August 23, Black Ribbon Day

No to the Glorification of Nazism and Nonsense that Those Who Participate in Committing Genocide Are the True Democrats!

At a mass action on Parliament Hill on September 19, 2015, Canadians reject the Harper government’s attempt to impose its anti-communist monument and its anti-social offensive.

On August 23, the Trudeau government will mark “Black Ribbon Day” – a “memorial day” concocted by the ruling circles of Europe in 2009 to promote anti-communism through slanders and lies, and to glorify Nazism. It was adopted by the Parliament of Canada under Stephen Harper in 2009.

The real historical significance of this date is deliberately covered up by this anti-communist campaign. August 23 is the date that the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was signed in 1939. The Soviet Union had no alternative but to sign a non-aggression pact with Germany because the British and French refused to enter into a collective security agreement with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Instead, they sought to isolate the Soviet Union, egging on Hitler to achieve the aims he clearly set forth in his book Mein Kampf which advocates the superiority of the so-called Aryan race and capture of land in Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia to be used as “living space” for the German people.

Standard Anglo-American imperialist anti-communist propaganda equates the Nazis, who are well-known as the biggest war criminals of that time, with the Soviet Union, which played the major role in defeating the Hitlerites and freeing the world of the scourge of Nazism. It deliberately promotes the view that the Hitlerite Nazis and their collaborators, who slaughtered the peoples of Europe and the Soviet Union amongst others, were freedom fighters because they fought against communism, and the anti-fascist forces who fought them to the death, especially the communists, should be erased from the historical record.

This ignominious anniversary is linked with the anti-communist monument the Government of Canada has erected and financed in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories across from Library and Archives Canada on Wellington Street in Ottawa. This monument to the “victims of communism,” first promoted by the Harper government and now the Trudeau government, glorifies Nazis and Nazi collaborators as freedom fighters against the communists. It was initiated by the anti-communist organization Tribute to Liberty in 2008. Canadians and Quebeckers do not support such a monument and the group failed to raise funds for the original projected cost of $1.5 million. To their shame, the Harper Conservative government and then the Trudeau Liberal government stepped in and handed over at least $6 million in public monies to fund the ballooning cost of the project.

The unveiling of this wretched monument has been postponed time and again because of the opposition of the Canadian people to the government’s support for neo-Nazis. This was made very clear when the Trudeau government invited the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Hunka, who was a member of SS Division Galicia of the Nazis’ Waffen-SS during the war, to the Parliament for the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The entire Parliament gave him more than one standing ovation. The government has yet to find a way to talk its way out of the debacle. Since then, Heritage Canada which was given charge of completing this anti-communist project has been jumping through hoops trying to find the means to whitewash this ignominious project, to no avail. All it has achieved is to spend more and more public funds to pay consultants to present it with different options, none of which change one iota what this monument stands for.

The fact is that this monument in Ottawa is based on Canada’s Cold War anti-communist ideology which upholds a democracy that conciliates with Nazi war criminals and collaborators. Far from manipulating a cover-up of its praise for these criminals, no government should permit it to be unveiled. On the contrary, the monument deserves to be demolished in its entirety. With or without the names of donors and the inscription of the names of these Nazis and their collaborators, its aim of declaring Canada a refuge for “victims of communism” is unacceptable because it glorifies Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Despite the insistence that the monument upholds Canadian values, it goes against everything Canadians who gave their lives in the anti-fascist war stood for and which their descendants, from all corners of the earth, stand for today.

There is no monument to the 27 million Soviet citizens and soldiers who gave their lives to defeat Nazism or to the 60 million people who died at the hands of the Nazis, fascists and militarists during World War II. This includes many Canadians who sacrificed their lives to defeat Hitler and whose descendants have great respect for the death-defying achievement of the Soviets at Stalingrad and throughout the war. This anti-communist project is an insult to all Canadian men and women and peoples of the world who sacrificed their lives to defeat Nazi-fascism and Japanese militarism.

How about a monument to them? Canada must be a refuge for all the victims of slavery, genocide, colonial conquests, imperialist wars and coups d’etat.

At a time the peoples of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and many other countries including the mercilessly enslaved and exploited African peoples and peoples of the Caribbean islands continue to bring down monuments which exalt slavery, genocide and those who have committed crimes against humanity, for Canada to unveil such a monument based on fanatical anti-communist beliefs is unacceptable.

The monument also seeks to divert attention from Canada’s official support for those committing crimes against humanity and genocide today. Today, those who commit genocide are presented as the ones who defend democracy. No matter what they do to claim otherwise, this is the truth of the matter which is why this monument must be demolished, despite the more than $6 million in public funds successive governments have already given to realize it because those who initiated it were incapable of raising funds from the public.

Cold War definitions of democracy versus totalitarianism underlie the anti-communist monument. This Cold War ideology is being resuscitated today to foment divisions among the Canadian people and to present those who do not conform to the ruling ideology on crucial questions as being anti-Semitic, terrorists and agents of foreign powers. This includes those who do not conform to the official line on issues like the U.S./NATO war in Ukraine, the warmongering aims of NATO, Canada’s international role such as its support for Israeli Zionism. It is also seen in attempts to criminalize those who support the Resistance movement of the Palestinian people against occupation and genocide and to affirm their right to be in the form of a state of their own making, without foreign interference of any kind, no matter what the pretext.

The following excerpt from Justin Trudeau’s 2014 letter to the anti-communist organization Tribute to Liberty, which was used to get this project going, makes this Cold War ideology evident. This is the same Trudeau who as Prime Minister is at the helm of a government which has funded and trained the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and applauded the Nazi-collaborator Yaroslav Hunka in the Parliament and shouts the fascist slogan of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, Slava Ukraina. It bears mentioning that the Harper government which preceded his initiated this project which all the cartel parties with seats in the Parliament continue to support to this day. These are the same cartel parties which voted to make August 23 Black Ribbon Day to erase the enormous role of the Soviet Red Army during the anti-fascist war.

Trudeau wrote:

“[…] We, as Canadians, must never forget the pain and suffering entire generations endured under communist rule, and it is important that we remember the lives of its untold victims.

“Memorialization is important, as it not only serves to heighten Canadians’ awareness about the lives of those who suffered under oppression, but reminds us of how lucky we are to live in a country that celebrates the virtues of peace and liberty. […]”

What Trudeau calls “memorialization” is the falsification of history, that covers up the lessons, written in blood, by those who suffered and resisted under fascist aggression. It ignores the horrific slaughter of the people who faced the massacres and destruction by the Nazi aggressors and diminishes the heroic sacrifices made by the millions who fought the Nazi onslaught to defend and preserve their sovereign homelands.

Trudeau’s nonsense cannot cover up Canadians’ awareness about the lives of those who suffered under the oppression and genocide of Canada’s colonial Indian Act or the crimes of the German Nazis, Italian fascists and Japanese militarists and their collaborators during World War II. Nor can it erase their awareness of the crimes resulting from the Anglo-American Cold War policy and U.S. imperialist coups d’etat, dictatorships and wars of aggression in the last 75 years.

No to the glorification of Nazism and nonsense that those who participate in committing genocide are the true democrats!

Demand that the Anti-Communist Monument Be Demolished!

Information picket against the glorification of Nazism, Ottawa, August 21, 2020.

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