Nazification and Denazification in Our Own Times

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There are enormous implications that flow from President Vladimir Putin’s alleged assertion that the Russian government intends to “denazify” Ukraine as part of the process of its “demilitarization.” So far, however, these implications have yet to been seriously addressed by the mainstream media. 

Indeed, honest and balanced reports of all aspects of the conflict are few and far between. Instead we in the so-called “West” are delivered onslaughts of anti-Russian hysteria written and spoken by the propagandists charged to keep the business of war booming. Amidst the journalistic demands for blood and more blood come many variations on the absurd meme that Putin is entirely to blame, that “Putin is the Hitler of the 21st Century.”

 

See this.

There is a failure to put this controversy into anything like its true historical context. The incentives are great on the side of the United States and its NATO accomplices to hide and misrepresent their own roles in creating the conditions for the current conflict.

The Russian leader’s emphasis on the denazification of Ukraine brings forward a corrupted version of the core clash in the Second World War. The outcome of WWII was ultimately decided in the Russian and Ukrainian heartland where the Soviet Armed Forces landed the decisive blows that fatally crippled the National Socialist Army of Adolph Hitler. This blow to the Third Reich was accompanied by the sacrifice of the lives of over 25,000,000  soldiers and civilians on the Soviet-side of the conflict.

When the issue of denazification is raised outside the propagandistic framework of the Putin-as-Hitler meme, the matter is usually dismissed as ridiculous or outright delusional. The most common response is that the Ukraine could not host prominent Nazi factions because the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is himself Jewish.

This kind of simple-minded reductionism is unworthy of the very important topic of nazification and denazification at this momentous juncture in human history.

New Depths of Profanity

These days many authorities are prone to maliciously smear their own political opponents as “neo-Nazis” or “White supremacists” or people who “stand with the swastika.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of those politicians who regularly exhibits careless resorts to some of the weaponized terms of our time. He takes the obscenities of wedge politics to new depths of profanity not seen so far from any previous Canadian prime minister.

On the eve of Putin’s declaration that his government was going to intervene in Ukraine, Trudeau extravagantly accused Canadian Truckers as well as members of Canada’s Official Opposition Party that they “stand with the swastika.” When Trudeau introduced this allegation into the Canadian Parliament, he himself was deeply engaged in supporting and encouraging Nazi factions within the Ukrainian government.

In 2014 the neo-Nazi elements that have long been integral to Ukranian nationalism were brought into the government and embedded in important roles in policing, the Armed Forces and national security. This nazification of the Ukrainian government, a process continuing to this day, was carried out in a US-led government regime change identified with demonstrations at Kiev’s Maidan Square.

See this and this.

With the oversight of Victoria Nuland, US President Barack Obama’s designate, the puppet regime was based on the integration of neo-Nazi factions with a powerful class of oligarchs.

Its most influential member, by far, was Igor Kolomoisky who managed to seize control of major natural gas reserves in Ukraine. In this capacity he paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, to sit on the Board of Burisma Holdings. After buying up TV stations, Kolomoisky also funded one of his more popular actors, Volymyr Zelensky, in the performer’s successful run in 2019 for the Ukrainian presidency. Along the way Kolomoisky helped finance neo-Nazi fighting forces including the Azov, Aidar and Dnipro Battalions.

See this.

Those fascistic forces in Ukraine have also received resources and moral backing from the leadership of many Western countries including that of Canada, one of NATO’s original members.

Justin Trudeau and his Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, are prominent among those that have supported  “fascistic elements” of Ukrainian nationalism, a position that has a significant vote-rich constituency of Canadian citizens.

The private fortunes of the oligarchs typically started with their appropriation of large chunks of state wealth as the Soviet Union disintegrated. This new oligarchical class came to power in the early 1990s under the Russian presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s replacement, Vladimir Putin, navigated his way to domination of the Russian government by many tactics, both fair and foul. These tactics included Putin’s strategic navigation between oligarchical friends and foes.

As World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab points out, Vladimir Putin passed through the same WEF Young Leaders program as, for instance, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.

See this.

Putin, however, seems to have moved away from the globalist and corporatist preoccupations of the Davos School to a more aggressively nationalist strategy for guiding his own country into the twenty-first century. This journey is part of the process that gave rise to the present clash of competing forces situating humanity on the abyss of global war.

See this.

Ukraine as an Vehicle of Animosity to Russia

Joe Biden came to presidential power in the United States as a key beneficiary and participant in a very elaborate campaign of high-echelon dirty tricks. The objective of this campaign was to discredit US President Donald Trump by fabricating a lie, including through the fabrication of documents, that he was some sort of Russian agent under the thumb of President Putin.

