Sep 26, 2023·edited Sep 26, 2023Liked by Helen Dale
All parts of the Anglophone West are steadily becoming more and more of an embarrassment to themselves. Continental Europe - whilst being properly critical of Russia's behaviour in Ukraine - at least manage to grasp some of the complexities and nuances. The awful truth is that, for the Anglosphere MSM (and much of the political establishment), almost everything - including wars that their populations don't have to experience other than on tv - has become a ghoulish form of mass media entertainment. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Canada's accidental honoring of a former Nazi reminds me of my local school district finding out that Muslim parents don't like LGBTQ instruction in schools. In the world of social justice, the enemy of my enemy is another enemy.
Awareness of Ukrainian history in the twentieth century (or in any other period) is not widespread in Canada; at least, not in Ontario or Quebec. For example, I'd never heard of the Holodomor until I was in my late 20s. It's simply not talked about. The average Canadian's perspective on WWII is limited to Canada's role on the Western front, and doesn't extend far beyond the moralized "Hitler was evil" comic book caricature of the conflict. There's barely any awareness of the Pacific theatre (aside from vague guilt about the Japanese internment camps ... somehow never called concentration camps), and the Eastern front is a giant blank space.
I suspect part of this may be that the Ukrainian population is heavily concentrated in the prairies, and therefore on the irrelevant periphery of Canadian culture, which tends to navel-gaze around the Toronto-Montreal corridor. Then, too, there's a certain reluctance amongst the great and the good to discuss the Holodomor, since that a) indicts communism, while b) taking the spotlight from the Holocaust, which is the only atrocity that is allowed to matter.
I suspect most people had no clue who this man was or what Ukraines role in WWII is.
I don't think it really matters either, the side that putatively promised to not starve these Ukrainians like Stalin did happened to lose and become the embodiment of complete evil.
However, this is indicative of their having no clue who the Ukrainians are or what is going on in the current war. Ditto their knowledge of Russia. It doesn't provide much confidence that they are making rational policy with reasonable goals.
What is your current perspective on what the USA/West should be doing vis a vis the war? Should we be supplying Ukraine with weapons/money? What, if any, changes to policy should the west make? Have any of your views changed since March 2022?
Was the invasion of Ukraine inevitable? Did the US play any role it in? Is Putin a modern Hitler and will he just invade Poland next? Is Donbas the Sudetenland of 2023?
Good post. However, I would say that associating Galicia with Ukrainian nationalism is a bit simplistic (although completely understandable in the context of the post). Still, I would point out that there used to be a rather influential 19th-century group movement in Galicia known as the Moscophiles (the name is self-explanatory) who have been pretty much memory-holed both in both Ukraine and Russia. There are also accounts of pro-Russian sentiment in Galicia, for example, the diary of Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin who visited the region as a military correspondent in 1914.
Just in case: I am not trying to peddle the whole “brotherly people” narrative or say that there was no strong Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia. I am just pointing out how things sometimes get airbrushed out of history, not necessarily on purpose but because one side prevailed over the years and it became hard to view things outside of certain frameworks. Now Galicia will forever be remembered solely as a bastion of anti-Russian sentiment, Vladimir Putin saw to it.
Of course Ukraine wasn't the only country caught between a rock and a hard place WRT Hitler and Stalin. Finland made much the same choice in accepting Nazi aid and generally regretting it (particularly when the Nazis retreated and burned chunks of Lapland during their retreat).
"Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Laine) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II;[3] and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.
Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously. His remains were located three decades later and then buried in Arlington National Cemetery; he is the only former member of the Waffen-SS known to be interred there. ..."
Trudeau's lot are far closer to Nazi's than anything I'd recognise as the parliamentary government of a royal republic. What is Canada anyway but Little America long leched after by Washington? Who could never understand it as an independent nation instead of 10 States and 3 Territories of the Union.
UPDATE Wed 27th Sept 10 am BST: Anthony Rota has stayed under the bus long enough for it to kill him off. He’s resigned: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66930482
All I can say is that Justin Trudeau must know where all the bodies are buried.
UPDATE Fri 29 Sept 9 am BST: Jewish-Ukrainian shitfight continues in Canada, this time over the literal plot to The Hand that Signed the Paper. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66914756
All parts of the Anglophone West are steadily becoming more and more of an embarrassment to themselves. Continental Europe - whilst being properly critical of Russia's behaviour in Ukraine - at least manage to grasp some of the complexities and nuances. The awful truth is that, for the Anglosphere MSM (and much of the political establishment), almost everything - including wars that their populations don't have to experience other than on tv - has become a ghoulish form of mass media entertainment. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
Canada's accidental honoring of a former Nazi reminds me of my local school district finding out that Muslim parents don't like LGBTQ instruction in schools. In the world of social justice, the enemy of my enemy is another enemy.
