How could this happen?

Canada is in uproar after the exposure that its parliament on September 22 provided a standing ovation to a Nazi veteran who had been invited into the chamber to participate in the parliamentary welcome to Ukrainian President Zelensky. Yaroslav Hunka, 98, a Ukrainian man who volunteered for service in Nazi Germany’s SS Galizien during World War II received two standing ovations led by the speaker Anthony Rota who had invited him to the session. Rota described Hunka as a Ukrainian war veteran, from the second world war, who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians.”

Hunka in the 1940s. Source: Wikipedia.

That got one standing ovation. The second came when the speaker declared that Hunka was “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.”

How could this happen? Two standing ovations from Canadian lawmakers, and from the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, for a representative of the most evil of military formations. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies condemned SS Galizien as “responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with a level of brutality and malice that is unimaginable.”

How could this happen? Surely Anthony Rota and other members of the Ukrainian parliament have IQ levels a bit higher than room temperature (Centigrade not Fahrenheit). Surely, they were aware that the Russians  Hunka fought against were members of the Soviet Red Army which was fighting to liberate Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe from Nazism. Surely, they know at the time there was no question of fighting for independence from the Russians – it was a matter of fighting to liberate Ukraine from Nazi Germany. And that required fighting alongside the Red Army and Soviet Partisans, not serving in a Nazi military unity fighting the Red Army.

As for President Zelensky, he surely knew what this description meant. His own grandfather Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelenskyy served in the Red Army during World War II. Even more painful is the fact that his grandfather and his two brothers were killed in the Holocaust.

I despair at attitudes today. Do we no longer despise Nazis and what they did? If history were repeated, would we be siding with the Nazis today? Or do we no longer concern ourselves with facts and instead go for the emotion of the moment or the approved narrative? How could any sensible person not know what the situation described by Canadian Parliamentary Speaker Rota really meant?

Do New Zealanders no longer support Ukraine?

Of a possible 55 heads of state, only four made time to join a virtual address delivered by the African Union Assembly on June 20 by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Source: Ghana Web

So Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to address the NZ Parliament next Wednesday. The address will be outside business hours (I will be interested to see how many MPs turn up) but it will please our Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, who has pushed hard to get this address. As she sees it:

“This address is a valuable opportunity to reiterate our support for Ukraine directly to President Zelenskyy and hear from him what the international community can do to continue to support its people, and its sovereignty.”

But the New Zealand people don’t appear to share the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for Zelensky. Just look at the negative comments this news received on the Twitter announcements of the address by the NZ Herald, News Hub Politics, and 1News NZ.

Ukrainian flags were everywhere 9 months ago. Twitter activists used them in their comments.

 

Gone are those Twitter activists from 9 months ago who proudly virtue-signalled their support for Ukraine and hatred for Russia. They seemed to be everywhere. Nowadays such enthusiastic supporters are few and far between. The mood is quite the opposite.

There is an occasional “Slava Ukraini!” But the vast majority of comments are hostile to this address. Comments raise issues of the corruption in Ukraine, Zelensky’s personal corruption, his attitude of entitlement and his insistent demands for money and weapons, and his support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the FT’s person of the year 2022. The 44-year-old has earnt a place in history for his extraordinary display of leadership and fortitude https://t.co/Rxsl03pzS8 pic.twitter.com/ibp52B4N66

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) December 5, 2022

This surprises me as I expected that New Zealanders had blindly accepted the government’s position on Ukraine. Even accepting New Zealand’s UN vote against a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazis and racism (see Is New Zealand covertly supporting the glorification of neo-Nazism?). Western Governments and media have competed in glorifying Zelensky as a brave and charismatic leader. The Financial Times even listed him as their Person of the Year.

Has the person on the street resisted all this pressure and come to their own mind about Zelensky?

I realise that Twitter commenters can be unrepresentative because they tend to congregate according to their biases. But these comments were on news media Twitter posts, so I expect them to be more representative. Maybe Elon Musk has somehow changed the composition of Twitter commenters, but I doubt it.

 

Have more and more ordinary New Zealanders resisted the media and government pressures to conform over Ukraine and the war in  Ukraine? Are more and more New Zealanders now thinking for themselves.

 

I think the more politically conscious amongst us have learned things about Ukraine and the causes of the war that they weren’t conscious of 9 months ago. The enthusiastic, but unthinking, support from Ukraine has dissipated. We have become more aware of the real nature of Ukrainian society and its recent history. We have become conscious of the 2014 coup which overthrew a democratically elected government. We now know now about the widespread influence of ultranationalists and neo-Nazis in society and in the military national battalions (see The subtlety of neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine – ignored by our media).

Whatever the reason I welcome this trend. A society blindly led by the government and media as happened 9 months ago is dangerous.