The
UN vote against the glorification of nazism and nazi figures was a
watershed insight into understanding what is going on inside western
governments today. Eric
Zuesse's article
labeling the no vote by the US, Canada, and Ukraine at the UN as
supporting the glorification of Nazism and Holocaust denial was
understatement at the very least. By this "no" vote these three
countries support the rights of nationalist chauvinists to promote
nazis like Adolf Hitler or Stepan Bandera as heroes and the murder of
their victims as a heroic act.
Two of the three countries that voted to support the right to glorify nazism are home to the largest openly nazi emigre groups in the world. In his lifetime these groups were led by Stepan Bandera directly. In the United States alone the combined grouping by their own reckoning exceeds 20 million members with large political clout to match.
How does this equate to Holocaust denial?
Looking back at WW2 there are two different holocaust narratives told today. The first is one people are familiar with which is the history of Nazi extermination of Jews and every other nationality or group they saw as less than them.
The second holocaust account from the period which the three negative voting countries support denies this. Monsters cannot be victims. Victims cannot be monsters. Reprisals that are done in self defense or to even scores with your enemies are commonplace in history. The second record purports that Jews/ Soviets killed 7-10 million Ukrainians.
It purports that Nazis (Ukrainian nationalists) were the victims and the Jewish populations were either murderous or suicidal depending on the year. It supposes that the Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian victims dug the mass graves, shot themselves, and each person took a shovel of dirt with them in self loathing as they jumped in.
The second narrative is the basis to propose that Jewish Nazi SS Battalions killed the Jews, Ukrainians, and not the Ukrainian nationalists that did this.
The second holocaust which the US, Canada, and Ukraine support with this vote in the name of free speech proposes Nazi forces were the heroes of WW2 as well as its victims.
Holomodor
The history of the Holomodor or Starvation holocaust until now has been left almost entirely in the hands of the Ukrainian nationalists. It is the historical centerpiece for their ideological hatred of Russia today. It is the historical basis of a nationalist Ukraine today. If accepted at face value it also whitewashes Ukrainian Nationalists out of history as prolific mass murderers and genocidal SS soldiers. As victims the Ukrainian Nationalists can soften how the world sees them without changing their positions, acknowledging their crimes, or changing their methods. Ukrainian nationalism only has a base of legitimacy if this tragedy happened according to their version of it.
The acceptance of this as a holocaust is also one of the main justifications for the OUN/UPA becoming soldiers for Hitler's 3 rd Reich. They were the "anti-communists" that steered American history. If their version of history is accepted then there will be no problem when they claim to have fought against Hitler after 1941. They can say they tried to save the Jews from the Nazis. In a nutshell they can make some of WW2's greatest murderers into heroes instead of leaving them in the waste can of history where they belong. They can continue what they are doing today.
First-Perspective
According to the Ukrainian nationalist perspective 7-10 million Ukrainians died as a result of forced starvation under Stalinism. During the famine years 1932-33 Stalin was forcing people onto collective farms across the Soviet Union. Stalin took advantage of the famine by confiscating what was left of the harvest, reserves, and forced the people to starve to death.
Historically West Ukraine (Galicia) where the Ukrainian nationalists were located and Ukraine's ideology today was derived existed only outside the areas affected by the famine. According to Ukrainian nationalist scholar Alexander Moytal "Just as the earlier debates in the West over the famine had been politicized, pitting "anti-Communists" against their critics, so too did the debate over the Holodomor-as-genocide thesis in Ukraine become profoundly political. First, it challenged the nature of Soviet reality. Second, it became the centerpiece of Yushchenko's nation-building project after the Orange Revolution. And third, it undermined Russia's hegemony over Ukraine.
... Since the debate also reflected popularly held attitudes--according to a 2009 InterMedia survey, eighty-three percent of Ukrainians in the west, fifty-eight in the center, twenty-eight in the south, and fifteen in the east accept the genocide thesis -- the Holodomor quickly became the main focus of efforts by both national democrats and their opponents to mobilize voters in the recent elections."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).