The Cold War Never Ended

The seminal work Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky provided the now-famous propaganda model to evaluate how news media in capitalist societies, particularly the US, works as a propaganda arm of the state. The book’s proliferation allowed a critique of capitalist news media that had rarely been scrutinized on such a thoroughly researched level.

Though it was not the first piece (or, in my opinion, the best) to critique the capitalist news industry, it provided a simple framework to contextualize which coverage dominated headlines. The news media of the time had successfully shifted its public image from its yellow journalism roots into the much more admirable presentation of a hard-nosed reporting machine that operated without bias. Manufacturing Consent provided the simplest manner to take apart this false image.

The book was published in 1988, in the context of the Cold War. As such, the fifth filter of control was labelled “Anti-communism,” as that was the overriding ideology of capitalist news media. But as the USSR fell, and reactionaries round the world cheered, Chomsky found this designation to be increasingly irrelevant, at least as far as Wikipedia has told me (but I haven’t been able to verify myself). Apparently, Chomsky revised the fifth filter to something else as the US set its sights on non-state actors: anti-terrorism.

This may have been prescient in the immediate illegal dissolution of the USSR, as acts like Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing and images of figures like Saddam Hussein increasingly occupied the minds of US citizens. As 9/11 and George W. Bush’s cataclysmic response elevated terrorism to a concern of international priority, the move seemed more justified. But the burying of anti-communism as a motivating factor was erroneous. The benefit of hindsight has shown that this was premature.

As many are aware, the Canadian Parliament gave two standing ovations to a literal Waffen-SS veteran, introduced as having fought Russia in World War II. Much has been said about this disgrace, and much will continue to be said about its international repercussions. But as for our news media, they collectively took a short breath before relaying sympathy for the Nazi war criminal.

Running Cover for Nazis

The most pertinent example is Global News. They ran the headline “Kingston, Ont. political expert says Galicia Division members weren’t war criminals,” where historian Lubomyr Luciuk indignantly refused to acknowledge reality.

“They weren’t pro-Nazi, they weren’t anti-Semitic and they didn’t indulge in war crimes,” Luciuk said.

Refuting this point is almost trite, however it’s sadly needed. The Nuremberg Trials found the Waffen SS to be a criminal organization for their genocidal killings. A 2003 Polish investigation found that the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS were the perpetrators of a massacre in the town of Huta Pieniacka. “The civilians, mostly women and children, were divided and locked in barns which were set on fire. Those who tried running away were killed.”

Every Waffen-SS member also had to pledge allegiance to Adolf Hitler to be inducted into the ranks of the unit.

In other words, they were “pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic and indulging in war crimes.”

Lucyk was one of the researchers in the Deschênes commission, which has been accused of white-washing the Nazi crimes. The Maple did a good run down of this, as linked here, but our news media ecosystem is the one perpetrating this sympathetic and defensive view.

It should be made clear that the piece is subtly running cover for this Nazi butcher, even if they consult another historian with a much more credible analysis. A more accurate headline would be “Kingston, Ont. political expert says Ukraine Waffen-SS members weren’t war criminals.” How, exactly, could one take this version of the headline seriously? It’s impossible, which is most likely why it wasn’t used.

This particular phrasing and Lucyk’s comments only make sense when taken together. Before he defended the Waffen SS, he said that Ukrainian volunteers “joined this military unit to defend their homeland, to fight against the Soviets, whom they’d already experienced once.”

This justification is likely why it was reported in the first place.

Other sympathetic coverage of the Waffen-SS volunteer continued. A piece by the CBC chose to whitewash the Nazi by consulting those who knew them in the community. One person said they’re an “honest, kind, helping family,” and all she knew about Yuroslav in particular was that he’s a “proud Ukrainian.” In their video segment, one family friend says “The Hunka family is known for their integrity.”

In another segment, CBC journalist Natasha Fatah expressed concern for the Nazi that he was in the spotlight that he didn’t want.

