Useful idiots and useful scoundrels

In popular perception, Canada is even more liberal than the USA. When Trump was elected president, advocates of unrestricted rights and freedoms, concerned about the threat of authoritarianism, even threatened to move to Canada.

The Speaker of the Parliament announced: “Today in our hall, we have a Ukrainian-Canadian, a World War II veteran who fought for Ukraine’s independence from Russia. Now, at 98, he continues to stand up for the truth. A hero of Ukraine, a hero of Canada, and we thank him for his service.”

The person referred to was a volunteer of the SS division. Besides their primary mission – the extermination of Jews and Polish anti-fascists – they fought against the anti-Hitler coalition, of which Canada was also a member. The Speaker, his staff, 405 members of parliament, and the country’s Prime Minister were unaware of the fascist collaborators whom Canada had accepted after the war?!!! These criminals lived here without hiding, actively participating in public life. Leaders of the country had decades to figure it out!

In Canada, laws punish Nazi crimes, and ignorance of the law does not absolve one of responsibility, especially politicians. They should have known. But not a word was said until an international scandal erupted. Even the Canadian press called the honoring of the Nazi a “complete disgrace.” Poland, which unconditionally supported Ukraine until recently, played a crucial role. Nowadays, very few pay attention to the protests from Israel.

Regardless of one’s attitude towards present-day Russia, the sharp reaction in this country to the honoring of a Nazi cannot be deemed unjustified. The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War II, and after the war, not a single fascist collaborator escaped responsibility. Germany and France made significant efforts to eradicate Nazism. Before entering the war, there was a powerful pro-Nazi movement in America, but not all its participants were punished.

Today, Nazism and aggressive nationalism are on the rise globally. It would be apt not to ignore, reassure, or declare the incident an innocent mistake but to give it a severe and principled assessment and take the necessary measures.

The American Center for Civic Initiatives has published a statement asking, “What did we know, and when did we know about it? And how does it concern us?” The Center describes the incident as surreal and notes that “many of us were left speechless. How could this happen in a country that fought against Germany alongside Russia, the USA, and England?” The Center called for people to “take the event seriously, very seriously.” But there’s little hope for real consequences rather than just lip service. Apart from the useful idiots, there are useful villains. The prevailing attitude seems to be: “Apologies have been made; the incident is over.”

The reasons for such a stance lie not only in oversight and malicious intent. Liberal democracy is increasingly sliding into uncontrollable chaos. The New York Times, seemingly finally realizing that remaining as a propaganda hub for the Democratic Party is detrimental, recently published an article titled “American Political Turmoil”: “Imagine being a foreign leader, surveying the political chaos in America,” followed by a long list of evidence of degradation and absurdity. “For many observers, domestically and abroad, the American way no longer appears as a model of effective democracy. Instead, it has become an example of disorder and discord, encouraging extremism, eroding norms, and threatening further polarization of the country.”

Another recent article in The New York Times titled “The US has new means of pressuring the world” shows that dominant American policies have severe consequences for allies worldwide.

One can only add that America is not alone on this path; European democracies and Canada are moving in the same direction. It’s not a local issue but a general crisis of liberal democracy, which has lost the will and energy for self-preservation and development, subject to an ideology of delusions and illusions. The Canadian scandal is just another illustration of this.

In the not-so-distant past, the main advantages of liberal democracy were the rule of law, humanistic values, and moral dignity. Today, the primary defense argument is that authoritarianism is even worse, and we oppose tyranny.

The Canadian Prime Minister said Russia would use this scandal for propaganda. Of course, they will – why wouldn’t they use the weapon of information warfare that you provided? This scandal has caused a lot of discomfort for the Russian opposition. One of the most famous Russian opposition human rights defenders, Vladimir Pastukhov, said that “the story is worthless”. His interlocutor and ally, Alexey Venediktov, exploded with anger. It’s strange to hear such a thing from a thoughtful, measured lawyer, but unfortunately, from the point of view of consequences, it’s accurate – nothing will change. I never thought I would quote Ksenia Sobchak, but in this case, her assessment seems the most adequate to me: “What a f***ed up picture.”

Naturally, the Jews took the honoring of the Nazis most painfully. During the war in Ukraine, one and a half million Jews became victims of the Holocaust. This disgusting episode became another reminder of the great tragedy, its lingering consequences, and the threat of recurrence.

During the war, most Ukrainians together with other peoples of the USSR, fought against fascism. Ukraine had a strong partisan movement; remember the names of Kovpak, Rudnev, Vershigora, and Fyodorov. The primary efforts of the partisans were to eliminate fascist collaborators.

