For immediate release
November 24, 2014

Canada, Ukraine and the U.S. vote against combating the glorification of Nazism

On November 21, the Harper government displayed undying love for Hitler fascism in the United Nations, in full collaboration with Ukraine and international imperialism’s bulwark of reaction, the United States.

According to a UN news release (Nov. 21/ 14), “A draft text on combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices was… approved by a record vote of 115 in favour, 3 against (Canada, Ukraine, United States), with 55 abstentions.” (1)

The vote continues international imperialism’s policy of appeasing fascism in Ukraine, which bans holidays celebrating the defeat of fascism, allows the lawless destruction of memorials to Soviet soldiers who died fighting the Nazis, and celebrates the founding of Ukrainian fascist groups who murdered Jews, communists and anti-fascists.

European countries comprised 41 of the 55 abstaining countries. (2) Lithuania explained the EU’s decision to abstain, saying fascism has nothing to do with racism, an outright deception. (3) In fact, Lithuania has an active neo-Nazi movement, much like Ukraine. Too afraid of pubic opinion to show their fascist stripes, these countries are allied with the U.S. and Canada in their ideological support for fascism.

The vote is a major step of North American imperialism publicly to embrace fascism as an acceptable ideology in its foreign policy ambitions. The vote tramples on the very reason for drafting the UN Charter itself, the defeat of fascism.

It continues the policy of propping-up of Ukraine as an Eastern outpost of NATO imperialism, for use as a springboard of aggression against Russia and China. War would be the natural continuation of this policy by violent means.

Russia is imperialism’s new target and perhaps the most dangerous front of aggression, motivated by rivalries among capitalist countries. Imperialism’s most reactionary circles also view war as tool of class struggle against resistance to global capitalism.

Such a war against Russia would be the final argument of a capitalist system lurching into deeper crisis. Fascism and imperialism’s policy of appeasement, which caused the last world war, must not be allowed to take root again.

Such a war today would have a profoundly harmful impact on democratic rights and the conditions of the class struggle in Canada, similar to the other inter-imperialist wars of the last century. For example, the First World War ended in the banning of democratic, progressive and socialist groups and parties, all of whom were opposed to Canada’s participation.

Democratic and progressive groups in Manitoba who oppose a new war against Russia need to raise the demand for the return of Canada’s warplanes, soldiers and ships from Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, and for Canada’s departure from the NATO military alliance.

– Darrell Rankin, Leader, Communist Party of Canada – Manitoba
Information: (204) 792-3371

1. http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/gashc4124.doc.htm . The full text is at: http://www.mediafire.com/view/94n40m3x00dr355/N1460426.pdf
2. http://www.un.org/en/ga/third/69/docs/voting_sheets/L56.Rev1.pdf
3. http://en.delfi.lt/central-eastern-europe/lithuania-and-all-other-eu-member-states-did-not-support-russias-resolution-at-un-which-attempts-to-manipulate-history.d?id=66470908

http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-crisis-of-capitalism

Rep. John Conyers wanted to block U.S. funding to neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help.

by Max Blumnthal

Alternet, November 19, 2014

http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-lobby-protected-ukrainian-neo-nazis?akid=12483.52132.WojW4O&rd=1&src=newsletter1027326&t=3&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

AlterNet has learned that an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have forbidden US assistance, training and weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was kept out of the final bill by the Republican-led House Rules Committee. Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment was intended to help tamp down on violent confrontations between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists.
A USA Today/Pew poll conducted in April while the NDAA was being debated found that Americans opposed by more than 2 to 1 providing the Ukrainian government with arms or other forms of military assistance.
If passed, Conyers’ amendment would have explicitly barred those found to have offered “praise or glorification of Nazism or its collaborators, including through the use of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or other similar symbols” from receiving any form of support from the US Department of Defense.
The amendment was presented by congressional staffers to lobbyists from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, two of the country’s largest established Jewish pressure groups. Despite their stated mission to combat anti-Semitism and violent extremism, the ADL and Wiesenthal Center refused to support Jeffries and Conyers’ proposal.
According to Democratic sources in Congress, staffers from the ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center rejected the amendment on the grounds that right-wing Ukrainian parties like Svoboda with documented records of racist extremism had “moderated their rhetoric.” An ADL lobbyist insisted that “the focus should be on Russia,” while the Wiesenthal Center pointed to meetings between far-right political leaders in Ukraine and the Israeli embassy as evidence that groups like Svoboda and Right Sector had shed their extremism. The ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center did not respond to numerous requests by email and telephone for comment.