Inside and outside the White House, Biden was a key US operative in the project of shaping the government of Ukraine as a major strategic liability for Russia. Biden’s role in helping shape Ukraine as an instrument of US animosity towards Russia was recorded in many ways, including in the corrupt business dealings in Kiev of his wayward son, Hunter.

In an essay entitled, “Uncle Sam’s Nazi Warriors,” Mike Whitney addresses the latest turn in now-President Joe Biden’s involvements in Ukraine. Whitney highlights the inconsistencies in the Biden administration’s domestic and foreign policies. Whitney writes,

“Readers should take a minute to savor Washington’s duplicity… While the Biden administration and the entire MSM was denouncing the January 6 [US Capitol] protestors as “racists” and “white supremacists”, the US government was busy arming and training “white crusader” Nazis to carry out its war on Russia….. these are not your garden-variety, right-wing militants. These are full-fledged, battle-hardened Nazi storm troopers that have engaged in all-manner of illegal and sadistic activities including “the mass killing of prisoners, the concealment of corpses in mass graves and the systematic use of physical and psychological torture techniques.”

See this.

Whitney’s citation comes from the analysis presented by Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò on the background and context of the Russia-Ukraine Crisis. The analysis includes a well documented section on “Neo-Nazi and Extremist Movements in Ukraine.” Prominent among the highlighted groups is the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary organization that has been officially integrated into the National Guard of the Ukrainian Army.

See this.

The primary symbol of the Azov Battalion is the SS symbol. This SS emblem is proudly brandished as part of the military apparatus of the Ukrainian government. The Azov Battalion has played a prominent role in the virtual civil war since 2015 pitting many thousands of self-identifying Russian Ukrainians, mostly in eastern Ukraine including prominently the Donbass and Lugansk region.

The Russian government recognized the independence of these regions prior to President Putin’s decision to simultaneously demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Another major aspect of the Russian Armed Forces’ current assignment in Ukraine is to seize and dismantle about 30 bioweapons laboratories built and maintained by the US Pentagon. This initiative is turning out to have broad-ranging implications for the prospects of war and peace in the international community.

The Invention and Manipulation of Enemies

At the highest levels of command and control there are many keys to asserting and maintaining top-down power over subordinates. One of the keys to maintaining pre-eminence in the exercise of power is in developing the capacity to invent enemies and to control their imagery and activities through covert means.

Especially since the introduction of a specious interpretation of the events of 9/11, the resort to the illusions of false flag “terrorism” have become a crucial element in the exercise of power at the highest levels. More recently the manufactured COVID crisis demonstrated a new twist on old techniques in the scientific engineering of fear to grab and maintain new forms of imperial dominance.

The most important battleground of all, is the theatre of the human mind where beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours have become the main prize for the conquistadors of psychological warfare. In extending the legacy of MK-Ultra, Operation Mockingbird and other initiatives in thought control, the CIA seems well embarked in using the Ukrainian cauldron as a means of inventing and manipulating new enemies to demonize and fight against.

Much like some al-Qaeda operatives were CIA recruited, financed and trained in the USA, the CIA is currently involved in a similar scheme in training the Azov Battalion and attending intelligence operatives at military installations in the southern United States. These parallels figure prominently in Whitney Webb’s essay, “Ukraine and the New al-Qaeda.”

See this.

Webb suspects that the CIA has been pulling strings behind the scenes to push Putin over a major “Red Line,” including the announcement by the Ukrainian President of his government’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons.

See this.

In Webb’s view, the CIA’s plan might well be to train and finance yet another proxy force of insurgents to be manipulated in order to gain advantages in various arenas of mental, military and cultural conflict. Webb speculates that “this latest escalation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has merely served as the opening act for the newest iteration of the seemingly endless ‘War on Terror.’”

The road to the Global War on Terror began in the 1980s with the US government’s decision to recruit, arm, train and finance a Muslim Army to overthrow the Soviet-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan. The creation of al-Qaeda was part of this anti-Soviet strategy. After the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were deployed in 2001 as primary patsies associated in the media with the false flag operation of 9/11.

It is entirely conceivable that after another contrived false flag event, the Azov Battalion could be pressed into transnational roles similar to those earlier performed by the CIA’s al-Qaeda creation or its subsequent replacement, ISIS.