Awareness of Ukrainian history in the twentieth century (or in any other period) is not widespread in Canada; at least, not in Ontario or Quebec. For example, I'd never heard of the Holodomor until I was in my late 20s. It's simply not talked about. The average Canadian's perspective on WWII is limited to Canada's role on the Western front, and doesn't extend far beyond the moralized "Hitler was evil" comic book caricature of the conflict. There's barely any awareness of the Pacific theatre (aside from vague guilt about the Japanese internment camps ... somehow never called concentration camps), and the Eastern front is a giant blank space.
I suspect part of this may be that the Ukrainian population is heavily concentrated in the prairies, and therefore on the irrelevant periphery of Canadian culture, which tends to navel-gaze around the Toronto-Montreal corridor. Then, too, there's a certain reluctance amongst the great and the good to discuss the Holodomor, since that a) indicts communism, while b) taking the spotlight from the Holocaust, which is the only atrocity that is allowed to matter.
I suspect most people had no clue who this man was or what Ukraines role in WWII is.
I don't think it really matters either, the side that putatively promised to not starve these Ukrainians like Stalin did happened to lose and become the embodiment of complete evil.
However, this is indicative of their having no clue who the Ukrainians are or what is going on in the current war. Ditto their knowledge of Russia. It doesn't provide much confidence that they are making rational policy with reasonable goals.
What is your current perspective on what the USA/West should be doing vis a vis the war? Should we be supplying Ukraine with weapons/money? What, if any, changes to policy should the west make? Have any of your views changed since March 2022?
Was the invasion of Ukraine inevitable? Did the US play any role it in? Is Putin a modern Hitler and will he just invade Poland next? Is Donbas the Sudetenland of 2023?
Good post. However, I would say that associating Galicia with Ukrainian nationalism is a bit simplistic (although completely understandable in the context of the post). Still, I would point out that there used to be a rather influential 19th-century group movement in Galicia known as the Moscophiles (the name is self-explanatory) who have been pretty much memory-holed both in both Ukraine and Russia. There are also accounts of pro-Russian sentiment in Galicia, for example, the diary of Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin who visited the region as a military correspondent in 1914.
Just in case: I am not trying to peddle the whole “brotherly people” narrative or say that there was no strong Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia. I am just pointing out how things sometimes get airbrushed out of history, not necessarily on purpose but because one side prevailed over the years and it became hard to view things outside of certain frameworks. Now Galicia will forever be remembered solely as a bastion of anti-Russian sentiment, Vladimir Putin saw to it.
1. No Good War: Correct.
I recommend discarding moral judgments in war along with any further legal farces all the way back to Nuremberg. Yes.
That was a dreadful mistake.
Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter refused to sit on the Nuremberg Tribunal.
2. If you take your laws to war you lose the war and your laws, America has proven out.
Both are lost.
3. An Jury of peers will often let “war crimes” go, yes. It’s nonsense, and often the Jury did same.
There are necessary wars but there are no unalloyed good wars. Most people can't walk and chew gum. Far too many can't do either well.
Yes, the meme is exceptionally well done.
Having a standing ovation for an SS member is probably the only based thing Canada's government has done in years, if not decades.
Of course Ukraine wasn't the only country caught between a rock and a hard place WRT Hitler and Stalin. Finland made much the same choice in accepting Nazi aid and generally regretting it (particularly when the Nazis retreated and burned chunks of Lapland during their retreat).
There's a Finnish "Nazi collaborator" buried in Arlington cemetery near DC in fact - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni
"Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Laine) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II;[3] and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.
Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously. His remains were located three decades later and then buried in Arlington National Cemetery; he is the only former member of the Waffen-SS known to be interred there. ..."
Trudeau's lot are far closer to Nazi's than anything I'd recognise as the parliamentary government of a royal republic. What is Canada anyway but Little America long leched after by Washington? Who could never understand it as an independent nation instead of 10 States and 3 Territories of the Union.
The distinction between Good and Right reminds me of Into the Woods. "You're not Good, you're just Nice. I'm not Good. I'm not Nice. I'm just Right".