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FTR #876 The OUN/B and the Assassination of JFK

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ November 20, 2015Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. 

Intro­duc­tion: Most of the pro­gram details the assas­si­na­tion of OUN/B leader Stephan Ban­dera. Blamed on the KGB, the killing was–in all likelihood–performed by BND (Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence and the suc­ces­sor to the Rein­hard Gehlen “org”) or oth­er Under­ground Reich-con­nect­ed ele­ments, pos­si­bly ele­ments of CIA.

The broad­cast cen­ters on dis­in­for­ma­tion (dis­sem­i­nated by W.A.C.C.FL.-related ele­ments) point­ing to Lee Har­vey Oswald as a KGB-trained assas­sin.

Attempt­ing to pin the assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­ets and/or Cubans, these ele­ments spurred many lib­er­als to endorse the “Oswald as lone-nut” hypoth­e­sis. They were afraid that the assas­si­na­tion could lead to nuclear war, if the per­cep­tion gained trac­tion that Oswald was a com­mu­nist. A cen­tral ele­ment in this dis­in­for­ma­tion ploy was an attempt to con­nect the JFK assas­si­na­tion to the death of Stephan Ban­dera, alleged­ly per­formed by an KGB assas­sin named Bog­dan Stashyn­sky.

Mur­dered on the same day that Lee Har­vey Oswald “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union, Ban­der­a’s killing was linked to Oswald’s alleged killing of JFK by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the W.A.C.C.F.L. (the World Anti-Com­mu­nist Con­gress for Free­dom and Liberation–the fore­run­ner of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.)

W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments dis­sem­i­nated the lie that Oswald was trained at the same facil­ity as Stashyn­sky, and that the JFK hit was part of a Sovi­et pro­gram of assas­si­na­tion of West­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers. It should be not­ed that W.A.C.C.F.L.-related ele­ments also fig­ured promi­nently in the “han­dling” of Oswald in New Orleans, Dal­las and (pos­si­bly) the Sovi­et Union.

Those W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments were close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the OUN/B and the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the BND, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

The dis­in­for­ma­tion that Oswald was a KGB assas­sin was insert­ed into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report by Sen. Thomas Dodd, with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA.

A mem­ber of the U.S. pros­e­cu­to­r­ial staff at Nurem­berg., this for­mer FBI agent (Dodd) was close to the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil (ASC), a domes­tic fas­cist group.  With its roots in the Hitler-Goebbels Anti-­Com­in­tern, the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil was a key Amer­i­can link to the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League or WACL. Cre­ated by for­mer FBI agents dis­grun­tled at the demise of Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s “inves­ti­ga­tions,” the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil coa­lesced around the files of Har­ry Jung’s Amer­i­can Vig­i­lance Intel­li­gence Fed­er­a­tion. Vir­u­lently anti-Semit­ic, Jung’s orga­ni­za­tion was part of the Anti-Com­intern pri­or to World War II.

Count­ing among its ranks some of the most promi­nent names on the far right, the orga­ni­za­tion kept track of peo­ple it con­sid­ered “sub­ver­sive,” shar­ing polit­i­cal intel­li­gence with prospec­tive employ­ers (par­tic­u­larly defense con­trac­tors). The ASC hat­ed Kennedy and it is not, there­fore, alto­gether sur­pris­ing that Dodd helped to dis­sem­i­nate the dis­in­for­ma­tion that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been trained in assas­si­na­tion by the KGB. With CIA assis­tance, Dodd insert­ed this Ban­dera-linked dis­in­for­ma­tion into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report. This dis­in­for­ma­tion, with roots in the same WACL milieu as the ASC, led lib­er­als to cov­er-up the assas­si­na­tion out of fear that pub­lic per­cep­tion that a com­mu­nist killed the Pres­i­dent would lead to a Third World War.

It is also inter­est­ing and very pos­si­bly rel­e­vant that the dis­in­for­ma­tion about Oswald/Stashynsky and the KGB was first called to the atten­tion of Julien Sour­wine by OUN/B oper­a­tive Lev Dobri­an­sky, who lat­er served as Rea­gan’s ambas­sador to the Bahamas, while his daugh­ter Paula served on Rea­gan’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Paula Dobri­an­sky lat­er served as an Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State under George W. Bush and head­ed the Tibet desk for a time.

Dodd’s role in this affair is all the more inter­est­ing when one con­sid­ers the pos­si­bil­ity that Oswald may have ordered his weapons while work­ing for Dodd’s Sub­com­mit­tee. Inves­ti­gat­ing the mail-order firearms busi­ness, the Dodd com­mit­tee focused on the two firms from which Oswald alleged­ly pur­chased his weapons. Both Sea­port Traders and Klein’s sport­ing goods, from which Oswald alleged­ly ordered his weapons, were under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Dodd Sub­com­mit­tee. Oswald was appar­ently extra­or­di­nar­ily inter­ested in mail-order guns, a strange way for a prospec­tive assas­sin to acquire weapon­ry. In 1963 in Texas, he could have pur­chased his guns over the counter with no trace of the trans­ac­tion.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  • Evi­dence that the Stashyn­sky cov­er sto­ry was fab­ri­cat­ed.
  • Review of the Cru­sade For Freedom–a covert oper­a­tion that spawned the Nazi wing of the GOP.
  • The role of the OUN/B in the CFF and in the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion.
  • The role of key CFF par­tic­i­pants in the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

(It is impos­si­ble with­in the scope of this post to cov­er our volu­mi­nous cov­er­age of the Ukraine cri­sis. Pre­vi­ous pro­grams on the sub­ject are: FTR #‘s 777, 778, 779, 780, 781, 782, 783, 784, 794, 800, 803, 804, 808, 811, 817, 

818, 824, 826, 829, 832, 833, 837, 849, 850, 853, 857, 860, 872, 875, 876, 877. Listeners/readers are encour­aged to exam­ine these pro­grams and/or their descrip­tions in detail, in order to flesh out their under­stand­ing.)

 1. Most of the pro­gram details the assas­si­na­tion of OUN/B leader Stephan Ban­dera. Blamed on the KGB, the killing was–in all likelihood–performed by BND (Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence and the suc­ces­sor to the Rein­hard Gehlen “org”) or oth­er Under­ground Reich-con­nect­ed ele­ments.

Much of the broad­cast cen­ters on dis­in­for­ma­tion (dis­sem­i­nated by W.A.C.C.FL.-related ele­ments) point­ing to Lee Har­vey Oswald as a KGB-trained assas­sin.

Attempt­ing to pin the assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­ets and/or Cubans, these ele­ments spurred many lib­er­als to endorse the “Oswald as lone-nut” hypoth­e­sis. They were afraid that the assas­si­na­tion could lead to nuclear war, if the per­cep­tion gained trac­tion that Oswald was a com­mu­nist. A cen­tral ele­ment in this dis­in­for­ma­tion ploy was an attempt to con­nect the JFK assas­si­na­tion to the death of Stephan Ban­dera, alleged­ly per­formed by an KGB assas­sin named Bog­dan Stashyn­sky.

Mur­dered on the same day that Lee Har­vey Oswald “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union, Ban­der­a’s killing was linked to Oswald’s alleged killing of JFK by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the W.A.C.C.F.L. (the World Anti-Com­mu­nist Con­gress for Free­dom and Liberation–the fore­run­ner of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.)

W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments dis­sem­i­nated the lie that Oswald was trained at the same facil­ity as Stashyn­sky, and that the JFK hit was part of a Sovi­et pro­gram of assas­si­na­tion of West­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers. It should be not­ed that WACL-relat­ed ele­ments also fig­ured promi­nently in the “han­dling” of Oswald in New Orleans, Dal­las and (pos­si­bly) the Sovi­et Union.

Those W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments were close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the OUN/B and the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the BND, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

The infor­ma­tion in this side is from The Dal­las Con­spir­a­cy, an unpub­lished man­u­script by Peter Dale Scott. The audio is excerpt­ed from AFA #15, record­ed in March of 1986.

2. The sec­ond audio excerpt is from FTR #158, record­ed on 6/6/1999. The doc­u­men­ta­tion is from Deep Pol­i­tics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott. The dis­in­for­ma­tion that Oswald was a KGB assas­sin was insert­ed into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report by Sen. Thomas Dodd.

A mem­ber of the U.S. pros­e­cu­to­r­ial staff at Nurem­berg., this for­mer FBI agent (Dodd) was close to the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil (ASC), a domes­tic fas­cist group.  With its roots in the Hitler-Goebbels Anti-­Com­in­tern, the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil was a key Amer­i­can link to the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League or WACL. Cre­ated by for­mer FBI agents dis­grun­tled at the demise of Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s “inves­ti­ga­tions,” the Amer­i­can Secu­rity Coun­cil coa­lesced around the files of Har­ry Jung’s Amer­i­can Vig­i­lance Intel­li­gence Fed­er­a­tion. Vir­u­lently anti-Semit­ic, Jung’s orga­ni­za­tion was part of the Anti-Com­intern pri­or to World War II.

Count­ing among its ranks some of the most promi­nent names on the far right, the orga­ni­za­tion kept track of peo­ple it con­sid­ered “sub­ver­sive,” shar­ing polit­i­cal intel­li­gence with prospec­tive employ­ers (par­tic­u­larly defense con­trac­tors). The ASC hat­ed Kennedy and it is not, there­fore, alto­gether sur­pris­ing that Dodd helped to dis­sem­i­nate the dis­in­for­ma­tion that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been trained in assas­si­na­tion by the KGB. With CIA assis­tance, Dodd insert­ed this Ban­dera-linked dis­in­for­ma­tion into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report. This dis­in­for­ma­tion, with roots in the same WACL milieu as the ASC, led lib­er­als to cov­er-up the assas­si­na­tion out of fear that pub­lic per­cep­tion that a com­mu­nist killed the Pres­i­dent would lead to a Third World War.

It is also inter­est­ing and very pos­si­bly rel­e­vant that the dis­in­for­ma­tion about Oswald/Stashynsky and the KGB was first called to the atten­tion of Julien Sour­wine by OUN/B oper­a­tive Lev Dobri­an­sky, who lat­er served as Rea­gan’s ambas­sador to the Bahamas, while his daugh­ter Paula served on Rea­gan’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Paula Dobri­an­sky lat­er served as an Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State under George W. Bush and head­ed the Tibet desk for a time.

Deep Pol­i­tics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott; Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press; p. 216.

