https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/13/czgh-s13.html
It had been a few years since I picked up Russ Bellant's Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, the 3rd edition published in 1991. The scandals he reports surrounding World War II-era fascists and the Nixon, Reagan, and GHW Bush administrations have been all but forgotten. And yet it was the Ukrainian angle that drove me to revisit the work - and it revealed some interesting bits of information.
Apart from all the content regarding ex-Iron Guard, Ustase, and outright Nazis, the Ukrainian aspect is interesting because it among all the other Warsaw Pact and Soviet elements received almost a special focus within the American Right. In fact in 1986, there was a GOP-sponsored congressional proclamation about support for Ukrainian independence and in it the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer, Stepan Bandera was singled out for praise. The US it would seem was keen on the idea of Ukrainian independence even before the Soviet Union finally collapsed.
Once it did collapse, the surviving elements of Ukrainian fascism were not idle and quickly formed political parties. Many elements (and certainly the ideology) from Bandera's OUN-B made their way into these groups - many of which are concentrated in today's Svoboda and some of the far-right parties, and certainly in their paramilitary wings. Some of the groups are openly fascistic and apart from the already extant Nazi-inspired symbolism, some overtly wear and wave swastikas.
Some will cringe at the WSWS link but it's worth the read, regardless of what one thinks of their Trotskyite analysis. I was aware of the Ukrainian youth camp near the Catskills but was unaware that the grounds host a monument to Bandera, Shukhevych, and Petliura - butchers all, men with tens of thousands of deaths on their hands. The fact that this monument sits just a short drive north of New York City is rather stunning, but the whole history of these movements in the United States can only be described as hidden.
While reading through Bellant's book I was looking up people to determine who was still alive or when people had died. While reading about Valerian Trifa - the Romanian Orthodox Archbishop based out Michigan and former Iron Guard member connected to the 1941 Bucharest Pogrom, I stumbled on an interesting episode back in the 1956, when a sniper took shots outside St. Dumitru Romanian Orthodox Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The pastor at the time was Florian Galdau a 'refugee priest' who in reality was a Trifa associate and former Iron Guard member. The sniper was either aiming for him or Princess Ileana, the aunt of King Michael (d. 2017). The sniper killed a church warden and wounded some others. Galdau who seems to have had CIA connections died sometime in the 2000's - certainly by 2013. Ileana who was also (as you might expect) a rather zealous anti-communist died in 1991 and is buried at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania - just north of Pittsburgh. I've been to her grave multiple times. There's actually a PCA congregation just a few minutes away. But I digress.
I've also provided a 2014 link to a Nation interview with Bellant in which Galdau is mentioned. Even then, only a few people were aware of the larger story. As I and others have suggested, the idea that a Nazi-era collaborator's picture would be paraded through the streets of a European capital bolstered by priests and torch-bearing paramilitary-types would have generated a major scandal - except in Ukraine. Can you imagine such a thing taking place in France, Italy, Austria, or Hungary?
Putin certainly was a 'villain' in 2014 but not to the level he would become in 2022. Bellant rightly calls out the Bandera/OUN-B/Svoboda connections as well as the fact that groups are marching through the streets with SS insignias. Putin exaggerated to be sure when he identified the Kyiv regime as Nazi - but there are certainly Nazis within the Ukrainian government and military and Zelenskiy helped incorporate the Azov Battalion into the mainstream military organisation. Timothy Snyder may choose to ignore this or downplay it on the basis that Zelenskiy is of Jewish background - but the explanation is simple. It's Nationalism. That in and of itself is a religion that can via romanticism and mythology gloss over all past disputes and inconsistencies. We're seeing it today in the United States as well.
It's also important to mention that with Stetsko and so many others mentioned by Bellant - that they were unrepentant and in many cases unapologetic about their war records and collaboration with the Nazis. These were all people in good standing with the US and its political machinery.
Ukraine (I believe) has long been a US project and do you think Putin (former KGB) doesn't know about US activities with Ukrainian nationalists and fascists during the Cold War and the 1990's? None of this excuses Putin's 2022 invasion but a little context is need. It was not the naked unprovoked aggression as the official media line repeatedly insists. The US was working to make trouble for Russia via Ukraine throughout the Cold War and as Bellant suggests - even during World War II.
You certainly won't hear about this connection these days but in the 2014 article Bellant also tied ex-OUN/Svoboda operatives with the 2004 Orange Revolution in Kyiv. Everyone forgets that the tug-of-war didn't begin in 2014. It was well underway in the early 2000's as the US by means of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko sought to pull Ukraine into the Western orbit. Even then it was about NATO expansion and broken promises.
We're told that the Zelenskiy regime stands for liberal democracy - this as he's canceled elections, goes after political opponents, presides over a regime of corruption and a government and military riddled with fascist ideologues and militants. One need not be a fan Vladimir Putin to be outraged over this story and suspicious of the coverage. It is but the latest episode that reveals the lies and corruption of both politicians and media.
The Right-wing media that denounces the Ukraine War has no moral standing. Their motives are corrupt - a desire to see resources directed at China or Iran or in other cases it's simply rotten politics and their desire to shout 'black' to every time the Democrats say 'white'. If a Republican were in office, they'd back the war and be pushing for a more aggressive strategy. They are scoundrels, every bit as deceitful as the mainstream media they despise.
In the meantime we're told about the heavy propaganda campaign taking place in Russia and how brainwashed the population is - and yet this is no less true in Ukraine and the West. The real story of this war is not told. I will grant that the people in Ukraine have suffered the bombs and missiles and whatever the cause, they're stuck with the reality. But if they want to end the war and make sure the conditions for it don't re-emerge then they had better come to an understanding of just what has happened. The whole narrative about Putin wanting to re-constitute the USSR or recreate the Tsarist Empire is just hype if not outright rubbish. This is about NATO. This about history. This about Moscow pursuing its own security and trying to avoid a repeat of history. Israel is allowed to make these appeals and commit mass slaughter on the basis of this same kind of narrative.
Far more Soviet citizens, Russians, and Byelorussians (in particular) died during World War II than the number of Jews in the Holocaust. I'm not speaking of ratios or percentages but the twenty-million plus who died has to be taken into account. It drives all Russian thinking about these questions but as I've long argued - most in the West (and in particular in Britain and the United States) do not understand World War II. They only see a small part of the larger story. That's the ghost that looms over all these questions. The narrative about the 'good war' (upon which Britain and America are largely built) is a false one and so to break through this, many myths have to be challenged and cast down.
See also:
https://tom-kinter.stelea.ro/PrincessIleana/Gallery/Ileana79.html
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2017/10/ghosts-of-wwii-murderers-among-us-and.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2023/01/banderas-birthday-celebrations-and.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2022/05/israels-new-right-and-ukrainian-neo.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-cover-of-world-war-ii-narratives.html
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