Unsurprisingly, the National Post published a column by Colby Cosh attempting to thread the Nazi needle about sympathy for this war criminal.  In fact the url for this particular story still reads “a-little-sympathy-for-yaroslav-hunka.” The subheader reads “If he does deserve to suffer….” Yes. Nazis deserve to suffer.

The question of Hunka’s children sharing culpability is immaterial. They are only responsible if they knew about and/or defend his volunteering to join the Nazis. At this point it’s irrelevant. We have a certified Nazi to deal with.

Besides this attempt to lump Yuroslav in with his family as deserving of sympathy, Cosh uses the Soviet Union as a justification for why Hunka joined the SS. The Soviets, under “Stalinist rule” and the “engineered famine in Ukraine” were the greater evil, which is why someone pledged allegiance to Adolf Hitler, and presumably why someone would throw Polish children into a burning barn.

Even as I was preparing to schedule this post, Politico also published an article with the headline “Fighting against the USSR didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi.”

The argument is the same, but uses old anti-communist tropes like citing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact as proof they were aligned. Of course, the author fails to note the Munich Agreement that saw western powers allow Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia, the Franco-German Non-Aggression Pact and Britain and France’s refusal to commit to Stalin’s overtures to create an anti-fascist alliance.

As former Soviet intelligence officer Gen Sotskov told The Telegraph in a 2008 article, “Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer [by the Soviet Union] seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany - double the number Hitler had at the time…This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks.”

Somehow, the West’s non-aggression pacts and concessions to Hitler’s expansion never paints them as the ultimate evil that the Soviet Union was.

Double Genocide Theory

This anticommunism is core to how capitalist news media operates. To them, the boogeyman of the USSR, with their famines and political turmoil in the 1930s, is an acceptable justification for someone to enlist with the Nazis. This is Double Genocide Theory in action.

Double Genocide Theory presents the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on equal footing in terms of genocidal terror. It’s the result of a concerted effort by post-Soviet states to justify the participation of anti-Soviet actors in fascist death squads while they move away from their Soviet history. This white-washes the murder of Jews and other ethnic groups done by anti-Soviet figures. David Katz, writing in Jewish Currents, points to the justification of people like Hunka joining the Waffen-SS directly as a result of this theory. “One major symptom of the revisionism underway in Eastern Europe is the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators as ‘national heroes’ on the grounds that they were anti-Soviet.”

Katz, while decidedly not pro-communist, refuses to mince words in the service that the Soviet Union and the Red Army provided the world by defeating the Nazis.

It is fair to say that nearly all the local killers in Eastern Europe were, at the time of their crimes, reliably anti-Soviet. From the Nazi invasion of June 22, 1941 onward, when the actual genocidal phase of the Holocaust got underway, each and every murderer was anti-Soviet and yearned for a Nazi victory. By contrast, every victim of the Nazis, and all the Righteous among the Nations who risked all to just do the right thing and save a neighbor, prayed for a Soviet victory — not because they were all Communists, but because the Soviet Union was the only force seriously fighting the Nazis on ground zero of the Holocaust from the onset of the genocide and right through to liberation.

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds arguing about the historiography of events like the Ukraine Famine and the Soviet response when this topic is broached. However, since it is a point of justification for those looking to explain Hunka’s joining of the Nazis, it does merit some discussion.

The Ukraine Famine 1932-1933

The subject is complicated, and certainly won’t be explained in its totality here. That being said, there are salient points to be raised. Soviet scholars, with the benefit of the archives being accessible since the late 20th century, have further developed on whether or not the 1932-1933 Ukraine Famine constitutes genocide. In broad strokes, while it does not generally constitute genocide, it does constitute crimes of humanity, primarily through negligence.

Michael Ellman, writing on the subject in 2007, summarized his position in the academic piece “Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33 Revisited.”

If the present author were a member of the jury trying this case he would support a verdict of not guilty (or possibly the Scottish verdict of not proven). The reasons for this are as follows. First, the three physical elements in the alleged crime can all be given non-genocidal interpretations. Secondly, the two mental elements are not unambiguous evidence of genocide. Suspicion of an ethnic group may lead to genocide, but by itself is not evidence of genocide. Hence it would seem that the necessary proof of specific intent is lacking.