. . . . [Gen­er­al Charles] Wilough­by, in par­tic­u­lar, was also part of the lead­ing defense-indus­tri­al lob­by the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, along with polit­i­cal­ly active army reserve offi­cers like Lev Dobri­an­sky, who first brought the issue of Bog­dan Stashyn­sky and the alleged mur­der train­ing school to the atten­tion of Sour­wine and the Sen­ate Inter­nal Secu­ri­ty Sub­com­mit­tee. . . . 

. . . . Sen­a­tor Dodd was on the ASC pay­roll when he gen­er­at­ed the Sen­ate sub­com­mit­tee report on Stashyn­sky’s sup­posed mur­der train­ing school. . . . 

3a. As indi­cat­ed above, Dobri­an­sky served as Rea­gan’s ambas­sador to the Bahamas, while his daugh­ter Paula served on Rea­gan’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, ulti­mate­ly becom­ing an Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State dur­ing the George W. Bush admis­tra­tions.

We note, in pass­ing, that the Bahamas were an epi­cen­ter of oper­a­tions for the Bank al-Taqwa, a major vehi­cle for fund­ing the Afghan muja­hadeen and, lat­er, their off­shoot Al-Qae­da. (Off­shore enti­ties used to fund the Afghan muja­hadin and Al-Qae­da were set up by Bau­doin Dunand, a friend of, pro­tege of, and attor­ney for Fran­cois Genoud.)

Paul Dobri­an­sky head­ed the Tibet desk at the State Depart­ment, work­ing with the CIA and SS-con­nect­ed Dalai Lama. Paula Dobri­an­sky has been very crit­i­cal of Oba­ma’s pol­i­cy toward Ukraine.

“Under­sec­re­tary for Democ­ra­cy and Glob­al Affairs”; U.S. Depart­ment of State: Archive.

The Office of the Under Sec­re­tary for Democ­ra­cy and Glob­al Affairs, head­ed by Dr. Paula J. Dobri­an­sky, coor­di­nates U.S. for­eign rela­tions on a vari­ety of glob­al issues, includ­ing democ­ra­cy, human rights, and labor; envi­ron­ment, oceans, health and sci­ence; pop­u­la­tion, refugees, and migra­tion; wom­en’s issues; and traf­fick­ing in per­sons and avian and pan­dem­ic influen­za.

Since her appoint­ment in 2001, Under Sec­re­tary Dobri­an­sky has also served con­cur­rent­ly as the Spe­cial Coor­di­na­tor for Tibetan Issues. In this capac­i­ty, she is the U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s point per­son on Tibet pol­i­cy mat­ters, includ­ing: sup­port for dia­logue between the Chi­nese and the Dalai Lama or his rep­re­sen­ta­tives; pro­mo­tion of human rights in Tibet; and efforts to pre­serve Tibet’s unique cul­tur­al, reli­gious and lin­guis­tic iden­ti­ty.

3b. More about the rela­tion­ship between Lev Dobri­an­sky, the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion (the U.C.C.A.) and the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion:

. . . . Many sur­viv­ing OUN‑B mem­bers fled to West­ern Europe and the Unit­ed States – occa­sion­al­ly with CIA help – where they qui­et­ly forged polit­i­cal alliances with right-wing ele­ments. “You have to under­stand, we are an under­ground orga­ni­za­tion. We have spent years qui­et­ly pen­e­trat­ing posi­tions of influ­ence,” one mem­ber told jour­nal­ist Russ Bel­lant, who doc­u­ment­ed the group’s resur­gence in the Unit­ed States in his 1988 book, “Old Nazis, New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty.” In Wash­ing­ton, the OUN‑B recon­sti­tut­ed under the ban­ner of the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca (UCCA), an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of “com­plete OUN‑B fronts,” accord­ing to Bel­lant. By the mid-1980’s, the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was hon­ey­combed with UCCA mem­bers, with the group’s chair­man Lev Dobri­an­sky, serv­ing as ambas­sador to the Bahamas, and his daugh­ter, Paula, sit­ting on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Rea­gan per­son­al­ly wel­comed Stet­sko, the Ban­derist leader who over­saw the mas­sacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.

“Your strug­gle is our strug­gle,” Rea­gan told the for­mer Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor. “Your dream is our dream.” . . . .

4a. We review analy­sis of the Cru­sade For Freedom–the covert oper­a­tion that brought the OUN/B oper­a­tives into the coun­try and also sup­port­ed their gueril­la war­fare in Ukraine, con­duct­ed up until the ear­ly 1950’s. (We cov­ered this in AFA #1 and FTR #777, as well as FTR #875.) Con­ceived by Allen Dulles, over­seen by Richard Nixon, pub­licly rep­re­sent­ed by Ronald Rea­gan and real­ized in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by William Casey, the CFF ulti­mate­ly evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; pp. 122–123.

. . . . Frus­tra­tion over Truman’s 1948 elec­tion vic­to­ry over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jew­ish vote”) impelled Dulles and his pro­tégé Richard Nixon to work toward the real­iza­tion of the fas­cist free­dom fight­er pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. As a young con­gress­man, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s con­fi­dant. They both blamed Gov­er­nor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Tru­man in the 1948 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on the Jew­ish vote. When he became Eisenhower’s vice pres­i­dent in 1952, Nixon was deter­mined to build his own eth­nic base. . . .

. . . . Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was nev­er inves­ti­gat­ed at the time. The for­eign lan­guage-speak­ing Croa­t­ians and oth­er Fas­cist émi­gré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc. There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . .

. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. As Vice Pres­i­dent, he even received East­ern Euro­pean Fas­cists in the White House. . .

4b. More about the com­po­si­tion of the cast of the CFF:

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 605.

. . . . As a young movie actor in the ear­ly 1950s, Rea­gan was employed as the pub­lic spokesper­son for an OPC front named the ‘Cru­sade for Free­dom.’ Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent for the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­er­ty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists. Bill Casey, who lat­er became CIA direc­tor under Ronald Rea­gan, also worked in Ger­many after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘free­dom fight­ers’ pro­gram. When he returned to New York, Casey head­ed up anoth­er OPC front, the Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, which spon­sored the immi­gra­tion of these Fas­cists to the Unit­ed States. Casey’s com­mit­tee replaced the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross as the spon­sor for Dulles’s recruits. Con­fi­den­tial inter­views, for­mer mem­bers, OPC; for­mer mem­bers, British for­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office. . . .

5. The broad­cast con­cludes with analy­sis of the pro­found over­lap of the key fig­ures in the Cru­sade for Free­dom and the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Allen Dulles was a key War­ren Com­mis­sion mem­ber, wide­ly viewed as a key orches­tra­tor of the cov­er-up. Richard Nixon was in Dal­las Texas on 11/22/1963 and lied about it to two FBI agents in Feb­ru­ary of 1964. (The pro­found links between the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion and Water­gate is dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3, FTR #253 and Mis­ce­la­neous Archive Show M59.)

Ronald Rea­gan helped frus­trate Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion by refus­ing to extra­dite Edgar Eugene Bradley to New Orleans as request­ed and sub­se­quent­ly served on the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble CIA par­tic­i­pa­tion in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. (Pre­dictably, the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion found none, which is not cred­i­ble.)

6. George H.W. Bush was cir­cu­lat­ing between Dal­las and Hous­ton, claim­ing that he can’t remem­ber where he was and what he was doing on the day of the Pres­i­den­t’s assas­si­na­tion. (Dis­cus­sion of Bush and the JFK assas­si­na­tion is detailed in FTR #712.)

While serv­ing as chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, the elder George Bush shep­herd­ed the Nazi émi­gré com­mu­ni­ty into posi­tion as a per­ma­nent branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; pp. 369–370.

. . . . It was Bush who ful­filled Nixon’s promise to make the ‘eth­nic emi­gres’ a per­ma­nent part of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. In 1972, Nixon’s State Depart­ment spokesman con­firmed to his Aus­tralian coun­ter­part that the eth­nic groups were very use­ful to get out the vote in sev­er­al key states. Bush’s tenure as head of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee exact­ly coin­cid­ed with Las­z­lo Pasztor’s 1972 dri­ve to trans­form the Her­itage Groups Coun­cil into the party’s offi­cial eth­nic arm. The groups Pasz­tor chose as Bush’s cam­paign allies were the émi­gré Fas­cists whom Dulles had brought to the Unit­ed States. . . .

 

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #876 The OUN/B and the Assassination of JFK”

  1. I recent­ly fin­ished read­ing “The Hitler Lega­cy” and, although I have a few unre­solved ques­tions, it was quite good. I just bought “The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment” by David Tal­bot. I just start­ed read­ing it — and it’s a page-turn­er. Dave, or has any oth­er lis­ten­er read “The Dev­il’s Chess­board” yet, and what did you think? Thanks!

    Posted by Ralph | May 19, 2016, 6:11 pm

  2. @Ralph–

    This should answer your ques­tion:

    https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-894-physicians-heal-thyselves-hypocrisy-and-the-trump-campaign/

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | May 19, 2016, 6:33 pm

  3. It’s nev­er too late to learn impor­tant his­to­ry. Well, ok, it’s too late when there’s noth­ing you can do to stop the con­se­quences from hav­ing nev­er learned it in the first place but let’s hope we aren’t there yet. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to the his­to­ry of the West­’s Cold war embrace of fas­cists in the name of anti-com­mu­nism. A his­to­ry that isn’t exact­ly a secret, but effec­tive­ly oper­ates as secret his­to­ry. Well doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry that isn’t real­ly taught in class and hard­ly any­one seems to know. But we can’t real­ly under­stand the world head­ing into 2024 with­out rec­og­niz­ing this his­to­ry. A his­to­ry of large­ly covert actions span­ning decades that pro­found­ly impact­ed how the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry and first cou­ple of decades of the 21st cen­tu­ry have unfold­ed. Action­able his­to­ry that still mat­ters.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing piece in Jacobin about a facet of that his­to­ry that’s became a lot more top­i­cal in 2023, thanks to the ongo­ing war in Ukraine in and self-inflict­ed pub­lic rela­tions wound the Cana­di­an par­lia­ment cre­at­ed with its stand­ing ova­tion for Ukrain­ian Waf­fen SS mem­ber Yaroslav Hun­ka. That would be the his­to­ry of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­men­t’s inten­tion­al impor­ta­tion and cod­dling of Ukrain­ian war crim­i­nals for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a strong nation­al­ist Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an pres­ence that would be a posi­tion to crush the left-wing labor orga­niz­ing that, at one point, had a strong pres­ence in Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ties. Quite lit­er­al­ly crush­ing the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left with vio­lent raids on labor head­quar­ters and even a bomb­ing in 1950, all seem­ing­ly con­doned by Cana­di­an author­i­ties. And as we’re going to see, it was strat­e­gy real­ly was wild­ly suc­cess­ful. In 1945 the Asso­ci­a­tion of Unit­ed Ukrain­ian Cana­di­ans (AUUC) added 2,579 new mem­bers. That fig­ure dropped to 84 by 1969. By the 1970s, Ukraine nation­al­ist had achieved a kind of cul­tur­al dom­i­nance over the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an dias­po­ra.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, offi­cial fig­ures show rough­ly 26,000 Ukrain­ian dis­place per­son had been accept­ed as of Jan­u­ary 1952. Lat­er research sug­gests that offi­cial num­ber was sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­count­ed and clos­er to 50,000 dis­place per­sons were brought into the coun­try by that point, with rough­ly half orig­i­nat­ing from West­ern Ukraine.