Earlier this year, the ADL’s outgoing National Director Abraham Foxman noted Svoboda’s “history of anti-Semitism and platform of ethnic nationalism” in a press release demanding the party renounce its past glorification of Stepan Bandera, a World War Two-era Nazi collaborator who has become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism.
When the Ukrainian parliament failed to pass a bill this October honoring Bandera’s Ukrainian Rebel Army, about 8000 supporters of Svoboda and the extremist Right Sector marched on the building, attacking riot police with homemade weapons while waving Banderist flags and Svoboda banners. The violent backlash was a reminder that the legend of Bandera would not die any time soon, and that Foxman’s admonitions had fallen on deaf ears.
Svobodoa’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, once called for the liberation of his country from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” In 2010, following the conviction of the Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for his supporting role in the death of nearly 30,000 people at the Sobibor camp, Tyahnybok flew to Germany to praise him as a hero who was “fighting for truth.”
Since the Euromaidan revolution, however, Svoboda has fought to rehabilitate its image. This has meant meeting with Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Reuven Din El and appealing to shared national values. “I would like to ask Israelis to also respect our patriotic feelings,” Tyahnybok has remarked. “Probably each party in the [Israeli] Knesset is nationalist. With God’s help, let it be this way for us too.”
Right Sector, the radical right-wing movement that battled riot police during the latter stages of the Euromaidan uprising, earned plaudits from the ADL’s Foxman when its leader arranged his own meeting with Din El. “[Right Sector leader] Dmitry Yarosh stressed that Right Sector will oppose all [racist] phenomena, especially anti-Semitism, with all legitimate means,” the Israeli embassy declared.
The results of this month’s Ukrainian parliamentary elections were widely portrayed as a setback for the ultra-nationalist right-wing, with Svoboda taking around 6 percent of the vote while Yarosh’s Right Sector failed to qualify for seats. The outcome cheered the American Jewish Committee, which declared that “Jews in most of Ukraine are heartened by the election results and even optimistic about the country’s future.”
But the dismal showing by the traditional ultra-nationalist parties was hardly evidence of a diminished right-wing. With President Petro Poroshenko leading the nationalists’ dream war in the East, Svoboda and Right Sector lost the protest vote they had commanded during the heady years of insurrection. As Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on Europe’s radical right, explained, “in 2012, Svoboda was also considered almost the only ‘patriotic’ party, but now all democratic parties are patriotic, so Svoboda has lost its ‘monopoly’ on patriotism.”
During the national election campaign, Ukraine’s leading party, the People’s Front of neoliberal Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was honeycombed with far-right militants. Andrei Parubiy, the co-founder of the neo-Nazi-inspired Social National Party and former chief of the Maidan defense committees, was among the extremists who won seats on the People’s Front ticket.
Besides Parubiy, the People’s Front included Andriy Biletsky, leader of the Azov militia, an overtly neo-Nazi fighting force that has been on the front lines of the battle against Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Azov deputy commander Vadym Troyan joined him on the party’s electoral list, rounding out a peculiar mix of khaki shirt clad fascists and buttoned-down neo-liberals.
Unlike Svoboda, these figures do not even feign moderation. “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival,” Biletsky recently wrote. “A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
Azov fighters are united by their nostalgia for Nazi Germany and embrace of open fascism. Sporting swastika tattoos, the battalion “flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag,” the New York Times’ Andrew Kramer recently reported.
With the government in a state of flux, Azov is filling the void in the East. As Ukrainian parliamentarian Gregory Nemira complained to reporter Anna Nemtsova in September, “The president still has not appointed a chief of staff for the armed forces. He has not admitted we are in a state of war, preferring to throw the battalions like Azov into the most dangerous combat zones, where authorities would not have the courage to send regular troops.”
Azov is precisely the sort of neo-Nazi organization that Conyers’ NDAA amendment would have deprived of US assistance. But when the congressman sought help from the ADL and the Wiesenthal Center in moving the proposal forward, he was rebuked. The amendment died a quiet death and Azov’s American supply line remains intact.

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Published 19 November 2014