Whitney’s expectation that that the real culprits of 9/11 are planning something like a reiteration of the events engineered to initiate the Global War on Terror are echoed by Patrick Lawrence in Consortium. Where once al-Qaeda was the set up as a vehicle of Deep State deception, now it is “the Nazi militias that infest the Ukraine’s National Guard that the US arms and trains.”

See this.

Are the Governments that Back Nazi Fighting Units in Ukraine Affected by Their Willingness to Support Nazi Fascism?

What were its intentions when the US government moved its embassy from Kiev to Kviv several days before Putin declared his intentions to intervene with Russian boots on the ground of Ukraine? Eric Zuesse points out that Kyiv was the “the Ukrainian city that was the most ardently pro-Hitler during WW II.”

See this.

In 1941 in Kviv, the local leader of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists declared, prematurely as it turned out, the independence of a Ukrainian state allied with Nazi Germany.  The US establishment of a new embassy in a location where Ukrainian nationalism most clearly coincides with the Nazi dimension of Ukrainian history, is highly suggestive.

Most recently the Azov Battalion has been making news on several fronts including for its role in opposing the attempt by Russian Armed Forces to evacuate Russian-speakers from the Mariupol area.

See this.

The Azov group also gets much attention for its efforts to recruit members internationally, a project related to its hosting of a military training camp for children. This project, which includes the goal of encouraging young people to imbibe the philosophy of National Socialism, is pushed forward in violation of UN Conventions.

See this.

Taking his lead from neocon politician Chrystia Freeland and from US politicians like Senator John McCain, Trudeau allowed Canadian soldiers to train fascist units including the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector. The fascist militarism of Ukraine’s Right Sector is expressed in a Canadian branch that sometimes takes part in Ukrainian-Canadian jamborees and such.

As Yves Engler has observed “Alongside the U.S., Canada also funds, equips, and trains the neo-Nazi–infiltrated National Police of Ukraine.”

See this.

Shortly after he acquired the job of Canadian PM in 2015, Trudeau showed interest in developing diplomatic relations with Svoboda, the Ukrainian “Social-Nationalist” political party. The reversal of the National Socialist label is not accidental. In 2016 and 2019 Canada’s Prime Minister met with Svoboda leader, Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy is a political ally of Oleh Tyahnybok who has made no secret of his pro-Nazi convictions.”

See this and this.

The impact of Ukrainian fascism on Canada and other NATO countries should not be understated. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky has addressed these larger existential questions in 2014 when he observed the effect of on the backers of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine. He wrote,

“Supporting Neo-Nazism in any country in the world, from my standpoint, is an act of complicity, particularly in the Ukraine where the Neo-Nazi parties have a long history and where the forefathers were involved in atrocities directed at the Ukrainian population but also at the Jewish community in the Ukraine.”

In the Canadian context the Canadian government’s flirtation with Ukrainian-style Nazism seems to be reflected in the disgraceful treatment of the Canadian Truckers’ movement still seeking an end to mandated injections. The Trudeau Liberals’ actions showed up in the decision to subject peaceful protesters to police brutality, to seize bank accounts without an ounce of due process, and to criminalize under dubious circumstances the members of the Coutts 13.

Chossudovsky concluded with some apt remarks highlighting the contemporary role of corporate rule and financial privatization in our own times by pointing attention to the conditions surrounding Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. Chossudovsky explained,

“The United States supported German conglomerates during World War II and the privatization program launched by Adolph Hitler in 1933 was, in some regards, similar to that adopted in the UK under Margaret Thatcher. The first thing they did was to privatize the railways, and then they privatized the banks and they privatized heavy industry, so that, in effect, the thrust of the Nazi economy in the course of the 1930s was not the state; it was the private sector and it was a profit-driven military agenda.”

See this.

Prof. Chossudovsky’s concluding comments help put in context the role of US-based mercenary soldier businesses in the current conflict. The corporate belligerents preparing to send troops into Ukraine Academi (formerly Blackwater) as well as Cubic and the Dyn Corporation.

 

The UN General Assembly’s December 2021 Motion: “Combating the Glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism”.

On December 16, 2021, two months before the intervention by the Russian government, a motion was passed “combating the glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism.” Section 5 of the motion included

“Expresses deep concern about the glorification, in any form, of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials….. as well as by the renaming of streets glorifying them.”

See this.

Tellingly, only the USA and Ukraine voted against the resolution. Canada and the EU were among 49 polities to abstain. Supporting the resolution were 130 countries.

We need much more sage and sober discussion concerning the meaning of nazification and denazification in our own times.

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Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

 


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Articles by: Prof. Anthony J. Hall

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