    So when we find the Cana­di­an par­lia­ment scram­bling to explain its seem­ing­ly bizarre deci­sion to cel­e­brate a Ukrain­ian Waf­fen SS mem­ber, it’s impor­tant to recall that the Cana­di­an state did­n’t sim­ply turn a blind eye to the thou­sands of Waf­fen SS mem­bers let into the coun­try. The state was approv­ing­ly watch­ing these Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors clash with and even­tu­al­ly crush Canada’s labor move­ment. That was the plan and the plan worked.

    And that was just what hap­pened with Cana­da. It was obvi­ous­ly a lot worse in US, which took in far more war crim­i­nals from across the East­ern bloc. And as we’re going to be remind­ed of in a March 2014 inter­view with Russ Bel­lant, that his­to­ry includes the US’s ele­va­tion of many of the lead­ing fig­ures in these Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist groups like the OUN to lead­er­ship posi­tions inside the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty through the West­’s offi­cial embrace of groups like the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which was led by OUN‑B leader Yaroslav Stet­sko until his death in 1986. And then there was the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s embrace of these groups through its Eth­nic Out­reach Com­mit­tees. An embrace that, as in Cana­da, was focused on using these same groups to sway the pol­i­tics of East­ern Euro­pean Amer­i­cans and win elec­tions.

    And then there’s all of the evi­dence point­ing towards the involve­ment of these ele­ments in the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. The point being that we can’t real­ly ful­ly under­stand the pol­i­tics of Cana­da or Unit­ed States today with­out a recog­ni­tion of this his­to­ry. A his­to­ry of state backed pol­i­cy of import­ing war crim­i­nals to defeat labor pol­i­tics. A his­to­ry that start­ed before the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1950s and con­tin­ued long after the fall of Joe McCarthy.

    And as Bel­lant points out in that inter­view, while much of this his­to­ry had long been obscured to an extent that it sim­ply was­n’t acces­si­ble to aver­age peo­ple, that’s no longer the case. These is all old news at this point. We don’t actu­al­ly have a great excuse not to know this stuff. So with New Year’s res­o­lu­tions just around the cor­ner, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that absorb­ing cru­cial his­to­ry we can eas­i­ly learn but just nev­er got around to learn­ing is one of those res­o­lu­tions that works for every year:

    Jacobin

    To Crush Left-Wing Orga­niz­ing, Cana­da Embraced Ukrain­ian Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tors

    By William Gillies
    12.21.2023

    Canada’s Nazi ova­tion gaffe in the House of Com­mons was just the tip of the ice­berg. For years, the coun­try delib­er­ate­ly admit­ted World War II Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors in the hopes of dis­man­tling polit­i­cal rad­i­cal­ism and sup­press­ing labor mil­i­tan­cy.

    In Sep­tem­ber, Canada’s par­lia­ment ignit­ed con­tro­ver­sy when it cel­e­brat­ed Yaroslav Hun­ka, a nine­ty-eight-year-old World War II Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor. The inci­dent has brought renewed focus to the issue of war crim­i­nals who immi­grat­ed to the coun­try after 1945. The pri­ma­ry source of out­rage has right­ly cen­tered on how some­one like Hun­ka, who vol­un­tar­i­ly served in the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS (1st Gali­cian), gained entry into Cana­da, and why the gov­ern­ment nev­er deport­ed or pros­e­cut­ed sus­pect­ed war crim­i­nals. Even a desul­to­ry 1980s inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter of Nazi immi­grants is still most­ly sealed from the pub­lic, despite iden­ti­fy­ing dozens of sus­pect­ed war crim­i­nals liv­ing freely in Cana­da — most of whom are now like­ly all dead.

    How­ev­er, media cov­er­age has large­ly failed to engage with the ques­tion of why Cana­da let peo­ple like Hun­ka immi­grate, result­ing in the cur­rent polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy lack­ing essen­tial his­tor­i­cal con­text. There have been some excep­tions, such as pieces in these pages that have point­ed out that there is a trou­bling his­to­ry that Cana­da must reck­on with, and cor­rect­ly sug­gest­ed that this immi­gra­tion of war crim­i­nals was tied to anti-com­mu­nism. It is impor­tant to delve fur­ther into this his­to­ry, as it reveals a delib­er­ate effort by the Cana­di­an state to dis­man­tle polit­i­cal rad­i­cal­ism and tame labor mil­i­tan­cy in the post­war peri­od.

    Immi­grants like Hun­ka were grant­ed entry specif­i­cal­ly because their col­lab­o­ra­tionist pasts made them use­ful in crush­ing left-wing orga­niz­ing in Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ties. Col­lab­o­ra­tors assumed con­trol of com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, some of which were trans­ferred to them by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, hav­ing seized them from social­ist groups dur­ing the war. The process was often quite vio­lent, with mob vio­lence intim­i­dat­ing left­ists, fas­cists serv­ing as strike­break­ers in min­ing towns, and a Ukrain­ian labor tem­ple being attacked with a bomb dur­ing a con­cert. All of these actions were con­doned by the Cana­di­an state in the name of anti-com­mu­nism.

    Ukrain­ian Labor Tem­ples and “Hall Social­ism”

    Con­trary to the present exis­tence of Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor mon­u­ments in Cana­da, there was once a robust Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left. Orga­nized around the Ukrain­ian Labour Farmer Tem­ple Asso­ci­a­tion (ULFTA), it played a piv­otal role in var­i­ous chap­ters of Cana­di­an labor his­to­ry, often adopt­ing rad­i­cal stances. The ULFTA oper­at­ed hun­dreds of “labor tem­ples” across the coun­try that nur­tured a polit­i­cal move­ment often called “hall social­ism.” Labor tem­ples host­ed polit­i­cal ral­lies, con­tained lend­ing libraries, pub­lished news­pa­pers, sup­port­ed Ukrain­ian immi­grants, spon­sored cul­tur­al activ­i­ties, and pro­vid­ed a venue for col­lec­tive social­iza­tion. In Win­nipeg, Man­i­to­ba, the finest still-exist­ing labor tem­ple was com­plet­ed in 1919, just in time to serve as the head­quar­ters of the city’s gen­er­al strike that same year.

    Between the world wars, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment feared Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an rad­i­cal­ism and its con­nec­tions to com­mu­nist agi­ta­tion. Ukraini­ans were enor­mous­ly over­rep­re­sent­ed in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Cana­da, which even had a Ukrain­ian lan­guage sec­tion. The ULFTA was for­mal­ly affil­i­at­ed with the par­ty and helped orga­nize Winnipeg’s large Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an work­ing class to elect com­mu­nists like Bill Kar­dash from the 1930s to the 1950s. In con­trast, Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists in Cana­da were mar­gin­al. They expressed admi­ra­tion for Hitler and denounced com­mu­nist politi­cians as the tri­umph of the “Bol­she­vik-Jew­ish clique.” In 1934, they pub­lished a Ukrain­ian edi­tion of The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.

    When Cana­da declared war on Ger­many in Sep­tem­ber 1939, the Com­mu­nist Par­ty opposed the war, fol­low­ing the Sovi­et polit­i­cal line after the sign­ing of the Molo­tov-Ribben­trop Pact. Sub­se­quent­ly, the par­ty and its many affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions were out­lawed. On June 4, 1940, the ULFTA was banned, and the gov­ern­ment seized all of the organization’s assets and interned many of its mem­bers. Over 180 halls were con­fis­cat­ed, and the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police (RCMP) took con­trol of all archives, metic­u­lous­ly review­ing them to aug­ment their already exten­sive knowl­edge of the move­ment. A recent purge of mem­bers with nation­al­ist sym­pa­thies caught the atten­tion of the Moun­ties, prompt­ing them to con­tact these indi­vid­u­als as infor­mants.

    Fol­low­ing the ban­ning of the ULFTA, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment took fur­ther action to force a uni­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups in Cana­da in Novem­ber 1940. Invit­ing the var­i­ous groups’ lead­ers to a meet­ing, gov­ern­ment offi­cials pre­sent­ed a stack of police intel­li­gence reports doc­u­ment­ing their aware­ness of fas­cist polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions that they be out­lawed. The ulti­ma­tum was clear: unless these groups uni­fied accord­ing to the government’s pref­er­ences, they would face pro­hi­bi­tion. Respond­ing to this pres­sure, the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Com­mit­tee (lat­er Con­gress) (UCC) was prompt­ly formed and remains in exis­tence today. The UCC was expect­ed to sup­port the war effort and act as an inter­me­di­ary between the gov­ern­ment and the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. In return the gov­ern­ment would lend sup­port to the claim that the nation­al­ists rep­re­sent­ed Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­ans.

    After the Sovi­et Union joined the Allies in 1941, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment was slow to reverse the ban on the now very pro-war Com­mu­nist Par­ty and its affil­i­ates. Internees were released in the fall of 1942, and the ban on the ULFTA was lift­ed in Octo­ber 1943. Prop­er­ty still in gov­ern­ment pos­ses­sion was returned start­ing in 1944. In many cas­es the halls had been sold, often to rival Ukrain­ian groups, with their con­tents dis­persed or dis­card­ed. Halls that were tak­en over by nation­al­ists had their libraries stripped of any sub­ver­sive mate­r­i­al.

    ...

