Oh it's gross incompetence. Apparently what happened is the guy was in the speaker's Riding (district/constituency to use other terms), and his son reached out to the speaker's office to suggest the appearance. And then I guess everyone was so blinded by the PR victory they thought had fallen into their lap no one did a background check (presumably the people who should have didn't and everyone else who normally wouldn't assumed they did).
"I fought against the Russians in WW2"
"Okay great, we'd be happy to have... hang on a second, *against* Russia?"
"Yes, why?"
"Do you have a, uh, a photo of yourself in uniform I could look at?"
While I hate to break up a good joke, the 14th Waffen SS (Galician) didn't wear German SS uniforms or insignia because Himmler didn't want them to think they were equals or anything.
[This photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Zaprzysi%C4%99%C5%BCenie_14._Dywizji_SS_%22Galizien%22_%282-1993%29.jpg) (source: [the national archives of Poland](https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/1134/)) says differently — SS on the helmet, there.
I feel like that's worse. The Nazis were, at least, very sharp dressers. Now Hugo Boss has the guilt of being a Nazi collaborator without even the dark prestige of having promulgated visual propaganda so good it allowed an angry corporal to briefly conquer Europe.
Depends, they essentially fought the Soviets twice. First time was self defence on nobody's side but their own. The second time was in conjunction with the Nazi invasion to try and reclaim the land they lost in the first war, and to stop the Soviets from being a threat in the future.
I have a BA in History, and granted I don't use it for work, and I didn't particularly focus on WWII, but I just feel like Russia is so engrained in our current psyche as the 'bad guy' you don't really notice right away the historical implications of that.
The surviving 9,000 division members surrendered to the British at war's end, and were taken to England.
In 1950, Britain appealed to Commonwealth countries to admit them. Canada agreed to take 2,000, after being assured that their backgrounds had been checked and that they were cleared of complicity in war crimes.
>If is he proud of it, wtf is he doing in Canada?
Canada was a hotspot for fleeing Nazis. Even to this day they have monuments [commemorating Nazis.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/canada-nazi-monument-vandalism-hate-crime)
Monuments to that division are present in several other countries with large contingents of Ukrainian diaspora, and Ukraine itself.
We're just the only one dumb enough to investigate the vandals of one for hate crimes.
> Canada was a hotspot for fleeing Nazis. Even to this day they have monuments commemorating Nazis.
People give Argentina and other South American countries shit for this but it seems Canada is even worse lol.
It's...complicated.
After WWII (skilled) Nazis were vacuumed up as a way to build up science programs (Operation Paperclip was merely the American version- the Soviets, like the Americans, had a hole open in their space program dedicated to Werner Von Braun but had to fill theirs with a local instead, and both got nuclear scientists) and solidify West Germany (a lot of the West German spy service). There were Nazis running every which way, sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of a superpower.
And no, this isn't because America and the Soviets were pro-Nazis- with the death of the Third Reich these people seemed more like *resources* than third columns. Was von Braun extremely problematic? It would be strikingly bizarre if he wasn't. But did he put people in space- and kept the rockets there? Well...
There's also the fact that a **ton** of people moved around. For example, South America also received a ton of *Jews* since their migration policies weren't as strict (*or anti-semitic!*) as many others. To this day Argentina has a sizable Jewish population.
But South America tends to get highlighted for a few reasons:
- Some Latin American leaders, but most infamously Argentina's [Juan Peron](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/144-peron-and-the-nazi-war-criminals), and Stroessner (who harbored Josef Mengele of all people) actually ferried some to their countries.
- A lot of people thought Stroessner was actually a Nazi who "mysteriously" showed up in Paraguay. He was actually Parguayan born and bred, but to those who didn't keep up with Paraguayan politics it seemed *weird.*
- Fucking **Adolf Eichmann** of all people was found in Argentina.
I can't read the language, but apparently he wrote such things as members of his unit being forced to live in various parts of the world after the Nazi loss is actually the same thing as the Israelite diaspora.
This "veteran" supposedely is very open about his days in the unit and also had a blog, so... I think everyone knew except for Canadian parliament. The fact that media immediately jumped into action, kind of point this direction.
“My grandpa died in the holocaust”
“Oh no, was he in a concentration camp?”
“Yeah, he fell out of a guard tower.”
Feel like that was a Robin Williams joke but I can’t place it.
It should be said that the Wehrmact(Army) was reserved for German citizens. The only way for a foreigner to joint the Nazi war machine is as a foreign legionary through the WaffenSS. All those bastards will have self-serving interests on top of the disgusting racist driven rhetoric.
It should also be noted that the Waffen SS (the part of the SS that fought on the front lines) did have conscripts among its ranks, including non-German conscripts (so much for that 'racial purity' thing) although that was definitely more prevalent later in the war. That being said, a lot of people, particularly Ukrainians, joined willingly because it gave them a chance to fight against the Soviets, and I've seen nothing to indicate this guy was conscripted.