But many Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis, participating in mass shootings, serving in the police, and as guards in concentration camps. Ukraine’s history includes the genocide of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s army, mass pogroms, bloody accusations against Judaism, and figures like Bandera, Shukhevych, Stechko, Shanruk, Voynovskiy, and “Galicia” and the like. As early as the 1920s, German revanchists collaborated with Ukrainian nationalists and conducted their military training.

During the Soviet years, Nazis and radical nationalists couldn’t raise their heads, but in the chaos of perestroika, with an unstable corrupt government and slogans of national revival, Nazi propaganda and activity were renewed.

At the same time, after the end of the Cold War, Nazi forces strengthened in developed democracies. Parties and groups with extremist programs appeared; nationalists found a place in public politics and state structures.

The intensification of nationalist sentiments, driven by the deterioration of the economic situation and the increase in social tensions, mass immigration, and the weakness of populist leaders and institutions, was inevitably accompanied by a rise in anti-Semitism, which never disappeared anywhere but weakened after the Holocaust.

Throughout history, Jews have hoped that improving living conditions, education, rights, freedoms, and loyalty to diaspora countries would help overcome centuries-old evil. Jewish organizations have been at the forefront of charity, offering comprehensive assistance to the discriminated, hoping that good deeds would be appreciated on their merits. They cared about their problems last. This was most evident in America. Here, Jewish politicians, professors, and journalists, as well as Jewish organizations and reformist synagogues, comprehensively supported “progressives” demanding social restructuring, privileges for ethnic and sexual minorities, open borders for illegal immigrants, and subjecting education and culture to the aggressive ideology of “awakening.”

Today, anti-Semitism is growing both from the left and the right, with the number of anti-Semitic incidents and crimes at a record high. In universities and the media – bastions of civilization where Jews recently held strong positions – anti-Semitism has solidified in the form of criticism of Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish lobby.

Whenever another anti-Semitic episode occurs, those who judge Jewish life from the outside, according to customary stereotypes, ask: where is Jewish unity? Where are the Jewish organizations? On the surface, there’s active action: loud statements, declarations, and sometimes protests are organized, with fewer participants than in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Recently, outside a hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stayed during a UN session, there were more of his opponents than supporters. Reformist synagogues, having become a platform for the Democratic Party, criticize Israel and its government, the Orthodox; their primary sorrow is gay rights, immigrants, and support for other ethnic minorities, where strong anti-Semitic sentiments persist.

Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the country’s most active and conscientious Jewish organization, in the new book “Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership,” together with coauthors, paints a picture of the long-term political and moral degradation of organizations that have forgotten their role and responsibility, serving the politics and ideology of the Democratic Party. He pays special attention to the Anti-Defamation League, which, having abandoned its sound traditions, is now concerned with the problems of everyone in the world, least of all Jews. For 80 years, Jewish leaders have been repeating “Never Again,” but the situation only worsens.

The ZOA is fighting a losing battle with the Biden administration, advocating for maintaining close ties with Israel, supporting its rights to Judea and Samaria, against dangerous concessions, treaties, and payments to Palestinian terrorists at the expense of American taxpayers. There are anti-Semitic appointees in senior positions in the Biden administration, and the president often sympathizes with the brazen team of “progressive” anti-Semites in Congress.

The ZOA stands almost alone, with the majority of Jewish organizations, as well as American Jews, supporting the Democrats, and they won’t deviate from this path. Among the Democrats, with the active support of leading Jewish politicians, “progressives” from minorities see Jews as a privileged race. New demographics objectively weaken the positions of Jews, but Jewish liberals actively support massive, uncontrolled immigration.

Like most European allies, the US provides extensive support to Ukraine and its president. There are countries besides Israel where Jews were in senior leadership, but nowhere has been focused on it as on Zelensky and the Jews in his government. It’s hard to say how this will turn out for Jews in the near future. Even inside the country and abroad, there’s a lot of sharp criticism of Ukraine’s leadership.

In one of the latest programs, Alexey Arestovich, perhaps the most prominent and influential figure in the Ukrainian media space, who’s aiming for a leading role, talks in a conversation with Dmitry Gordon about the wrong strategy of military actions, excessive casualties of the Ukrainian army, the disenfranchised  Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny, improper relations with the West, and, to put it bluntly, the unprecedented daily corruption at the expense of foreign aid. Such a broadcast does not add confidence to the president. Election time is soon, the struggle and criticism will intensify, and the enthusiasm of the West is waning. Apart from Hungary and Slovakia, Poland has changed its tone of unconditional support. The war is dragging on, and forecasts for a quick conflict resolution are bleak. How long before we hear the familiar “Jews are to blame for everything”?

Irrespective of who’s to blame, seeing Zelensky and his wife applauding a Nazi is a mind-boggling picture, a terrible dream that could not have been imagined by his grandparents, who survived the war. It’s a mockery of the memory of millions who died in the fight against fascism.