    This peri­od had a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left, as the halls and their con­tents, cru­cial to the move­ment and care­ful­ly built up over decades, suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss­es. Gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an pol­i­tics tipped the scales in the nation­al­ists’ favor, empow­er­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive UCC to dom­i­nate the com­mu­ni­ty after 1945.

    Dis­placed War Crim­i­nals

    In 1945, the sur­ren­dered 14th SS Divi­sion was held at a POW camp in Rim­i­ni, Italy, while the West­ern Allies decid­ed what to do with them. The Sovi­ets want­ed them repa­tri­at­ed to face con­se­quences for col­lab­o­ra­tion, but the onset of the Cold War altered the polit­i­cal land­scape. For­mer ene­my col­lab­o­ra­tors, such as Ukraini­ans who had served in the 14th SS Divi­sion, were recon­sid­ered as poten­tial allies against Sovi­et com­mu­nism.

    By June 1947, dis­placed per­sons reg­is­tered as eth­nic Ukrain­ian totaled 106,549. Ini­tial­ly, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment showed lim­it­ed inter­est in admit­ting more Ukraini­ans, reflect­ing a long-stand­ing bias against non-West­ern Euro­pean immi­grants. Fur­ther­more, Cana­di­an law pro­hib­it­ed the accep­tance of for­mer com­bat­ants who had vol­un­tar­i­ly served in the Ger­man armed forces. How­ev­er, much of the screen­ing was con­duct­ed by British major Denis Hills, a self-described fas­cist who instruct­ed col­lab­o­ra­tors on how to avoid inves­ti­ga­tion. The British exon­er­at­ed the Gali­cia Divi­sion and trans­ferred many of them to Britain to fill labor short­ages in agri­cul­ture.

    The UCC lob­bied the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to accept Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons and empha­sized their anti-com­mu­nist poten­tial. Against the back­drop of a boom­ing labor mar­ket in Cana­da, these Ukraini­ans were por­trayed as dis­ci­plined work­ers opposed to any sort of union rad­i­cal­ism. They were pos­i­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ized as capa­ble of fill­ing vacan­cies in min­ing and forestry, where they could break up left-wing Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tions.

    Start­ing in 1947, this lob­by­ing began to yield results, espe­cial­ly as the British gov­ern­ment pres­sured Cana­da to accept them. In 1950, the immi­gra­tion ban on Ukraini­ans who served in the SS was lift­ed, thanks to UCC advo­ca­cy that claimed they were sim­ply sol­diers who had fought against com­mu­nism.

    Many Ukrain­ian Cana­di­ans and Jew­ish groups opposed the admis­sion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors. The Asso­ci­a­tion of Unit­ed Ukrain­ian Cana­di­ans (AUUC), cre­at­ed in 1946 as the suc­ces­sor to the ULFTA, lob­bied against the move. While sup­port­ing the immi­gra­tion of Ukrain­ian refugees to Cana­da, they argued for thor­ough screen­ing of their wartime activ­i­ties. They were large­ly ignored.

    By Jan­u­ary 1952, offi­cial fig­ures indi­cat­ed that twen­ty-six thou­sand Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons had been accept­ed. How­ev­er, lat­er his­tor­i­cal research sug­gests that offi­cial fig­ures under­count­ed, and that the actu­al num­ber could have been as high as fifty thou­sand, with half orig­i­nat­ing from west­ern Ukraine, the heart­land of the nation­al­ist move­ment. Approx­i­mate­ly 3 per­cent were vet­er­ans of the 14th SS Divi­sion, about 1,500 peo­ple, although some sources cite fig­ures as high as two thou­sand. Addi­tion­al­ly, there were oth­er nation­al­ists who col­lab­o­rat­ed in less for­mal ways than join­ing the SS, but were still active par­tic­i­pants in the Holo­caust.

    ...

    Expung­ing the Reds

    On Octo­ber 8, 1950, a bomb went off dur­ing a con­cert at the Cen­tral Ukrain­ian Labor Tem­ple on Bathurst Street in Toron­to. Eleven peo­ple were injured, and the explo­sion lev­eled part of the build­ing. Author­i­ties offered a $1,500 reward for infor­ma­tion, but no one was ever caught. The long-stand­ing sus­pi­cion is that Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists were respon­si­ble, as this attack aligned with a pat­tern of vio­lence direct­ed against the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left dur­ing the 1950s. Ukrain­ian labor tem­ples and the broad­er labor move­ment were cen­tral to the post­war strug­gle between Ukrain­ian fas­cist emi­gres and the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Left.

    ...

    In the imme­di­ate post­war years, it became clear that an inde­pen­dent Ukraine was unlike­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, attack­ing left­ists in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty became a sort of con­so­la­tion prize. The Cana­di­an state was to some extent pleased with this change of focus by the nation­al­ists, and tac­it­ly approved of such attacks.

    Offi­cial anti-com­mu­nist sen­ti­ment was cou­pled with the need for more work­ers in Canada’s boom­ing post­war econ­o­my. Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons, as a con­di­tion for immi­gra­tion, often entered into work con­tracts bind­ing them to an employ­er, typ­i­cal­ly in resource extrac­tion towns in the north of Ontario or Que­bec. Min­ing com­pa­ny agents vis­it­ed refugee camps in Europe, screen­ing prospec­tive employ­ees for anti-com­mu­nist beliefs, and then recruit­ed them to relo­cate to Cana­da. They often arrived in places that had a pre­ex­ist­ing Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left.

    ...

    As the work con­tracts for the first wave of nation­al­ist emi­gres expired, they moved into urban areas, lead­ing to an esca­la­tion in attacks on the AUUC. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a fresh wave of Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons were admit­ted into Cana­da in the ear­ly 1950s after the removal of the ban on the immi­gra­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tors. In Win­nipeg, Toron­to, and Edmon­ton, nation­al­ists would attend labor tem­ple events with the inten­tion of dis­rupt­ing and attack­ing. This ranged from heck­ling to shut down a speak­er to phys­i­cal assaults on atten­dees and orga­niz­ers, prop­er­ty van­dal­ism, and even fol­low­ing atten­dees home.

    Police inves­ti­ga­tions into the attacks were large­ly lack­lus­ter, often attribut­ing blame to the AUUC for some­how insti­gat­ing them. In Dec 1949, a crowd of two hun­dred nation­al­ists sur­round­ed a labor tem­ple event in Tim­mins, Ontario. They were denied entry, but refused to leave, shout­ing and bang­ing on the door. When the police arrived, they con­clud­ed that noth­ing crim­i­nal had occurred, and then drove off. Embold­ened, the nation­al­ists broke inside and start­ed beat­ing men, women, and chil­dren, send­ing sev­er­al peo­ple to hos­pi­tal in seri­ous con­di­tion. The local police returned but sim­ply stood and watched. Even­tu­al­ly, one nation­al­ist was charged with assault, but the pros­e­cu­tion and the defense col­lud­ed to acquit him.

    The Octo­ber 1950 bomb­ing of a Toron­to labor tem­ple brought broad­er pub­lic atten­tion to the con­flict with­in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. The AUUC accused Gali­cia Divi­sion vet­er­ans of the attack and blamed the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to screen them dur­ing immi­gra­tion. The RCMP inves­ti­ga­tion into the bomb­ing swift­ly elim­i­nat­ed nation­al­ists as sus­pects, even when lack­ing ali­bis and pos­sess­ing obvi­ous motive. Law enforce­ment also enter­tained nation­al­ist claims that the bomb­ing was a false-flag oper­a­tion car­ried out by the com­mu­nists to gar­ner pub­lic sym­pa­thy.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion failed to pur­sue many sig­nif­i­cant leads, and by ear­ly 1951, the case was closed with­out ever iden­ti­fy­ing a poten­tial sus­pect. Instead, the RCMP invest­ed its effort into cre­at­ing lists of any­one who wrote to the gov­ern­ment about the bomb­ing and con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on vic­tims of the attack. While it is like­ly that the bomb­ing was per­pe­trat­ed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, the inten­tion­al­ly poor inves­ti­ga­tion by the RCMP ren­ders it impos­si­ble to estab­lish with cer­tain­ty.

    Fol­low­ing the bomb­ing, overt vio­lence against Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left­ists declined by the mid-1950s. This decline was, in large part, due to its effec­tive­ness in intim­i­dat­ing AUUC sup­port­ers from attend­ing events and orga­niz­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, the far-right nation­al­ists had become increas­ing­ly inte­grat­ed into main­stream Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tions by this point, afford­ing them the legal means to expunge the reds in the com­mu­ni­ty. This align­ment with the broad­er Red Scare, which squashed left rad­i­cal­ism in Cana­da, fur­ther con­tributed to the decline of the AUUC.

    In 1945 the AUUC wel­comed 2,579 new mem­bers, but by 1969 that fig­ure dwin­dled to eighty-four annu­al­ly. The num­ber of tem­ples col­lapsed to forty-three by 1973. By the late 1960s, both the mem­ber­ship and lead­er­ship was aging, while young recruits were scarce.

    Endur­ing His­tor­i­cal Revi­sion­ism

    By the 1970s the nation­al­ists had estab­lished dom­i­na­tion over the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an expe­ri­ence. This frame­work exclud­ed diverse points of view, such as labor rad­i­cal­ism, and replaced it with a mono­lith­ic iden­ti­ty built on a con­ser­v­a­tive nation­al­ism. This era coin­cid­ed with the fash­ion­ing of Canada’s offi­cial mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, in which both the fed­er­al and provin­cial gov­ern­ments aimed to cel­e­brate diverse eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties.

    Under the fig leaf of cel­e­brat­ing eth­nic her­itage, stat­ues of Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, such as Roman Shukhevych in Edmon­ton, began to be erect­ed at this time, often with gov­ern­ment mon­ey. Hav­ing exten­sive­ly researched post­war vio­lence in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, the his­to­ri­an Kas­san­dra Luciuk argues that this was a delib­er­ate project of the Cana­di­an state, intend­ed to mar­gin­al­ize left­ists. It left no room for oth­er ideas of “Ukraini­an­ness” oth­er than one tight­ly wound with anti-com­mu­nist nation­al­ism.

