West's Falsification of WWII History, 'Anti-Russia Discourse' Led to Nazi Scandal in Canada: Analyst

As the scandal continues to swirl over the Canadian Parliament’s move to honor Ukrainian Waffen SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka, political analyst Caleb Maupin recalled that Ukrainian nationalists have always had a "tolerance" for the Nazis.

The discourse in the US and some other Western nations has become so anti-Russia-laden that coupled with an erasure of the heroic feat of the Soviet people to defeat fascism in World War II, “a travesty” such as the Canada Nazi scandal was allowed to happen, independent journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin told Sputnik.

There have since been strong calls for accountability coming from Canada's opposition leader, Poland, Jewish groups, Russia, and the United Nations. Russia's Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik that he would request explanations from the Canadian Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office in connection with the incident.

"Citizens of this country must once again think about who their leaders glorify and what kind of junta they support in Ukraine. Russia condemns any form of glorification of Nazism. And Russia will always remember heroism of Canadian sons and daughters who fought side by side with us to free the world from Nazi plague," the Russian Embassy said on Monday.

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This "pro-Hitler sentiment," as evidenced by the recent scandal involving the glorification of a Nazi war veteran in Canada’s Parliament, "that's nothing new," Caleb Maupin reflected.

Recalling his years of political organizing in Cleveland, Ohio, and, specifically, in the suburbs on the west side of Cleveland, Parma Heights, he said:

"You know, there's a lot of Eastern European folks there. There's a really strong Ukrainian community. And, you know, at one point in the 1990s, I think they discovered an actual Nazi war criminal who was there who had been a concentration camp guard. And there was kind of a scandal in local media that this very old man who had been a concentration camp guard and committed many atrocities was there. But one thing that I noticed, and this was even years ago, years before the 2014 coup and all of that was that there was a soft spot for the Nazis among Ukrainian nationalists."

Caleb Maupin recalled the many arguments he has had with Ukrainian Americans that would start out with him defending the legacy of the Soviet Union.

“And they would insist that 'the Soviet Union was worse than Hitler, worse than the Nazis.' And as the argument would progress, they would start to say things like 'the Holocaust didn't really happen.' They would start to say things like 'Well, Hitler was just trying to protect the Ukrainian people from Stalin,’” the analyst said.

Such arguments left the pundit “frustrated,” as there appeared to be “this blind spot and this tolerance for it [Nazism] among Ukrainian Americans."

"People would say 'Well, they lived under communism and communism is just so bad that being a Nazi, it's an understandable mistake.' And I would be like 'No, it's not an understandable mistake.' I mean, we all know the crimes of the Nazis, and especially in Eastern Europe, the crimes that they committed during that war were so utterly horrendous," Caleb Maupin pointed out.

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The pundit then weighed in on the billions of dollars in assistance that the Biden administration is sending to fuel NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

"So, now it's gotten to the point where the United States is pouring so much money into Ukraine and just trying to prolong this war, and now we have an actual Nazi fighter, a guy who fought against the Soviet Union in World War II. Now, what side does that put him on? It shouldn't be too hard to figure out, but the discourse in the United States has gotten to be so anti-Russian and there's been such an erasure of the heroic activism of the Soviet people and the communists around the world to defeat fascism, that this has happened," Caleb Maupin said.

The "travesty" of a Ukrainian Nazi veteran being invited and honored in the Canadian Parliament is the result of a concerted "effort to obfuscate the actual history of the Second World War and who was on what side," Maupin clarified.

The communists "in most of the Western world" had a "really good reputation coming out of World War II," the pundit underscored, because "they had very clearly been on the right side." He emphasized that, "starting in the 1950s with the Congress for Cultural Freedom Program, which was a CIA program to kind of change political discourse and academic dialog, there started to be an effort to tamper with the historical narrative, and try to equate the Soviet Union with the Nazis. And in order to do so, they had to redefine what fascism was."

"You had this big ideological effort to not really explain the economic basis of fascism and what fascism really is, but to make fascism just kind of synonymous with some kind of fanatical political movement, some kind of society where people are being mobilized to carry out a goal, and then, in that language, to equate the Soviet Union with the Nazis. And they have been doing this for decades," Maupin underscored.

The fact that there has been such a massive effort to "equate the Soviet Union and actually existing communism with Nazism in the public mind" was a disservice to the actual historical record, the analyst pointed out. However, for all those pushing this narrative, Caleb Maupin noted an indisputable fact:

"You can have criticism, you can disagree, but you have to admit there were two sides in World War II [...] One side was right, and one side was wrong, and the right side won. And the Soviet Union, and Roosevelt and America were on the right side."