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New and Views Related to Ukraine
Canadian Nationals Recruited to Illegally Fight in Foreign Wars
The ruling circles of Canada and their monopoly media are once again bragging about how certain Canadian citizens are “heroic” for illegally joining the forces fighting in Ukraine. Previously, in 2014, praise for “heroic Canadians” illegally fighting abroad supported the approximately 145 “lone soldiers” going to Israel to help commit war crimes against the Palestinian people.
The illegal enlistments associated with Ukraine have been promoted for some time. On February 26, 2014, the Globe and Mail carried a front-page article that extended across three pages, entitled “How private Canadians are aiding Kiev’s war effort.” While mentioning the “sometimes-extreme nationalism” of the Canadian foreign fighters, the article extolled them as “famed for their bravery.” This mealy-mouthed allusion to their “extreme nationalism” was a reference to the fact that certain neo-Nazis already held important government posts in Ukraine, while openly Nazi battalions were part and parcel of the armed forces of Ukraine.
Members of Azov Battalian, pictured in 2014 preparing to deploy against the peoples of the Donbass. |
One Canadian fighter quoted in the 2014 Globe and Mail article openly declared he is a “national socialist” and that he fought for Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. The Azov Battalion, run by the extremist Patriot of Ukraine organization, considers Jews and other minorities ‘sub-human’ and calls for a white, Christian crusade against them. Members sport three Nazi symbols on the insignia of their uniforms: a modified Wolf’s Hook, a black sun (or “Hakensonne”) and the title Black Corps, which was used by the Waffen-SS.
Canadian law explicitly prohibits the recruitment of Canadian nationals to serve in foreign armies — or more precisely with “a foreign state at war with a friendly state” — and “provides for fines from $500 up to two years imprisonment, the issue, restriction, cancellation and impounding of passports, whether within Canada or elsewhere.” “Friendly state” in the context of Canada’s subservience to U.S. imperialism inevitably translates in practice to any state supporting reaction and imperialist aims. The relevant legislation is the Canadian Foreign Enlistment Act (1985), amended from the 1936 Foreign Enlistment Act, which itself was based on the British imperial Foreign Enlistment Acts of 1870, extended by imperial decree to all Dominions, including Canada.
Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act has consistently been used by the ruling circles to support reaction and oppose everything progressive, by imposing, suspending or ignoring it. The act in an earlier form was first imposed by the British colonialists in the 1860s to block the United States from recruiting Canadians, especially escaped African-Americans, to fight against the slave-owning Confederacy. In 1861, Colonel Arthur Rankin, a Canadian MP, set out to raise a regiment of 1,600 lancers for service with the Union. He was quickly arrested for violating the British Foreign Enlistment Act.
A most notorious use of Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act was against 1,300 progressive Canadian workers and others who went to fight in the anti-fascist war in Spain in the famous MacKenzie-Papineau Brigade. The Hitlerite Nazis openly supported the Spanish fascists at the time. The MacKenzie King government declared the anti-fascist volunteers to be committing a criminal act, stripped them of their passports, and had the RCMP oppose their re-entry to Canada. For their selfless act, the anti-fascist volunteers and their families were punished both at the time and for generations afterwards through denial of recognition, pensions and medical benefits. The Canadian government and media of the day demonized their political motivations and beliefs, while today the Trudeau government and monopoly media acclaim those who fight for Israel and Ukraine as personifying “Canadian values.”
The Foreign Enlistment Act was suspended by the federal cabinet in 1940 to allow Canadians to assist the Nazi collaborationist Mannerheim government of Finland, which was fighting Canada’s wartime ally, the Soviet Union, surely fitting the definition of a “friendly state.” It was again suspended in 1948 to facilitate Canadians enlisting in the Israeli armed forces striving to conquer Palestine. The law was ignored during the Vietnam War, during which an unknown number of Canadians joined the invading U.S. imperialist forces. They were forced to pick a fake “U.S. Home Town” to put in their U.S. military records to hide their country of origin.
This most recent activity on behalf of Ukraine originating from Canada, is obviously occurring with the full approval and acclaim of the ruling circles in Canada, even though it violates their own laws. This comes as no surprise. Just as Trudeau is well-known to be an unqualified supporter of Israeli war crimes, he is also an unqualified supporter of the Nazi-infiltrated Ukraine government.
(TML Daily, posted March 5, 2022)