    The pres­ence of Nazi mon­u­ments in Cana­da is symp­to­matic of this hege­mo­ny, vis­i­bly illus­trat­ing the his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists have suc­cess­ful­ly imposed. These mon­u­ments not only cel­e­brate indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that took part in war crimes dur­ing World War II, but also rep­re­sent a tri­umph over left-wing oppo­si­tion in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. This his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism has become so preva­lent that even a main­stream politi­cian, such as fed­er­al finance min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land, reg­u­lar­ly extols her Ukrain­ian grand­fa­ther, who hap­pened to run a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist news­pa­per recruit­ing for the 14th SS Divi­sion — the same divi­sion that Hun­ka joined.

    This revi­sion­ism owes its exis­tence to the Cana­di­an state, which used the many tools at its dis­pos­al — from the immi­gra­tion sys­tem to the police — to ensure an out­come that has per­sist­ed well after its anti-com­mu­nist pur­pose fad­ed. Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an nation­al­ists of course have been active in con­struct­ing this revi­sion­ism, but they flat­ter them­selves if they believe they could have accom­plished it alone.

    ...

    ————

    “To Crush Left-Wing Orga­niz­ing, Cana­da Embraced Ukrain­ian Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tors” By William Gillies; Jacobin; 12/21/2023

    “How­ev­er, media cov­er­age has large­ly failed to engage with the ques­tion of why Cana­da let peo­ple like Hun­ka immi­grate, result­ing in the cur­rent polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy lack­ing essen­tial his­tor­i­cal con­text. There have been some excep­tions, such as pieces in these pages that have point­ed out that there is a trou­bling his­to­ry that Cana­da must reck­on with, and cor­rect­ly sug­gest­ed that this immi­gra­tion of war crim­i­nals was tied to anti-com­mu­nism. It is impor­tant to delve fur­ther into this his­to­ry, as it reveals a delib­er­ate effort by the Cana­di­an state to dis­man­tle polit­i­cal rad­i­cal­ism and tame labor mil­i­tan­cy in the post­war peri­od.”

    Ukrain­ian Nazis weren’t just import­ed and cod­dled by the Ukrain­ian state for the hell of it. They were serv­ing a pur­pose: under­min­ing and tam­ing the Cana­di­an labor move­ment. It’s a cru­cial part of the his­to­ry behind the hon­or­ing of Yaroslav Hun­ka by the Cana­di­an par­lia­ment. Hun­ka was­n’t mis­tak­en­ly allowed into Cana­da despite his record as a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor. He was allowed in because of it, in the hopes that he and oth­ers would crush Cana­di­an labor:

    ...
    Immi­grants like Hun­ka were grant­ed entry specif­i­cal­ly because their col­lab­o­ra­tionist pasts made them use­ful in crush­ing left-wing orga­niz­ing in Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ties. Col­lab­o­ra­tors assumed con­trol of com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, some of which were trans­ferred to them by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, hav­ing seized them from social­ist groups dur­ing the war. The process was often quite vio­lent, with mob vio­lence intim­i­dat­ing left­ists, fas­cists serv­ing as strike­break­ers in min­ing towns, and a Ukrain­ian labor tem­ple being attacked with a bomb dur­ing a con­cert. All of these actions were con­doned by the Cana­di­an state in the name of anti-com­mu­nism.

    ...

    Con­trary to the present exis­tence of Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor mon­u­ments in Cana­da, there was once a robust Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left. Orga­nized around the Ukrain­ian Labour Farmer Tem­ple Asso­ci­a­tion (ULFTA), it played a piv­otal role in var­i­ous chap­ters of Cana­di­an labor his­to­ry, often adopt­ing rad­i­cal stances. The ULFTA oper­at­ed hun­dreds of “labor tem­ples” across the coun­try that nur­tured a polit­i­cal move­ment often called “hall social­ism.” Labor tem­ples host­ed polit­i­cal ral­lies, con­tained lend­ing libraries, pub­lished news­pa­pers, sup­port­ed Ukrain­ian immi­grants, spon­sored cul­tur­al activ­i­ties, and pro­vid­ed a venue for col­lec­tive social­iza­tion. In Win­nipeg, Man­i­to­ba, the finest still-exist­ing labor tem­ple was com­plet­ed in 1919, just in time to serve as the head­quar­ters of the city’s gen­er­al strike that same year.

    Between the world wars, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment feared Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an rad­i­cal­ism and its con­nec­tions to com­mu­nist agi­ta­tion. Ukraini­ans were enor­mous­ly over­rep­re­sent­ed in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Cana­da, which even had a Ukrain­ian lan­guage sec­tion. The ULFTA was for­mal­ly affil­i­at­ed with the par­ty and helped orga­nize Winnipeg’s large Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an work­ing class to elect com­mu­nists like Bill Kar­dash from the 1930s to the 1950s. In con­trast, Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists in Cana­da were mar­gin­al. They expressed admi­ra­tion for Hitler and denounced com­mu­nist politi­cians as the tri­umph of the “Bol­she­vik-Jew­ish clique.” In 1934, they pub­lished a Ukrain­ian edi­tion of The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.
    ...

    Cana­di­an law enforce­ment even encour­aged open vio­lence against Cana­di­an labor orga­niz­ers in the Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a scene eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent to the way Nazi mili­tias like C14 have allowed to open­ly ter­ror­ize Ukraine’s Roma com­mu­ni­ty with the back­ing of Ukrain­ian law enforce­ment. State backed ter­ror in both cas­es:

    ...
    On Octo­ber 8, 1950, a bomb went off dur­ing a con­cert at the Cen­tral Ukrain­ian Labor Tem­ple on Bathurst Street in Toron­to. Eleven peo­ple were injured, and the explo­sion lev­eled part of the build­ing. Author­i­ties offered a $1,500 reward for infor­ma­tion, but no one was ever caught. The long-stand­ing sus­pi­cion is that Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists were respon­si­ble, as this attack aligned with a pat­tern of vio­lence direct­ed against the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left dur­ing the 1950s. Ukrain­ian labor tem­ples and the broad­er labor move­ment were cen­tral to the post­war strug­gle between Ukrain­ian fas­cist emi­gres and the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Left.

    ...

    As the work con­tracts for the first wave of nation­al­ist emi­gres expired, they moved into urban areas, lead­ing to an esca­la­tion in attacks on the AUUC. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a fresh wave of Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons were admit­ted into Cana­da in the ear­ly 1950s after the removal of the ban on the immi­gra­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tors. In Win­nipeg, Toron­to, and Edmon­ton, nation­al­ists would attend labor tem­ple events with the inten­tion of dis­rupt­ing and attack­ing. This ranged from heck­ling to shut down a speak­er to phys­i­cal assaults on atten­dees and orga­niz­ers, prop­er­ty van­dal­ism, and even fol­low­ing atten­dees home.

    Police inves­ti­ga­tions into the attacks were large­ly lack­lus­ter, often attribut­ing blame to the AUUC for some­how insti­gat­ing them. In Dec 1949, a crowd of two hun­dred nation­al­ists sur­round­ed a labor tem­ple event in Tim­mins, Ontario. They were denied entry, but refused to leave, shout­ing and bang­ing on the door. When the police arrived, they con­clud­ed that noth­ing crim­i­nal had occurred, and then drove off. Embold­ened, the nation­al­ists broke inside and start­ed beat­ing men, women, and chil­dren, send­ing sev­er­al peo­ple to hos­pi­tal in seri­ous con­di­tion. The local police returned but sim­ply stood and watched. Even­tu­al­ly, one nation­al­ist was charged with assault, but the pros­e­cu­tion and the defense col­lud­ed to acquit him.
    .
    The Octo­ber 1950 bomb­ing of a Toron­to labor tem­ple brought broad­er pub­lic atten­tion to the con­flict with­in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. The AUUC accused Gali­cia Divi­sion vet­er­ans of the attack and blamed the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to screen them dur­ing immi­gra­tion. The RCMP inves­ti­ga­tion into the bomb­ing swift­ly elim­i­nat­ed nation­al­ists as sus­pects, even when lack­ing ali­bis and pos­sess­ing obvi­ous motive. Law enforce­ment also enter­tained nation­al­ist claims that the bomb­ing was a false-flag oper­a­tion car­ried out by the com­mu­nists to gar­ner pub­lic sym­pa­thy.

    The inves­ti­ga­tion failed to pur­sue many sig­nif­i­cant leads, and by ear­ly 1951, the case was closed with­out ever iden­ti­fy­ing a poten­tial sus­pect. Instead, the RCMP invest­ed its effort into cre­at­ing lists of any­one who wrote to the gov­ern­ment about the bomb­ing and con­duct­ed sur­veil­lance on vic­tims of the attack. While it is like­ly that the bomb­ing was per­pe­trat­ed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, the inten­tion­al­ly poor inves­ti­ga­tion by the RCMP ren­ders it impos­si­ble to estab­lish with cer­tain­ty.

    Fol­low­ing the bomb­ing, overt vio­lence against Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left­ists declined by the mid-1950s. This decline was, in large part, due to its effec­tive­ness in intim­i­dat­ing AUUC sup­port­ers from attend­ing events and orga­niz­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, the far-right nation­al­ists had become increas­ing­ly inte­grat­ed into main­stream Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tions by this point, afford­ing them the legal means to expunge the reds in the com­mu­ni­ty. This align­ment with the broad­er Red Scare, which squashed left rad­i­cal­ism in Cana­da, fur­ther con­tributed to the decline of the AUUC.
    ...

    And as we can see, this cod­dling of Ukrain­ian fas­cist groups start­ed as ear­ly as 1940, with the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Committee/Congress (UCC) form­ing that year in response to pres­sures for the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment:

    ...
    Fol­low­ing the ban­ning of the ULFTA, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment took fur­ther action to force a uni­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups in Cana­da in Novem­ber 1940. Invit­ing the var­i­ous groups’ lead­ers to a meet­ing, gov­ern­ment offi­cials pre­sent­ed a stack of police intel­li­gence reports doc­u­ment­ing their aware­ness of fas­cist polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions that they be out­lawed. The ulti­ma­tum was clear: unless these groups uni­fied accord­ing to the government’s pref­er­ences, they would face pro­hi­bi­tion. Respond­ing to this pres­sure, the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an Com­mit­tee (lat­er Con­gress) (UCC) was prompt­ly formed and remains in exis­tence today. The UCC was expect­ed to sup­port the war effort and act as an inter­me­di­ary between the gov­ern­ment and the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. In return the gov­ern­ment would lend sup­port to the claim that the nation­al­ists rep­re­sent­ed Ukrain­ian-Cana­di­ans.

    ...

