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Whitewashing The SS: The Attempt to Re-Write the History of Hitler’s Collaborators

espritdecorps.ca Whitewashing The SS: The Attempt to Re-Write the History of Hitler’s Collaborators — espritdecorps

By David Pugliese Over the years some Ukrainian Canadians have staunchly defended the 14th SS Division Galicia. They have falsely claimed that Ukrainians who served in the division were conscripted, when in reality 80,000 volunteered and 13,000 were selected. Other apologists argue that the divisio

Whitewashing The SS: The Attempt to Re-Write the  History of Hitler’s Collaborators — espritdecorps

Relevant due to the Canadian monument that was recently defaced. Image via RadicalGraffiti@todon.eu.

This is a plea not to whitewash Ukraine's nazi past or minimize the fascist presence in its forces, but to defend its people from fascism and imperialism. Anarchists and Communists are fighting for the Ukrainian people against Russia, and are calling for solidarity.

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  • This post mirrors similar posts made in /c/world@lemmy.world and /c/worldnews@lemmy.world where the user making the post was trying to assert that Canada welcomes Nazi soldiers. You can skim my profile for comments I've made on those posts within the last 24hs if you want a bit of context.

    Both of the original posts were deleted from their respective communities so trying to follow the comments leads to an error page informing you that the post could not be found.

    Here are some screenshots I have of the users' partially censored usernames and the associated post titles which are very similar to the wording in the title used here (I'm using censored names because I'm unsure if naming users is against the rules).
    lemmygrad user posting to /c/world@lemmy.world
    lemmynsfw user posting to /c/worldnews@lemmy.world

    I'm guessing that this is getting pushed due to a recent incident involving a Canadian House of Commons speaker, and trolls have been trying to push Ukrainians as Nazis since then.

    • If anyone came straight to the comments, I strongly encourage you to read the article right now. You can make your own judgement about what the above commenter is trying to do after reading it.

      • I probably inferred too much from the post's title, especially after I had seen previous posts with very similar titles framing Canada as being supportive of Nazis.

        While I don't agree with OP's stance of associating people today with people from +70 years ago, people have differing perspectives on things and my opinion is going to be based off of how much I perceive the two things to be relevant. To me, their stance would be like holding a person accountable because their grandparents destroying a building long before they were even born.

    • this is getting pushed

      My stance is clear from the post body text and my post history.

      Representing concern about fascism in Ukraine as a narritive only shared by pro-Putin trolls is tacit support for nazism. Your kind of propaganda is harming support for Ukraine in the west. Please stop.

      • That's the point especially people in Ukraine don't seem to get.

        Nobody gives a fuck about right-wing radicals or neo-nazis existing in Ukraine because they (like every group of idiots) exist everywhere to some degree. Giving their extreme situation, we can also somewhat live with them being used for a cause back when they were a vital part of fighting Russians at a time when the official army wasn't up to the task yet.

        But only IF we feel that they acknowledge the issue and are able to handle them when they become a problem. And categorically denying everything and denouncing every question as Russian propaganda is doing the exact opposite. And it's actually fuelling the narratives they try to work against.

        Or to paraphrase a particularly extreme example of Ukrainian¹: "Neither do neo-nazis (or any other right-wing radicals) exist in Ukraine nor have they ever existed there in history. All evidence saying otherwise is fabricate by or for Russia." That comment alone has probably done more good for Russian propaganda than a hundred of Russian bullshit stories. As we know history and he was either lying to our faces or insane.

        ¹Ukraine's ambassador to Germany in 2015

      • The issue is with conflating people from an event which occurred in the 1950s and associating it with groups of people alive currently, to me these two things are distinctly different from each other, and I wouldn't link these two things together.

        Events related WWII feel irrelevant anything going on today, it's been ~75 years since then and the majority of people from that time period are already dead or >90 years old. Their actions were not influenced by people born decades after the fact, and it feels incorrect to link the two groups together. Multiple generations of people have been born in that time span further distancing people from older ideologies.

        By David Pugliese Over the years some Ukrainian Canadians have staunchly defended the 14th SS Division Galicia. They have falsely claimed that Ukrainians who served in the division were conscripted, when in reality 80,000 volunteered and 13,000 were selected. Other apologists argue that the divisio...

        With the title of the article/post, and the summary shown on desktop, it looked like this was just another post associating Canada with accepting Nazis/implying that people with Ukranian nationality are Nazis due to the phrasing of the title being similar to the titles used by the lemmygrad/lemmynsfw users.

        It's my fault for skimming the rest of the post body, it looked that was a generic image caption crediting a photographer, followed by a short paragraph copied from the article.

      • Might've picked the wrong link on the second one - it leads to a post about Ukraine's denial of a missile attack rather than anything about far-right whitewashing.

  • Sure, there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine and there's no denying that Azov has that past. The Russian Volunteer Corps fighting for Ukraine is composed of neo-Nazis and there are multiple other Russian neo-Nazis now on the side of Ukraine.

    There are also neo-Nazis fighting for Russia. The Wagner and Rusich groups for example.

    More importantly, at the helm of Russia, there is a real fascist with a track record of countless acts of murder committed to further his idea of a great nation. Any ideological Nazi is like child's play in comparison, so I see no issue with Ukraine choosing the lesser evil and using those dreamers to fight another Hitler wannabe, just as they did Stalin in the years of Bandera.

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