That’s if the strict UN definition of genocide is applied to the famine. Ellman notes that if a more broad definition of genocide were to be applied, then the Ukrainian Famine would count. But this also comes with the caveat that it expands genocides across more nations’ history. The last line of his conclusion explains… “this more relaxed definition makes genocide a common historical event. It also adds countries such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, UK and USA to the list of those guilty of past genocides (which also includes Australia even on the strict definition).”

Robert Conquest, one of the biggest proponents of the theory that the Ukraine Famine was genocide, wrote on the subject in his 1986 book “Harvest of Sorrow.” However, it’s important to note that he walked back that claim 20 years later, when confronted with updated evidence by the historians R.W Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft. In their book The Years of Hunger, in the preface to the revised edition, the two authors discuss this in the endnote 12 on page xvi-xvii. “[I]n June 2006 a Ukrainian delegation of experts on the Holocaust and the Golodomor [sic] met Robert Conquest in Stanford University and enquired about his views, and were told directly by him that he preferred not to use the term genocide.”

This update in the historiography is in conflict with the entire political spectrum. Those who hope to equate the USSR with Nazi Germany will argue against this conclusion, differing their interpretations of available evidence to suit their goal. Those who hope to abdicate Stalin and the Soviet Union of responsibility will take this technical win as proof that there was simply nothing to be done about the famine by Soviet authorities.

Though it is a hotly debated subject, especially in the context of the sociopolitical ramifications of the Russia-Ukraine war, any side that aims to reduce the subject to a simple answer has an agenda they’re pushing.

You will not find a concrete result in the middle of this column about news media justifying the actions of a Waffen-SS volunteer. But hopefully the resources provided add context to the concept that the USSR were the ultimate evil, and have shown that claim to be misleading at best.

Justifying anticommunism

The truth is that there is absolutely no way to equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. The industrialized genocide and ethnic cleansing of Hitler’s regime reached heights never seen before in history. Millions of Jews were forced into death camps, alongside LGBTQIA+, Slavic, Romani and disabled people, as well as anyone deemed a communist. However, after nearly a century of ceaseless red scare propaganda, and the crimes of the Nazis fading in memory, the logical conclusion of these influences gains hold in the public consciousness: fascism is preferable to communism.

Here are the facts: a Ukrainian fascist volunteered to join the Waffen-SS. He pledged allegiance to Hitler not because he was a national hero, but because he wanted to align himself with the ethnic cleansing goals of the Nazis. Indeed, he very much wanted to destroy communism, which the Nazis saw as intertwined with judaism. After the war, he escaped to Canada, where he lived his life in peace… until he was unanimously praised by our federal government.

When Anthony Rota introduced Hunka as a WWII veteran who fought Russia, anyone who stood and applauded was either aware of what that meant, or is too ignorant to hold their position of power. The inconvenient truth, which this sympathetic news coverage has revealed, is that anticommunism is just as integral to Nazi ideology as it is to capitalist ideology. This fascist crusader was praised in parliament not in spite of his anticommunism, but because of it. This is why news media has lept to his defence.

If capitalism truly won the argument, and the end of history was reached, there would be no need to demonize the USSR to this degree. The Soviet Union’s defeat of fascism would not need to be minimized. In this lens, for all their achievements, the communist project did not succeed. If this was the conclusion, praising their achievements would bring no threat. Capitalism won. So what difference would it make if the USSR defeated fascism? Their achievements would be recognized as the historical phenomenon it was. Conversely, as fascism remains a present threat, that ideology would take the place as the ultimate evil.

Obviously, this hasn’t happened. That’s why the news media presents Hunka’s justifications and sympathizes with him. As old age softens the liberal view of the Waffen-SS veteran, and the decades of red scare messaging justifies why a man would join the Nazi death machine, we see what Chomsky failed to after the collapse of the Soviet Union: the Cold War never ended.