    This peri­od had a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an left, as the halls and their con­tents, cru­cial to the move­ment and care­ful­ly built up over decades, suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss­es. Gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an pol­i­tics tipped the scales in the nation­al­ists’ favor, empow­er­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive UCC to dom­i­nate the com­mu­ni­ty after 1945.
    ...

    The UCC, in turn, began lob­by­ing the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to lift the ban on Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, which was indeed lift­ed in 1950. Inter­est­ing­ly, it appears near­ly twice as many Ukrain­ian refugees were allowed in as the offi­cial num­ber, with half orig­i­nat­ing from West­ern Ukraine, includ­ing up to 2000 mem­bers of the 14th Waf­fen SS Gali­cian divi­sion. It’s the kind of bureau­crat­ic ‘over­sight’ that would be in keep­ing with a secret gov­ern­ment agen­da to import far more of these indi­vid­u­als than Cana­di­an law allowed for, which rais­es the ques­tion as to how many of these uncount­ed refugees were brought in before the 1950 lift­ing of ban on Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors:

    ...
    By June 1947, dis­placed per­sons reg­is­tered as eth­nic Ukrain­ian totaled 106,549. Ini­tial­ly, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment showed lim­it­ed inter­est in admit­ting more Ukraini­ans, reflect­ing a long-stand­ing bias against non-West­ern Euro­pean immi­grants. Fur­ther­more, Cana­di­an law pro­hib­it­ed the accep­tance of for­mer com­bat­ants who had vol­un­tar­i­ly served in the Ger­man armed forces. How­ev­er, much of the screen­ing was con­duct­ed by British major Denis Hills, a self-described fas­cist who instruct­ed col­lab­o­ra­tors on how to avoid inves­ti­ga­tion. The British exon­er­at­ed the Gali­cia Divi­sion and trans­ferred many of them to Britain to fill labor short­ages in agri­cul­ture.

    The UCC lob­bied the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to accept Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons and empha­sized their anti-com­mu­nist poten­tial. Against the back­drop of a boom­ing labor mar­ket in Cana­da, these Ukraini­ans were por­trayed as dis­ci­plined work­ers opposed to any sort of union rad­i­cal­ism. They were pos­i­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ized as capa­ble of fill­ing vacan­cies in min­ing and forestry, where they could break up left-wing Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tions.

    Start­ing in 1947, this lob­by­ing began to yield results, espe­cial­ly as the British gov­ern­ment pres­sured Cana­da to accept them. In 1950, the immi­gra­tion ban on Ukraini­ans who served in the SS was lift­ed, thanks to UCC advo­ca­cy that claimed they were sim­ply sol­diers who had fought against com­mu­nism.

    ...

    By Jan­u­ary 1952, offi­cial fig­ures indi­cat­ed that twen­ty-six thou­sand Ukrain­ian dis­placed per­sons had been accept­ed. How­ev­er, lat­er his­tor­i­cal research sug­gests that offi­cial fig­ures under­count­ed, and that the actu­al num­ber could have been as high as fifty thou­sand, with half orig­i­nat­ing from west­ern Ukraine, the heart­land of the nation­al­ist move­ment. Approx­i­mate­ly 3 per­cent were vet­er­ans of the 14th SS Divi­sion, about 1,500 peo­ple, although some sources cite fig­ures as high as two thou­sand. Addi­tion­al­ly, there were oth­er nation­al­ists who col­lab­o­rat­ed in less for­mal ways than join­ing the SS, but were still active par­tic­i­pants in the Holo­caust.
    ...

    By the 1970s, Canada’s large Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty was effec­tive­ly dom­i­nat­ed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. With all of the revi­sion­ism that comes with such dom­i­nance. State-financed revi­sion­ism in many cas­es:

    ...
    By the 1970s the nation­al­ists had estab­lished dom­i­na­tion over the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an expe­ri­ence. This frame­work exclud­ed diverse points of view, such as labor rad­i­cal­ism, and replaced it with a mono­lith­ic iden­ti­ty built on a con­ser­v­a­tive nation­al­ism. This era coin­cid­ed with the fash­ion­ing of Canada’s offi­cial mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, in which both the fed­er­al and provin­cial gov­ern­ments aimed to cel­e­brate diverse eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties.

    Under the fig leaf of cel­e­brat­ing eth­nic her­itage, stat­ues of Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, such as Roman Shukhevych in Edmon­ton, began to be erect­ed at this time, often with gov­ern­ment mon­ey. Hav­ing exten­sive­ly researched post­war vio­lence in the Ukrain­ian Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, the his­to­ri­an Kas­san­dra Luciuk argues that this was a delib­er­ate project of the Cana­di­an state, intend­ed to mar­gin­al­ize left­ists. It left no room for oth­er ideas of “Ukraini­an­ness” oth­er than one tight­ly wound with anti-com­mu­nist nation­al­ism.
    ...

    It’s not hard to see why Cana­di­an offi­cials don’t want to talk about this kind of stuff today. It’s a lot hard­er to see why the rest of the pub­lic has remained so dis­in­ter­est­ed. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing inter­view of Russ Bel­lant from back in March of 2014, pub­lished less than a month after the fall of the Yanukovych gov­ern­ment. An inter­view about the US’s own decades of embrac­ing an array of promi­nent Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors right from the out­set of the Cold War and the deep­en­ing of that embrace, includ­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s polit­i­cal main­stream­ing of these groups through its Eth­nic Out­reach Com­mit­tees. And as Bel­lant points out at the end, not only does the pub­lic have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to under­stand this kind of impor­tant his­to­ry but it’s not that hard to do so any­more. This stuff was a secret. It’s not still a secret. We’ve known about this for decades. It’s a sto­ry about decades of dirty secrets fol­lowed by decades of will­ful blind­ness:

    The Nation

    Sev­en Decades of Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tion: America’s Dirty Lit­tle Ukraine Secret

    An inter­view with Russ Bel­lant, author of Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

    Paul H. Rosen­berg and For­eign Pol­i­cy In Focus
    March 28, 2014

    This arti­cle is a joint pub­li­ca­tion of TheNation.com and For­eign Pol­i­cy In Focus.

    As the Ukrain­ian cri­sis has unfold­ed over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Amer­i­cans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big vil­lain. But the his­to­ry of the region is a his­to­ry of com­pet­ing vil­lains vying against one anoth­er; and one school of villains—the Nazis—have a long his­to­ry of engage­ment with the Unit­ed States, most­ly below the radar, but occa­sion­al­ly exposed, as they were by Russ Bel­lant in his book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty (South End Press, 1991). Bel­lan­t’s expo­sure of émi­gré Nazi lead­ers from Ger­many’s World War II allies in the 1988 Bush pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was the dri­ving force in the announced res­ig­na­tion of nine indi­vid­u­als, two of them from Ukraine, which is why he was the log­i­cal choice to illu­mi­nate the scat­tered men­tions of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments among the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, which some­how nev­er seems to war­rant fur­ther com­ment or expla­na­tion. Of course most Ukraini­ans aren’t Nazis or fascists—all the more rea­son to illu­mi­nate those who would hide their true natures in the shadows…or even behind the momen­tary glare of the spot­light.

    * Your book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, exposed the deep involve­ment in the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Nazi ele­ments from Cen­tral and East­ern Europe, includ­ing Ukraini­ans, dat­ing back to World War II and even before. As the Ukrain­ian cri­sis unfold­ed in the last few weeks, there have been scat­tered men­tions of a fas­cist or neo-fas­cist ele­ment, but some­how that nev­er seems to war­rant fur­ther com­ment or expla­na­tion. I can’t think of any­one bet­ter to shed light on what’s not being said about that ele­ment. The dan­ger of Russ­ian bel­liger­ence is increas­ing­ly obvi­ous, but this unex­am­ined fas­cist ele­ment pos­es dan­gers of its own. What can you tell us about this ele­ment and those dan­gers? *

    The ele­ment has a long his­to­ry, of a long record that speaks for itself, when that record is actu­al­ly known and elab­o­rat­ed on. The key orga­ni­za­tion in the coup that took place here recent­ly was the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists [OUN], or a spe­cif­ic branch of it known as the Ban­deras [OUN‑B]. They’re the group behind the Svo­bo­da par­ty, which got a num­ber of key posi­tions in the new inter­im regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from oth­er groups, and, espe­cial­ly in the 1930s, began a cam­paign of assas­si­nat­ing and oth­er­wise ter­ror­iz­ing peo­ple who didn’t agree with them.

    ...

    With­out get­ting deeply involved in that whole his­to­ry, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists to this day defend their wartime role. They were back­ers of form­ing the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion, which was the all-Ukrain­ian divi­sion that became an armed ele­ment on behalf of the Ger­mans, and under over­all Ger­man con­trol. They helped encour­age its for­ma­tion, and after the war, right at the end of the war, it was called the First Ukrain­ian divi­sion. They still glo­ri­fy that his­to­ry of that SS divi­sion, and they have a vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion that obvi­ous­ly doesn’t have too many of mem­bers left, but they formed a vet­er­ans divi­sion of that.

    ...

    So this is a very clear record, and the OUN, even in its post­war pub­li­ca­tions, has called for eth­no-genet­i­cal­ly pure Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry, which of course is sim­ply call­ing for purg­ing Jews, Poles and Rus­sians from what they con­sid­er Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry. Also, cur­rent lead­ers of Svo­bo­da have made bla­tant­ly anti-Semit­ic remarks that call for get­ting rid of Mus­covite Jews and so forth. They use this very coarse, threat­en­ing lan­guage that any­body know­ing the his­to­ry of World War II would trem­ble at. If they were liv­ing here, it would seem like they would start wor­ry­ing about it.

    Obvi­ous­ly these peo­ple don’t hold monop­oly pow­er in Ukraine, but they stepped up and the Unit­ed States has been behind the Svo­bo­da par­ty and these Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. In fact, the US con­nec­tions to them go back to World War II, and the Unit­ed States has had a long­stand­ing tie to the OUN, through the intel­li­gence agencies—initially mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, lat­er the CIA.

