level nazi")

I think it's worth giving a hearing to his own account of his experience with the war (auto-translated). This obviously could be heavily sanitized in retrospect, but with the historical literacy to understand the circumstances of growing up in a village in eastern interwar-Poland through 1939, I don't think it necessarily has to be. This whole situation is just profoundly sad.

I imagine the daughter gave the staffers of Speaker Rota, who is also their personal MP in North Bay, the little lie-by-omission of "First Ukrainian Divsion" as part of trying to arrange for her father to be able to come see Zelensky speak (I didn't see any indication that the expectation was for him to be presented before parliament), and it snowballed all the way through all the staffers necessary for this to have happened without a second thought. It's fun to imagine those staffers, and the circumstances that lead the Liberal Party and Parliament to have nobody in the entire chain equipped to realize that "fought against the Russians in WWII" needs a second look. What an unbelievable unforced error.

I think there may be some meaningful distinction to be made between Eastern European and Baltic people who had first been conquered by the Soviets and who subsequently lived under NKVD terror and had friends and family disappeared forever in the middle of the night, and who were later under the direct physical threat of the Soviets' return, for whom these Waffen-SS units were the only organized option available for them to fight that with; and German SS who had other options and for whom joining the SS was something very particular. Indeed a Canadian government commission found something like this in the 1980s (pretty explicitly laid out in part 2), specifically regarding this division.

Of course there's no conceivable way you would expect the general public to have enough historical literacy to process this with any more finely-grained nuance than how they are. Boy did they ever fuck up.

Other things:

The SS Galician's specific accusation of atrocities was against not-specifically-jewish Poles. File this too under "there's no conceivable way you could expect, historical literacy, etc". (also I can't find any mention of this atrocity in the commission report ...)

The Daughter's facebook was absolutely plastered, multiple posts per day interspersed with their giddy anticipation of this event going back as far as I looked, with "Good People Don't Spend Their Time Harassing Marginalized Communities" (Progress Pride Flag), "No Space For Hate" (Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag-coloured map of Canada), Orange Shirt Day profile pics, etc. What an impossible nightmare this attempt to do a nice thing for her incredibly elderly father must have turned out to be.

expect the general public to have enough historical literacy to process this with any more finely-grained nuance

This is a cheque the current regime [and the fragment of the public that supports them] is inherently unable to cash. If you want to pretend the evil Nazi menace is everywhere, fine, but that approach has inherent costs, one of which is that you now have to be unimpeachable about not bringing things literally called "Nazis" in.

The public is not going to care (their faction has in large part seen to that) that "he's one of the good ones", even though that's obviously true, and so that faction has no other option but to cancel a military ally from a country they're trying to help because to do otherwise is just writing your own attack ads. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Personally, I'm rooting for the father; a Communist foreign empire trying to unjustly impose its will on territory that empire considered a western province is not entirely irrelevant to recent Canadian history. Sadly, I don't think there's a Canadian political party willing/representing a public that would be receptive enough to actually pointing that out, but it would be absolutely hilarious if there was.

The public is not going to care (their faction has in large part seen to that) that "he's one of the good ones", even though that's obviously true

How is it "obviously true"?

Also, Eastern European SS sympathizers just looked to act out ethnic revenge fantasies on civilian populations. This is what Hunka's group did, mostly focusing on killing Polish civilians. Same thing in Croatia and doubtless other places too, where it was an excuse for killing local Serbs and Jews and stealing their property. What about that makes them "the good ones"?

the little lie-by-omission of "First Ukrainian Division"

I'm glad someone pointed this out. That he was introduced to the parliament as the veteran of the "First Ukrainian Division" was a calculated and blatant lie. The 14th Waffen-SS division was named Galizien specifically to avoid any official mention of "Ukraine", as the Nazis did not view it as a legitimate nation, and certainly not as a polity worthy of sovereignty. Then in the last stage of the war when defeat was imminent, the Ukrainian collaborators in Germany started to self-organize as control over them collapsed, and one of their actions was apparently renaming the 14th, which was at that point stationed on Austrian soil, to the "First Ukrainian Division". The Waffen-SS headquarters never sanctioned this, so the change was never official, and thus does not appear in official documents.

