Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Canada almost never makes global headlines, but when it does, it鈥檚 usually for nonsense such as our prime minster wearing blackface or truckers laying siege to Ottawa.
This time, our country made headlines when Parliament unintentionally gave not one but two standing ovations to a literal Nazi who fought during World War II.
Specifically, the 98-year-old Ukrainian man had served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command.
Parliamentarians were hoping to praise someone who had fought against Russian imperialism but ended up praising someone who fought for evil instead.
Although the full truth came out after the fact, our elected officials should have remembered their Grade 10 history.
The Russians were on our side during WWII, and if the man they were praising had fought the Russians back then, that begs the obvious question of which side he was fighting for.
The incident has resulted in condemnation from Jewish groups and others, the resignation of House Speaker Anthony Rota and yet another grovelling apology from our dear leader.
One lesson from all this is that we shouldn鈥檛 elect people solely because of their nice hair, famous last name or ability to spout progressive talking points.
The finger should also be pointed at the government staff responsible for vetting this individual.
However, ignorance and incompetence weren鈥檛 the only factors here.
We are living in an era where social movements are prone to becoming moral panics, where all nuance is crushed in the wake of a cause.
Those questioning the flirtation with nuclear war, the intentions of U.S. neocons and all the blank cheques going to Ukraine are automatically considered Putin apologists.
The support for Ukraine has become so single-minded and absolute that many in the West are willing to whitewash this country鈥檚 checkered history.
Many Ukrainians fought alongside the Nazis during World War II, ostensibly in hopes of breaking free from the cruel grip of the Soviet Union.
Clearly, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
These men have since become nationalist heroes in the eyes of many Ukrainians, one infamous example being far-right militant Stepan Bandera.
The ugly past continues to haunt Ukraine, as the ultra-nationalist Azov Brigade currently fighting the Russians has been accused of harbouring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
With many Ukrainians immigrating to Canada, this veneration of far-right militants can be found on our side of the Atlantic.
In Edmonton, a journalist was charged last year for defacing a statue of Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian military leader during WWII and a Nazi collaborator.
Ukraine is not a perfect country, for no such country exists.
All this doesn鈥檛 change the fact that the ongoing war is horrific, and Russia is acting aggressively and imperialistically.
The idea that Russia is attempting to 鈥渄e-Nazify鈥� Ukraine should be viewed as absurd, since the vast majority of Ukrainians are normal people trying to live normal lives, and especially considering that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish himself.
It should also be noted that there is plenty of antisemitism in Russia, and many far-right groups view Vladimir Putin as some sort of saviour of Christian civilization.
As well, Ukraine isn鈥檛 the only county to glorify an ugly past.
Many Russians still hold mass-murderer Joseph Stalin in high esteem, and you can still find Confederate flags throughout the United States and even in Canada.
To this day, we still have debates on who to revere and who to condemn. Should we have statues of Sir John A. Macdonald? How about Woodrow Wilson? Maybe we can give Christopher Columbus another shot?
However, we should all draw the line at Nazis.