    * Your book dis­cuss­es a cen­tral fig­ure in the OUN, Yaroslav Stet­sko, who was polit­i­cal­ly active for decades here in Amer­i­ca. What can you tell us about his his­to­ry? *

    Yaroslav Stet­sko was the num­ber-two leader of the OUN dur­ing World War II and there­after. In 1959, Stepan Ban­dera, who was head of the OUN, was killed, and that’s when Stet­sko assumed the lead­er­ship. Stet­sko was the guy who actu­al­ly marched into Lvov with the Ger­man army on June 30, 1941. The OUN issued a procla­ma­tion at that time under his name prais­ing and call­ing for glo­ry to the Ger­man leader Adolf Hitler and how they’re going to march arm in arm for Ukraine and so forth. After the war, he was part of the key lead­er­ship that got picked up by the Amer­i­cans.

    There’s a num­ber of accounts I’ve seen, at least three cred­i­ble reports, on how they were in the dis­placed per­sons camp—the Allied forces set up dis­placed per­sons camps and picked up tens of thou­sands of these for­mer allies of Hitler from coun­tries all over the East—Hungary, Latvia, Lithua­nia. There weren’t Pol­ish col­lab­o­ra­tors; I think most peo­ple know the Ger­mans heav­i­ly per­se­cut­ed and mur­dered mil­lions of Pol­ish residents—but Bul­gar­ia, Roma­nia, Croa­t­ia and so forth, Belorus­sia. They had them in these camps they built and orga­nized them, where the Ukraini­ans were assas­si­nat­ing their Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist rivals so they would be the undis­put­ed lead­ers of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist move­ment, so they would get the spon­sor­ship of the Unit­ed States to con­tin­ue their polit­i­cal oper­a­tion, and they were suc­cess­ful in that regard. So when Ban­dera was out of the pic­ture, Stet­sko became the undis­put­ed leader of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

    The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in 1943 under Ger­man spon­sor­ship orga­nized a multi­na­tion­al force to fight on behalf of the retreat­ing Ger­man army. After the bat­tle of Stal­in­grad in ’43, the Ger­mans felt a height­ened need to get more allies, and so the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists and oth­ers with mil­i­tary for­ma­tions in place to assist came togeth­er and formed the unit­ed front called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, and again worked on behalf of the Ger­man mil­i­tary. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, or ABN. Stet­sko was the leader of that until he died in 1986.

    I men­tion this in part because the OUN tries to say, Well, dur­ing the war we fought the Ger­mans and the Com­mu­nists. The fact of the mat­ter is that they were the lead­er­ship of this whole multi­na­tion­al alliance on behalf of the Ger­mans the last two years of the war and in the war there­after. All the post­war lead­ers of the unre­pen­tant Nazi allies were under the lead­er­ship of Yaroslav Stet­sko.

    * What hap­pened when Stet­sko, and oth­ers like him from oth­er Ger­man allied forces, came to the Unit­ed States? *

    In the Unit­ed States, when they came, his groups orga­nized “cap­tive nations” com­mit­tees. They became, sup­pos­ed­ly, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of peo­ple who were being oppressed in East­ern Europe and the Baltic coun­tries by the Sovi­et Union. They were, in fact, being giv­en an uncrit­i­cal blank check to rep­re­sent the voic­es of all these nations that were part of the War­saw Pact, when in fact they rep­re­sent­ed the most extreme ele­ments of each of the nation­al com­mu­ni­ties.

    The Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee in Wash­ing­ton, DC, for instance, was run by the per­son who head­ed the Ukrain­ian orga­ni­za­tion of nation­al­ists; that was true in a num­ber of places. In my home­town area near Detroit, as well, they played a major role. In the ear­ly 1950s, when they were reset­tled in the Unit­ed States, there were at least 10,000 of them that were reset­tled, when you look at all the nation­al­i­ties. They became polit­i­cal­ly active through the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, because it was real­ly the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion that made the pol­i­cy deci­sion in the ear­ly 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions, every four years they would mobi­lize for the Repub­li­can can­di­date, who­ev­er it would be, and some of them, like Richard Nixon in 1960, actu­al­ly had close direct ties to some of the lead­ers like the Roman­ian Iron Guard, and some of these oth­er groups.

    When Nixon ran for pres­i­dent in 1968, he made a promise to these lead­ers that they would—if he won the pres­i­den­cy, he would make them the eth­nic out­reach arm of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee on a per­ma­nent basis, so they wouldn’t be a qua­dren­ni­al pres­ence, but a con­tin­u­ing pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And he made that promise through a guy named Las­z­lo Pasz­tor, who served five years in prison after World War II for crimes against human­i­ty. He was pros­e­cut­ed in 1946 by the non-Com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment that actu­al­ly had con­trol of Hun­gary at the time (there was a peri­od from ’45 to ’48 when the Hun­gar­i­an Com­mu­nist Par­ty didn’t run Hun­gary). They were the ones who pros­e­cut­ed him. He had served as a liai­son between the Hun­gar­i­an Nazi par­ty and Berlin; he served in the Berlin embassy of the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross move­ment. This is the guy that got picked to orga­nize all the eth­nic groups, and the only peo­ple that got brought in were the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors.

    They didn’t have a Russ­ian affil­i­ate because they hat­ed all Rus­sians of all polit­i­cal stripes. There were no African-Amer­i­cans or Jew­ish affil­i­ates either. It was just com­posed of these ele­ments, and for a while they had a Ger­man affil­i­ate, but some expo­sure of the Nazi char­ac­ter of the Ger­man affil­i­ate caused it to be qui­et­ly removed, but oth­er [Nazi] ele­ments were retained.

    * Your book was researched and pub­lished in the 1980s. What was hap­pen­ing by that point in time, after these groups had been estab­lished for more than a decade? *

    I went to their meet­ings in the 1980s, and they put out mate­r­i­al that real­ly made clear who they were. One of their 1984 book­lets praised the pro-Nazi Ustashi regime in Croa­t­ia; these Ustashi killed an esti­mat­ed 750,000 peo­ple and burned them alive in their own camp in Croa­t­ia. And here they are prais­ing the found­ing of this regime, and acknowl­edg­ing that it was asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazis, and it was signed by the chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. You couldn’t make this stuff up! It was just crazy.

    ...

    When Bush Senior was run­ning for pres­i­dent in 1988, he came to these, basi­cal­ly one of the lead­ing loca­tions of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists in North Amer­i­ca, which is just out­side of Detroit, a sub­urb of Detroit, to their cul­tur­al cen­ter, and one of their fore­most lead­ers in the world is head­quar­tered out of there. At the time, he got Bush to come there and they denounced the OSI, and Bush just shook his head; he wouldn’t say any­thing about it.

    The OSI was the Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. It was inves­ti­gat­ing the pres­ence of Nazi war crim­i­nals in the Unit­ed States, and deport­ing those who were found to have lied on their his­to­ry when they applied to come into the Unit­ed States after the war. They had deport­ed a num­ber of peo­ple from all over the Unit­ed States. They had a lot of open inves­ti­ga­tions, and all these émi­gré Nazis were try­ing to bring all the polit­i­cal pres­sure they could to stop these inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

    So they denounced them, the OSI inves­ti­ga­tions, in front of Bush. Bush nod­ded his head, but he wouldn’t say any­thing because he didn’t want to sound like he was sym­pa­thet­ic to the Nazi war crim­i­nals, but at the same time he didn’t want to offend his hosts by dis­put­ing the issue with them. So, the issue of World War II was still being played out over four decades lat­er, in the pol­i­tics of the pres­i­den­cy, and unfor­tu­nate­ly Bush and Rea­gan con­tin­ued to be on the side that we defeat­ed in World War II.

    * What was the response when your book came out, with all this infor­ma­tion? How was the infor­ma­tion received, and what was the polit­i­cal reac­tion? *

    ...

    If you want an anec­dote, I know that 60 Min­utes was work­ing on a piece that Bradley’s team was work­ing on. Nan­cy Rea­gan her­self called the exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and said that we would real­ly like it if you wouldn’t do this sto­ry, and they killed it. Because, basi­cal­ly, it’s not just about Nazis and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and the White House. It inevitably rais­es the ques­tion of, who are they, how did they get here, who spon­sored them? And it goes back to the intel­li­gence agen­cies at that point. And some peo­ple don’t like tread­ing there; if it’s tied to an intel­li­gence agency, they pre­fer to just stay away from the sub­ject. So, some peo­ple at 60 Min­utes were frus­trat­ed by it, but that’s what hap­pened. I think that they were able to effec­tive­ly kill the sto­ry when peo­ple tried to cov­er it. They were able to per­suade news man­agers to not delve into it too much.

    ...

    * Your book was an impor­tant rev­e­la­tion but was not alone. Your book notes that Jack Ander­son report­ed on the pro-Nazi back­grounds of some of the eth­nic advi­sors as far back as 1971, yet when your report came out almost two decades lat­er, every­one respond­ed with shock, sur­prise and even denial. What lessons should we draw from this his­to­ry of buried his­to­ry? And how should it influ­ence our think­ing about the unfold­ing cri­sis in Ukraine? *

    I don’t believe it’s ever too late to become famil­iar­ized and edu­cat­ed about the his­to­ry of this phenomenon—both the wartime his­to­ry and our post­war col­lab­o­ra­tion with these folks. There were a num­ber of exposés writ­ten about the émi­gré Nazis. There was a 1979 book called Want­ed, and it did a num­ber of case sto­ries of these peo­ple being brought into the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the Tri­fa sto­ry. Christo­pher Simp­son did a book called Blow­back that dis­cussed the pol­i­cy deci­sions; it’s an incred­i­ble book. He’s a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, and he did years of research through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act and archives, and got the pol­i­cy doc­u­ments under which the deci­sions were made to bring these folks togeth­er, and not just into the Unit­ed States but to deploy them around the world.

    Like my book, it didn’t get the atten­tion it deserved. The New York Times book review­er was neg­a­tive toward the book. There are peo­ple who real­ly don’t want to touch this stuff. There’s a lot of peo­ple who don’t want it touched. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant for peo­ple who believe in open­ness and trans­paren­cy and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, who don’t want to see hate groups come back to pow­er in oth­er parts of the world, to know what hap­pened.

    There aren’t very many Amer­i­cans who real­ly even know that the Waf­fen SS was a multi­na­tion­al force. That’s been kind of kept out of the received his­to­ry. Oth­er­wise peo­ple would know that there were Ukrain­ian Nazis, Hun­gar­i­an Nazis, Lat­vian Nazis, and they were all involved in the mass mur­der of their fel­low cit­i­zens, if they were Jew­ish, or even if they were co-nation­al­ists that were on the oth­er side of the issue of the war. They were just mass mur­der­ers, across East­ern Europe. And that his­to­ry, those facts, aren’t even well-known. A lot of peo­ple didn’t even know this phe­nom­e­non exist­ed.