Another calculated lie that at least some members of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada committed was erecting monuments to their military veterans which carry the insignia of the 14th on them, but are nominally dedicated to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which is a completely different organization and was not founded by the Germans.

"No Space For Hate" (Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag-coloured map of Canada), Orange Shirt Day profile pics, etc. What an impossible nightmare this attempt to do a nice thing for her incredibly elderly father must have turned out to be.

Pardon? I'm supposed to feel sympathy for someone willingly participating in slanderous attack against parents concerned with the gender affirmation scandal?

The racism that ought to be focused upon when it comes to these old fighters being praised is obviously Anti-Russian racism. That is the stronger continuity. I don't think it is an accident that Ukrainian nazis are being promoted. Rather the point is to allow a continuity of ultranationalism against Russians, including of warcriminal type.

But of course not to allow dissent from the other agendas that said grandaughter was all too happy to promote. So nationalism including of the more extreme sort but only so far leads to Ukrainians dying to kill Russians. And including putting no pressure on groups and a mentality that has proven willingness to commit attrocities towards civilians as well.

Which is immoral of course. Especially if you examine things from a more long term outlook, not just last two years and consider whether the meat grinder had to happen. Those who supported it happening because they don't mind Ukrainians dying and Russians dying for they value the weakening of Russia as more important, could very well be more bloodthirsty characters than this 90 year old in his youth.

Certainly I find the obsession with 80 years old WW2 insane when it is far greater moral affront to be arming people willing to commit attrocities than giving awards to someone who might have commited them in the past. We have people who have bloodied their hands with warcrimes enough in our timeline to not concern us too much with those who did so 80 years ago. It is current warmongering imperialists who we should be more concerned with.

Another thing to consider is maybe her grandfather was not the most evil to ever evil, but in addition to any atrocities he might have participated or not participated in, even more importantly today like in his youth he is betting on the wrong horse. He is betting on a foreign power establishment which sees his own nation's and its people and sovereignity as a threat and has no intention to let them be.

There is a repetition of the same mistake of joining with the devil you don't know how oppressive it is to oppose the devil you have a more direct experience of screwing you over. I believe this is a factor in the establishment supporting these "nazis". Already proven to be useful idiots for a foreign western power and are following the same playbook.

The better path for Ukraine to have followed would had been to try to resist being captured by either sphere of influence and to play the threat of each against each other. If that had happened, the future would be much brighter for the Ukrainian nation. It would be better for the world as well. The real shitshow, this incredible unnecessary loss of life would not have happened.

I caught the daughter's Facebook page before she deleted. She and her father were so incredibly proud and excited about this, and her father was over the moon at the chance to meet Zelensky. (there is a lot of boring stupidity around "but Zelensky's jewish!", but I think this is sufficient disproof of at least "currently a joins-the-SS-to-cleanse-Ukraine-of-jews-level nazi")

Jews supporting something does not sanctify evil since plenty of Jews has supported all sorts of evil in modernity especially as well. There are the obvious far left movements but even certain movements less associated with the left.

I have even seen the arguement that Italian fascists were not racist because they were rather friendly with Italian Jews who were well integrated and overepresented per their population in Italian fascism which is actually a hidden fact. One should not take the wrong conclusion from this however. The Italian fascists changed their attitude due to the influence of nazi Germany but even then they were much more protective of Italian Jews than various other nazi allies.

At the same time that the Italian fascists (including Jewish Italian fascists) were friendly to Jewish Italians (or less hostile later on) they were genocidal imperialists demonizing and justifying brutal murderous conquest against other ethnic groups including european ones. Even well within WW2, Italian fascists obviously treated Jewish Italians far better than Greeks, Slavs and other groups they conquered.

Jews or some Jews being at the center of something does not mean that something is good. That prejudice is racist stupid nonsense and it is promoted by people who want to excuse evil by using it.

Someone with nazi symbols who isn't an antisemite but willing to commit attrocities against other groups should be condemned for what they are. Jews should not lie at the center of our moral universe, although their welfare should be considered too along other groups but never as a prioritization at expense of others.

The better path for Ukraine to have followed would had been to try to resist being captured by either sphere of influence and to play the threat of each against each other.

