The purpose of a good investigative writer is to explore what others ignore. What constitutes newsworthy items is not always determined by the mainstream media. Sure, the latter guarantees widespread exposure for issues it deems important, but also ignores those topics which shed light on the machinations of imperialist-corporate power.

I have deliberately chosen not to write too much about Syria just yet. That is not because the toppling of the former Ba’athist government in Syria is inconsequential, but because there has already been extensive coverage of the topic, accompanied by mandatory celebratory pictures of the downfall of a brutal regime.

I also do not wish to participate in the interminable, emotionally draining inter-Left debate on Syria which only recycles cliches on road trodden by numerous commentators in the past.

The Nazification of Arab nationalism

I never begrudge anyone their release from prison. Opening up the dungeons of the Ba’athist regime is a relief to its victims. Please, let’s stop using the word Assadist – there is no such thing. What I am concerned about, and was waiting for, is the anticipated Nazification of the Ba’athist regime and its leaders, both Hafez and Bashar Al-Assad. It is easy, and lazy, to deploy the Hitler analogy when an authoritarian leader is overthrown, and it plays directly into a view of the world our corporate-managerial masters want us to adopt.

Alois Brunner (1912 – 2001 or 2010) was an Austrian SS officer responsible for the deaths of thousands of European Jews. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he fled accountability for his crimes, and settled in postwar Syria. The Ba’athist government gave him sanctuary, and he spent the rest of his life in that nation. He is buried in Damascus.

Our toadying corporate media, sensing an opportunity to kick the Ba’athist party while it is down, gave publicity to this sordid episode. Making the Arab-Nazi connection even more explicit, Al Jazeera claimed that Brunner advised Syrian security forces in setting up prisons and torture techniques.

Making the Arab-Nazi connection serves to further the false claim that Arabs – and Palestinians in particular – oppose the Israeli state on the basis of irrational antisemitism. The Ba’ath party advocated a pan-Arab nationalism which respected the rights of non-Arab ethnic minorities. It proposed the building of a socialist economy, not Soviet nor Marxist. Its ideological mix of pan-Arabism and ethnic inclusivity made it inhospitable to the racialist, ethnically paranoid hypernationalism of the Nazi party.

One wonders what the reaction of the mainstream media would have been if Syria, or another Arab nation, had provided sanctuary for thousands of Nazi war criminals. Actually, we do not have to look too far for such a scenario. Canada provided safe haven for thousands of Ukrainian (and Eastern European) wartime Nazi collaborators, who were the recipients of Ottawa’s considerable largesse.

Worthy refugees

When Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian man who served in the Waffen SS (Galician) was given two standing ovations in the Canadian Parliament in September 2023, it was inadvertently providing the tip of an iceberg. Thousands of Ukrainian SS troops were quietly provided sanctuary by successive Canadian governments after the Second World War. One of the Trudeau government’s most prominent figures, Chrystia Freeland, is herself a grandchild of Mykhailo Chomiak, a propagandist for the Ukrainian Nazi administration during the war.

No, we cannot hold the grandchildren responsible for the sins of the grandparents. Freeland, who has used her ethnic background as a platform to climb the ladder of Canadian politics, has never distanced herself from her white supremacist grandfather. Indeed, Chomiak helped a white supremacist regime massacre the grandparents of today’s Holocaust survivors.

Trudeau and Freeland should face the consequences of the Hunka affair. They should admit the ethical bankruptcy of Canadian foreign and domestic politics – turning away Jewish refugees from Europe during the war, but then providing sanctuary for their white supremacist killers, is the height of moral decrepitude and cynical political expediency.

Both Trudeau and Freeland are intelligent, articulate politicians. Trudeau specifically has marketed himself as a reasonable centrist, removed from the rancorous, divisive Left vs Right paradigm. He should have known better than to sweep criminal and shameful episodes of Canadian history under the carpet.

We must highlight the words of Judi Rever, journalist from Montreal who wrote that:

Freeland knows full well that soldiers from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) collaborated with the Third Reich and took an active part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland. She would also know that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a paramilitary group, carried out massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, and hunted down and killed several thousand Jews during that period. More than any other Canadian politician today, Freeland knows this history. Canadians should ask what was going through her mind as she bestowed praise on a man who fought the Russians during that pivotal time, a man we now know was part of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS whose troops were involved in the mass murder of Jews, Poles and Ukrainians in the 1940s.

Canadian politicians, including whomever replaces Trudeau and Freeland, should read a new book that explores this underreported chapter.

Published in 2024, Peter McFarlane is the author of a new book called Family Ties: How a Ukrainian Nazi and a living witness link Canada to Ukraine today. The author elaborates the history not only of Ukrainian Nazis, but their Jewish victims as well. For instance, traveling to the Eastern European town of Brody, a city in Western Ukraine, McFarlane found that out of a prewar Jewish population of 10 000, only 88 Jewish persons survived.

There is a museum in Brody today, which does commemorate the Second World War. No, not the Holocaust victims – the Holocaust is not even mentioned. It is a memory lane for the Galician Division; its history, uniforms, insignia, Nazi-aligned personnel and conduct. The government in Ottawa provided refuge for these personnel, but subjected Jewish refugees to bureaucratic obstacles and official resistance.

War crimes trials are something we regard as quite remote, from the Australian perspective. Indeed, our direct experience of war crimes relates more to the cruelties inflicted upon Australian and British soldiers by Imperial Japanese troops. We are more likely to remember the Burma death marches and the thousands of died building the Thai railways, rather than Auschwitz.

We are reasonably free in liberal democratic Australia, and I can do what I want in my front garden. How would it be if I erected a statue to former Japanese emperor Hirohito, in my front yard? Am I not exercising my right to free speech?

I raise this hypothetical example to highlight the similar kinds of issues being debated by antifascist Canadian communities today. No single person can be an expert on every historical issue. We do expect our political leaders, however, to exhibit better conduct and be held to a higher standard. The foreign and domestic policies of Anglophone nations are allegedly motivated by respect for the law, and not by manipulative and deceitful political calculations.

Lack of accountability is a poor lesson to pass on to future generations, especially when covering up shameful episodes from recent history.