    ...

    I went to these meet­ings, I went to these con­fer­ences, I went over a peri­od of years. I met with them direct­ly, most of the peo­ple I wrote about, I met with them per­son­al­ly or in group meet­ings. Peo­ple can’t afford to do that on their own, time­wise, but there’s enough lit­er­a­ture out there so they can read about it. They will get enough of a han­dle to get what the real pic­ture is, to demand change. I’m not total­ly par­ti­san: I think the Repub­li­can Par­ty was extreme on this, but the Democ­rats fold­ed and didn’t chal­lenge this when they knew it was going on.

    ...

    ———–

    “Sev­en Decades of Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tion: America’s Dirty Lit­tle Ukraine Secret” by Paul H. Rosen­berg; The Nation; 03/28/2014

    “If you want an anec­dote, I know that 60 Min­utes was work­ing on a piece that Bradley’s team was work­ing on. Nan­cy Rea­gan her­self called the exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and said that we would real­ly like it if you wouldn’t do this sto­ry, and they killed it. Because, basi­cal­ly, it’s not just about Nazis and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and the White House. It inevitably rais­es the ques­tion of, who are they, how did they get here, who spon­sored them? And it goes back to the intel­li­gence agen­cies at that point. And some peo­ple don’t like tread­ing there; if it’s tied to an intel­li­gence agency, they pre­fer to just stay away from the sub­ject. So, some peo­ple at 60 Min­utes were frus­trat­ed by it, but that’s what hap­pened. I think that they were able to effec­tive­ly kill the sto­ry when peo­ple tried to cov­er it. They were able to per­suade news man­agers to not delve into it too much.”

    Yes, as Russ Bel­lant describes, Amer­i­ca’s dirty lit­tle Nazi secret isn’t just a polit­i­cal scan­dal for the Repub­li­can Par­ty, although it is very much that. But it’s much big­ger than a polit­i­cal scan­dal. It’s an intel­li­gence scan­dal going back to the ori­gins of the Cold War, the mod­ern nation­al secu­ri­ty state, and the domes­tic pol­i­tics of the Cold War. The Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist WWII enti­ty, the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, became the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations in 1946, with OUN-leader Yaroslav Stet­sko at its helm until he died in 1986. And near­ly the whole time, these same groups were act­ing as polit­i­cal oper­a­tives for the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It’s the kind of scan­dal that A LOT of peo­ple would rather we not talk about. A big, messy scan­dal that went on for decades and with con­se­quences play­ing out today, espe­cial­ly in war rav­aged Ukraine where these same forces have achieved cul­tur­al dom­i­nance:

    ...
    The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in 1943 under Ger­man spon­sor­ship orga­nized a multi­na­tion­al force to fight on behalf of the retreat­ing Ger­man army. After the bat­tle of Stal­in­grad in ’43, the Ger­mans felt a height­ened need to get more allies, and so the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists and oth­ers with mil­i­tary for­ma­tions in place to assist came togeth­er and formed the unit­ed front called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, and again worked on behalf of the Ger­man mil­i­tary. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, or ABN. Stet­sko was the leader of that until he died in 1986.

    I men­tion this in part because the OUN tries to say, Well, dur­ing the war we fought the Ger­mans and the Com­mu­nists. The fact of the mat­ter is that they were the lead­er­ship of this whole multi­na­tion­al alliance on behalf of the Ger­mans the last two years of the war and in the war there­after. All the post­war lead­ers of the unre­pen­tant Nazi allies were under the lead­er­ship of Yaroslav Stet­sko.

    ...

    In the Unit­ed States, when they came, his groups orga­nized “cap­tive nations” com­mit­tees. They became, sup­pos­ed­ly, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of peo­ple who were being oppressed in East­ern Europe and the Baltic coun­tries by the Sovi­et Union. They were, in fact, being giv­en an uncrit­i­cal blank check to rep­re­sent the voic­es of all these nations that were part of the War­saw Pact, when in fact they rep­re­sent­ed the most extreme ele­ments of each of the nation­al com­mu­ni­ties.

    The Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee in Wash­ing­ton, DC, for instance, was run by the per­son who head­ed the Ukrain­ian orga­ni­za­tion of nation­al­ists; that was true in a num­ber of places. In my home­town area near Detroit, as well, they played a major role. In the ear­ly 1950s, when they were reset­tled in the Unit­ed States, there were at least 10,000 of them that were reset­tled, when you look at all the nation­al­i­ties. They became polit­i­cal­ly active through the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, because it was real­ly the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion that made the pol­i­cy deci­sion in the ear­ly 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions, every four years they would mobi­lize for the Repub­li­can can­di­date, who­ev­er it would be, and some of them, like Richard Nixon in 1960, actu­al­ly had close direct ties to some of the lead­ers like the Roman­ian Iron Guard, and some of these oth­er groups.
    ...

    And when we hear about George H. W. Bush just sit­ting there dur­ing a 1988 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign event in Michi­gan, silent­ly nod­ding his head while a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist leader denounces the OSI, keep in mind it was John Lof­tus’s work at the OSI that orig­i­nal­ly uncov­ered a lot those Nazi war crim­i­nals. Lof­tus’s book about all that was pub­lished in 1982. It was­n’t a secret why this Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist leader had a prob­lem with the OSI. Also keep in mind that it was Bush who signed the order to make these Eth­nic Out­reach Com­mit­tees per­ma­nent enti­ties, instead of just on pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years, when Bush was the head of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in 1972. George H. W. Bush had a lot of rea­sons just qui­et­ly nod along:

    ...
    When Bush Senior was run­ning for pres­i­dent in 1988, he came to these, basi­cal­ly one of the lead­ing loca­tions of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists in North Amer­i­ca, which is just out­side of Detroit, a sub­urb of Detroit, to their cul­tur­al cen­ter, and one of their fore­most lead­ers in the world is head­quar­tered out of there. At the time, he got Bush to come there and they denounced the OSI, and Bush just shook his head; he wouldn’t say any­thing about it.

    ...

    So they denounced them, the OSI inves­ti­ga­tions, in front of Bush. Bush nod­ded his head, but he wouldn’t say any­thing because he didn’t want to sound like he was sym­pa­thet­ic to the Nazi war crim­i­nals, but at the same time he didn’t want to offend his hosts by dis­put­ing the issue with them. So, the issue of World War II was still being played out over four decades lat­er, in the pol­i­tics of the pres­i­den­cy, and unfor­tu­nate­ly Bush and Rea­gan con­tin­ued to be on the side that we defeat­ed in World War II.
    ...

    Final­ly, notes Bel­lan­t’s obser­va­tions about the per­sis­tent inabil­i­ty of the Amer­i­can pub­lic to learn this his­to­ry that’s been pub­lic knowl­edge for decades now. Yes, it’s true that aver­age peo­ple don’t have the time to per­son­al­ly inves­ti­gate these top­ics like Bel­lant has done. But they don’t have to do all that. They just need to read about all this stuff that’s now old news:

    ...
    I don’t believe it’s ever too late to become famil­iar­ized and edu­cat­ed about the his­to­ry of this phenomenon—both the wartime his­to­ry and our post­war col­lab­o­ra­tion with these folks. There were a num­ber of exposés writ­ten about the émi­gré Nazis. There was a 1979 book called Want­ed, and it did a num­ber of case sto­ries of these peo­ple being brought into the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the Tri­fa sto­ry. Christo­pher Simp­son did a book called Blow­back that dis­cussed the pol­i­cy deci­sions; it’s an incred­i­ble book. He’s a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, and he did years of research through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act and archives, and got the pol­i­cy doc­u­ments under which the deci­sions were made to bring these folks togeth­er, and not just into the Unit­ed States but to deploy them around the world.

    Like my book, it didn’t get the atten­tion it deserved. The New York Times book review­er was neg­a­tive toward the book. There are peo­ple who real­ly don’t want to touch this stuff. There’s a lot of peo­ple who don’t want it touched. I think it’s real­ly impor­tant for peo­ple who believe in open­ness and trans­paren­cy and demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, who don’t want to see hate groups come back to pow­er in oth­er parts of the world, to know what hap­pened.

    There aren’t very many Amer­i­cans who real­ly even know that the Waf­fen SS was a multi­na­tion­al force. That’s been kind of kept out of the received his­to­ry. Oth­er­wise peo­ple would know that there were Ukrain­ian Nazis, Hun­gar­i­an Nazis, Lat­vian Nazis, and they were all involved in the mass mur­der of their fel­low cit­i­zens, if they were Jew­ish, or even if they were co-nation­al­ists that were on the oth­er side of the issue of the war. They were just mass mur­der­ers, across East­ern Europe. And that his­to­ry, those facts, aren’t even well-known. A lot of peo­ple didn’t even know this phe­nom­e­non exist­ed.

    ...

    I went to these meet­ings, I went to these con­fer­ences, I went over a peri­od of years. I met with them direct­ly, most of the peo­ple I wrote about, I met with them per­son­al­ly or in group meet­ings. Peo­ple can’t afford to do that on their own, time­wise, but there’s enough lit­er­a­ture out there so they can read about it. They will get enough of a han­dle to get what the real pic­ture is, to demand change. I’m not total­ly par­ti­san: I think the Repub­li­can Par­ty was extreme on this, but the Democ­rats fold­ed and didn’t chal­lenge this when they knew it was going on.
    ...

    Keep in mind this inter­view with Bel­lant was in March 2014, just weeks into the Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion. All of this old news was incred­i­bly rel­e­vant for under­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion that was unfold­ing then because it was the his­to­ry that informed us about the nature of these new­ly empow­ered forces in Ukraine. Almost a decade lat­er, and it’s clear that not only have we not learned this his­to­ry but there’s been an Orwellian white­wash­ing of this his­to­ry, first in Ukraine and, once the war start­ed, spread across the world. Which makes this all the more impor­tant his­to­ry. It’s not hid­den his­to­ry. But it’s effec­tive­ly lost his­to­ry. The kind of lost his­to­ry that could be eas­i­ly found if we just remem­bered to look for it. The kind of pathet­i­cal­ly lost his­to­ry we should be resolved to recov­er because it mat­ters. Bet­ter late than never...just hope­ful­ly not too late to mat­ter.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 30, 2023, 6:11 pm

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