Sounds nice, pre-2014. Once one of your neighbors invades you, this isn't an option anymore. I know you know this. Help me understand what I'm missing.

You are missing the fact that it is immoral not to blame people who make crisis inevitable and it is short sighted to look at things only after things have escalated. So no, we need to blame those who made 2014 reality, both in Ukraine, Russia and in the USA.

After 2014, escalating to the current level has proven a worse option. Not shelling civilian areas for the Ukrainians. Or the USA not having their hands in this proxy war while their apologists lying their asses off. Or the Russians not supporting the rebels.

After the more hardcore invasion of 2022 there isn't really a good endpoint after the invasion. Ending the gruelling meat grinder sooner is better for an Ukrainian and Russian point of view. Unless you want Ukrainians to die so they can kill Russians for a long war, a peace agreement is not going to make people happy but is better than the alternative.

Of course if the Ukrainians could have won easier, it would be a better alternative for them not to go to the negotiating table. But that isn't the case.

The Ukrainians aren't the only ones needed for a peace agreement, but the better end point would have been a ceasefire peace. And crimea should had been the one area the Ukrainians should had been willing to make more direct concessions.

Actually it appeared that Ukraine and Russia were close to make an agreement but Britain torpedoed the agreement.

American imperialists both in terms of the USA itself and in terms of random indivudals who are American imperialists are not the only big power, and the only group of chauvinists willing to screw over others but they are not a good force for the world and they are very willing to destroy whole countries to expand their sphere of influence or harm rival powers like Russia while promoting propaganda about freedom and other nonsense. Meanwhile they try to put their own preffered people in charge who will go along with it. Maybe even advocate with greater zealotry for the American empire to remain engaged.

So I don't have a grand solution of the biggest powers bringing international justice because they are not lead by moral people with moral goals. I can still condemn the ruinous paths being followed. And pressure immoral actors who are hypocrites into behaving better, and condemning them for failing to live up to their propaganda. Obviously this forum has an over-abudance of American imperialists who cheerlead destruction and act with unparalled arrogance, having learned nothing from the Iraq, Libya, Syria debacles but even doubling down in acting as if they are moderates for doing so. A fraud.

Ideally we have a multi polar world where great powers use the concept of international justice to dissuade each other from warmongering would work better.

And while the world never had that, it could have it to a greater or lesser extend. The worst trajectory possible is American imperialists dreaming of world conquest and consolidating an authoritarian alliance that oppresses their vasals and is very hostile towards Russia/China and others while BRIC alliance also consolidates, and things heat up for a WW3.

For what is worth, I believe we need more gatekeeping against authoritarian american imperialists who deplatform and shame dissent while promoting both war outside and authoritarianism at home.

The escalatory potential of Ukraine/Russian war and how it helped lead Europe away from Russia and threatens to do so with China, is another facet to it.

So I've been reading and listening to a lot of WWII memoirs, specifically of Germans on the eastern front. I want to find out for myself the motivations of these men, dispel the myths and western propaganda of WWII, and find any parallels to our modern times. Many of these memoirs are written by soldiers of a Waffen-SS division. What I have picked up from reading these memoirs, is that the reasons these men joined the Waffen-SS are diverse and not as dubious as our western propaganda and the myth of the just war would have you believe. The Waffen-SS were elite units composed of volunteers, whereas I imagine the Wermacht were comprised of mostly conscripts.

Based on the accounts I have read, many of the men joined the Waffen-SS out of pure hatred for the communists and concerned the growth of communism would swallow European culture and religion. The time they spent in the Ukraine often talked of the local populace's hatred of the communists and the atrocities that were committed against them by the bolsheviks. The more fanatical SS that one usually thinks of were termed the Allgemeine SS and were often thought of poorly by the soldiers of the Waffen-SS.

So, it is no surprise that many Ukranians such as Mr. Hunka volunteered to serve in a Waffen-SS division as a matter of revenge against the bolshevik hordes. This hardly makes him a nazi as is the common narrative and its hilarious to see this backfire on Canada. Many if not most of these brave heroes died and its sad to see them slandered after the fact, when they were right to fear, and fight against communism.

Relevant Books

The Eastern Front: Memoirs of a Waffen-SS Volunteer

Für Volk and Führer: The Memoir of a Veteran of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler One of my favorites and actually has a really good audiobook on Audible, which as you can imagine is hit or miss on these memoirs.

The Forgotten Soldier This one is unique as the author was a young poor french kid who joined the army under Vichy France because of little opportunity when he came of age, then found himself a part of the Großdeutschland division. Also had a real good audiobook on audible.

Take them all with a dump truck of salt given the incentives. "I wasn't a real fascist, I was just an over eager patriot who donned the swastika to fight muh godless commie bolshevik asiatic hordes" is on the bingo card next to -

  • "I was just following orders"

  • "actually I never hated Jews"

  • "we lost because of numbers alone, not superior enemy tactics and strategy"

  • "those war crimes were carried out by this other officer who is now conveniently dead"

-and so on for conveniently self-serving narratives commonly encountered among accounts by nazis and quislings living in NATO countries seeking to ward off prison, hanging, repatriation or pariah status by whitewashing their past and selling themselves as useful assets for NATO. Historians are lately more critically approaching such works rather than taking them mostly at face value as before, which is really improving military history around the eastern front.

Interesting how all those brave heroes went to fight against "communism" and "bolshevik hordes", yet ended up mostly fighting Soviet people.

You could turn this same argument around on every western ally justifying their fight against Nazi's. Don't forget the soviet forces had political commissars in their units.

"Justifying" their fight against Nazis? The nazis attacked the allies and countless neutral countries first, that's all the justification needed to fight.

I'm not going to get dragged into a justification debate on WW2. You will clearly stick to the usual normie narrative so it's not worth the reddit style back and forth.

Retreating because you can't back it up. The "normies" are far more correct than the neo-nazis on this topic. The Gleiwitz incident was a false flag attack ordered by Hitler; the nazis attacked first and did so after years of other powers making nonaggression pacts, trade deals, territorial concessions, lifting Versailles treaty enforcement, and other negotiations in an attempt to avert another war. All of that amounted to a big waste of time, because the nazis were just acting in bad faith stalling to arm up and backstab everybody.

A bunch of my family died fighting in the Wehrmacht, then even more when Hitler in his incredible arrogance and egomania refused to allow civilians to evacuate as the front lines crept closer and closer. The region they were from doesn't even exist any more. Know who the survivors blame? Not the Allies, not even the Red Army, they place it squarely on Hitler and Nazism for starting the war then refusing to surrender when it was clearly lost.

I don't really understand why you feel the need to argue something I didn't even bring up. I'm not a "neo-nazi", merely trying to understand the time and motivations of the men that fought there, especially the eastern front.

My point, which I should have spent more time on, was that communists committed atrocities in these areas before the nazi's showed up. So it stands to reason that some men in the Waffen-SS, volunteered for retribution or to fight against a fear of spread throughout Europe. Which IMO is a valid reason.

To answer:

"Justifying" their fight against Nazis? The nazis attacked the allies and countless neutral countries first, that's all the justification needed to fight.

Yes justifying, as in the common narrative of the western soldier going off to fight the Nazi's but ended up just fighting normal German people. This was in response to sun's comment.

I don't appreciate your emotional appeal in your argument, and nowhere did I defend Hitler, his strategies, or motivations. I'm not a Nazi, however I also don't think the narrative that is so common in regards to WW2 is 100% correct. In order to find out the truth I read first hand accounts and other history in order to form my own opinion. I'm also not an expert on the subject and freely admit that. Sorry to trigger you I guess.

> be born in 1920s Polish Galicia

> be Ukrainian-speaking peasant

> be oppressed by ethnic-majority poles

> West side of country gets invaded by Germany

> your side of country gets invaded by Soviet Russia

> have to deal with literal fucking Stalin for two years

> get invaded by Germany

> liberation.jpg

> ”Hey kid, wanna fight the Russians and Poles that have been oppressing you your whole life?”

> 80 years later

> “fuck you. You picked the wrong side”

How were they oppressed by Poles? Not disagreeing, I'm just not very familiar with this area of history.

I only heard of the Polish-Ukrainian War two weeks ago, from this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DVZARacjKGI

The axe being ground in that video is a little complicated. Poland has a law making it a criminal offense to talk about "Polish concentration camps". I thought that I understood where the Poles were coming from. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact kicked off WWII with the Germans and the USSR dividing Poland between them. The Germans set up some concentration camps in the part of Poland that they occupied. Calling these "Polish concentration camps" blames the Poles for what the Germans got up to.

But the Polish law also bans talking about the Polish concentration camps that the Poles set up in the aftermath of the Polish-Ukrainian war. The law against blaming the Poles for what the Germans got up to, turns out to be a sneaky law against blaming the Poles for what the Poles got up to.

That leaves me rather against any law limiting freedom of speech; you never know what kind of sneaky cover up is being attempted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Ukrainians_in_Eastern_Galicia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereza_Kartuska_Prison

Thanks!

Many such cases

Yeah, people are acting like he drove a truck to Toronto, or something.

My hot take is that he deserves a standing ovation for fighting for his nation.

It’s denialism about the role of nazism in Ukrainian nationalism. Like it or not Ukrainian nationalism involves lionizing figures who supported the nazis and often as not lionizing actual neo nazis themselves, and I mean actually literally nazis not just politically incorrect. A general policy of denial had the side effect of bringing in an actual literal SS trooper. This man is viewed as a hero by lots of Ukrainians for the same reason lots of southerners view Lee and stonewall Jackson as heros. But pro-Ukraine western posturing denies that and then gets caught with its pants down. Simple as.

This seems to be fair to me for the people between Russia and Germany. They didn’t have a choice to pick the good side. I would have chosen Franco or Pinochet when those countries had their communists moment. Eastern front you had no good choice. And Russia isn’t just communists - they have a military based authoritarian form that did brutal oppress their neighbors for centuries. It’s not Cuban Marxism which is poverty but hasn’t been very deadly (they’ve allowed mass emigration any time it gets hot which was an immigrant group the US was fine with).

A lot of wars don’t have the obviously good side to be on. And that applies to modern wars.

I think at least we can say, Nazism doesn't mean what it means to us to people who lived in Eastern Europe.

One of the more surreal things I've experienced lately was when I asked on the Motte Telegram back around the start of the war (which has a couple of actual Ukranian residents), basically, so what's the deal with Jewish Zelensky having an apparently-actual-Nazi unit (Azov battalion) serving in his army? Taking Western views at least sort of seriously, surely an actual Nazi unit would refuse to take orders from a Jewish President, and a Jewish President would surely boot an actual Nazi unit out of the army he was Commander-In-Chief of. But all the Ukrainian residents were like, yeah, so what, why do you think this is weird? Even for English-speakers who presumably have at least some exposure to the Anglosphere, the idea that Nazis and Jews might not like each other much just seemed incomprehensible to them.

The way I understand it, the Azov aren't that Nazi and Zelensky is really not that Jewish. And even Hitler had a Jew or two he liked.

They are about as Nazi as the IRA were terrorists.

In the abstract there's room for nuance in this discussion, but in the context of the year of our lord 2023, it will never not be funny that an actual member of the Waffen-SS got a standing ovation from the very people who claim "honk honk" is code for "heil Hitler".

So what actually happened? They just didn't do a background check? Historical illiteracy? Aide who hates his job let him through for a giggle?

For added hilarity, it was on Yom Kippur.

Isn’t this basically “Ukraine good, Russia bad.” No need to think through the details.

The memory of the Commonwealth, the Soviets and Americans fighting on the same side has long faded. Plus the Cold War happened. It's no longer part of the public consciousness.

Let’s not forget when then-Congressman Adam Kinzinger praised the totally 100% real heroism of the fighter ace the “Ghost of Kiev”. Or when NATO shrugged its collective shoulders when Ukraine fired a missile at Poland, blamed it on Russia and then lied about it even after contradicting evidence came to light.

Nobody in the West is acting seriously about this war anymore. The battle lines are frozen. Russia isn’t giving up territory it has annexed. Ukraine will be just another failed state, just another sacrifice made on the altar of neoliberal democracy.

Or when NATO shrugged its collective shoulders when Ukraine fired a missile at Poland, blamed it on Russia and then lied about it even after contradicting evidence came to light.

Well, the important part is that if it was Ukrainian missile, then it was a collateral damage of anti-air missile.

The battle lines are frozen. Russia isn’t giving up territory it has annexed.

That does not appear to match reality, as far as I know.

I’m not sure they were ever taking Ukraine seriously. The minute the Russians crossed the border, it was treated like a kids’ story. Ukraine good, NATO good. Russia bad. Ukraine will win, Russia is pathetic and weak. Made up stories of heroism. And of course boycotting and deplatforming and renaming anything Russian. Cancel the Russian opera singer, if you can’t ban Russian athletes, make them compete under a different flag, and of course shame anyone who doesn’t use the proper names (Kyiv, Ukraine (no the), Chicken Kyiv, The Russian Invasion of Ukraine) or companies that don’t leave Russia within the first ten minutes. Anyone who questions the narrative is either a Russian Troll or fooled by one.

Now a lot of the above, worryingly, sounds a lot like what was going on in WW1. We at least in America, saw the war as a chance for glory, we cheerfully shit on the Germans and renamed Sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage. And eventually we found out just how bad war can be.

Have you read this article? https://www.ecosophia.net/notes-on-stormtrooper-syndrome/

I think you'd find it interesting given some of the points you've made above.

I would like to chalk this up to the foolish youth of American nations who haven't yet tired of the millennias of ruin warfare can bring.

But the truth is probably more grim. I recently watched They shall not grow old which is ostensibly about the British youths in WW1, and they too had a cheerful glee about them to start with, despite being part of a culture that has seen its fair share of horror at that point (if not of the industrial kind).

Maybe people are just eternally naïve about such things. There are seemingly endless examples of bloody conflicts that everyone was strongly convinced would be over by Christmas. The power of delusion is strong, and maybe it has to be to muster the will to defend oneself in the first place.

It's about exposure to reality and control of narrative. These proxy wars will continue to happen, even "real" "wars" will continue to happen. New soldiers are born every day, and they will be continuously fed into the meat grinder, until the mass of the populace gets exposed to the harsh reality of war, it will never end. This war needs to happen on US ground, everyone must feel the pain viscerally, personally for it to be real. When people die somewhere else, it's an abstract thing. It doesn't really register to the common person. If it does it will be swept away by some other personal problem or the news cycle will shift and some other bullshit will fill their attention.

Trudeau has said that Canada has committed genocide. Perhaps they're just owning it.

Imagine all the staff people who didn't realize "fought against Stalin in WW II" probably meant was a Nazi (Finns excluded, of course).

(Finns excluded, of course).

You appear to be forgetting at least Poland, probably also other.

But wasn't the fight between Poland and the Soviet Union over within about 2 weeks?

"fought against Stalin in WW II" probably meant was a Nazi (Finns excluded, of course).

was still wrong

also, there was further partisan activity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursed_soldiers

Interesting. I had never heard of them.

Two weeks' time, but there were nearly half a million Poles fighting, and since the German invasion of Poland was a couple weeks earlier I'd bet approximately 0% of the anti-Soviet fighters were Nazis or Nazi-sympathetic.

I’d bet 95% of them don’t even pay attention during every session. And they just follow along with the clapping figuring the people in charge are NOT getting them to clap for a Nazi soldier.

More surprising that Zelensky didn’t stop it since the Ukranians most of the time have decent meme game.

He looks positively gleeful during the ovation -- probably didn't occur to him that it could be a problem.

I realized a bit into this war that Russian Nationalist and Putin himself use the word Nazi in ways that we do not in the west. Often it seems like they used it to just refer to the west - the people who call themselves Neoliberal today are Nazis to the Russian Nationalists. Perhaps more simply western society itself gaining influence in the area Russia views as there backyard.

Well, for a time ‘fought with Stalin’ also meant you were probably a Nazi.

I just love it. It's such a funny thing, especially the part where the speaker said the "thank you for your service" incantation. I didn't think we would surpass (multiple, separate occasions) photos of our "woke dream" PM doing blackface in terms of pure lol factor, but this has to be close. The politician who got caught on a home camera peeing in a coffee mug is maybe a close 3rd. Canada politics man.

I was crying laughing. It had to be Trudeau.

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