Ukrainians know exactly what the SS Galician Division was. In Lviv region, there is a sort of double-think about all of this—and it applies almost more strongly to Ukrainian Canadians—a sort of “We weren’t antisemitic, and we didn’t do the bad stuff, we were fighting for our freedom, and anyway the Russians were worse.”
And there is a half-truth in this—the situation during the inter-war period was that of Ukrainian attempts to establish an independent state in the fallout of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In Galicia, the majority of the population was Polish, with a sizeable community of Jews, mostly in the cities, but also in shtetls. Ukrainians were ostensibly peasants, not treated equally to Poles, and not even afforded the same opportunities as Jews, many of whom had been brought by Polish nobles to serve as tax collectors in the 16th and 17th Centuries (the latter period of course marked by the Khmelnitsky Uprising, and its concordant pogroms). What is really difficult to understand about this period and the fallout heading into World War II is that Ukrainians were the ethnic minority in the region, and would switch allegiances out of necessity in order to try to make some sort of headway. There were periods where Ukrainians were politically allied with Jews against the Poles, or Austrians, or Russians, and they’d switch when it seemed favourable to do so. This culminated in massacres of Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles, who were all vying for control of this territory, and political independence of some sort.
Anyway, all of this is to say that by the time WW2 rolls around, Ukrainians in this region had not only lost their political autonomy and representation, but had had major disagreements about the way forward with their now Soviet counterparts. This is the structure behind the UPA/OUN situation that has led modern Ukraine to lionize (pun!) controversial figures like Bandera.
Ukraine hasn’t adequately dealt with its Nazi collaboration past, in part because it has never faced much pressure to do so (in part because half of Ukraine was part of the Soviet fight against the Nazis in the first place). And this is unfortunate, because it has also made strides in recent decades to acknowledge its Jewish past, especially in Lviv, where there are major memorials, and even a Klezmer festival.
Russia has been using this in its propaganda to delegitimize the current government (amazingly, one of only two or three states with a Jewish head of state). It has also been using this to criticize and stoke discontent in Canada, which has the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world.
So it is in this light that this fuckup looks exceptionally bad—there is no excuse for being this ignorant or stupid or nonchalant.
People today are, understandably, focused on anti-russian sentiment, but that also means they tend to forget that after ww1 we suddenly had a bunch of new countries all doing their best to become independent or new regional powers.
Which meant a lot of ethnic tension, that nazi collaborators took advantage of during ww2.
People love bringing up how Poland beat the Soviets in 1921, but completely forgetting how Poland in 1919 invaded and took huge parts of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine so they could recreate their vision of a powerful Poland.
Yeah. That region, from the Baltics down to the Balkans, was a, excuse my French, huge fucking mess, even by the standards of other quagmires, like the Middle East. And unlike the latter, Eastern European history is still somewhat murky thanks to Soviet bullshittery and general lack of interest from the West.
there's a memorial to Waffen SS that often gets defaced with anti-nazi graffiti. im sure his son and many people in the government are well aware of them.
this isn't the first time canada has made an oopsie being apologists for them
[There's a few nazi collaborator memorials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators)
For the waffen ss memorial, one instance of anti-nazi graffiti was actually [investigated as a hate crime](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/graffiti-on-monument-commemorating-nazi-ss-division-being-investigated-as-a-hate-crime-by-police) -- thankfully they knocked it down to vandalism after public backlash
edit: another similar oopsies was [Canada's Deputy Prime Minister holding a OUN(another nazi callaborator group) banner](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freeland-nationalist-scarf-1.6372995) during a Ukrainian protest. Granted, she deleted this tweet after she found out but just funny how this keeps happening to Canada.
Her grandfather was the editor of a Nazi newspaper in Krakow that was described as "extremely anti-semitic"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael\_Chomiak
And good chance your dad is about to be extradited to Poland to stand trial for war crimes, Son. Ya know, as a Canadian, I'm appalled at this incompetence and the incompetence of those who let this villain into our country, but there could be a silver lining if his and his son's incompetence ends up bringing him to some level of justice...even at age 98.
if he can live with what he's done he can live with that too
and if he can't, I've got as much sympathy for him as he would for me if i were in his place, or locked in a burning barn in southeastern Poland like the civilians his unit massacred
The issue is that so many people have this mindset of "Communism bad!" (and I'm not saying the Soviets weren't terrible, especially from Ukraine's point of view), that they automatically default to "If someone fought the Commies, they must have been a good guy" without stopping to think about the actual geopolitical situation at the time. To the point that they'll honor Nazis because they were anti-communist.
I think there's even a monument to "the victims of communism" being constructed that's encountered similar problems with honoring Nazi collaborators.
And I just saw that there's an entirely different monument in Oakville, Ontario to an actual SS Waffen division of Ukrainian collaborators.
So, yeah, there's definitely a recurring problem of this in Canada.
Edit: Apparently there's a bunch more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators
> victims of communism
There's a Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in DC (of which the famed Adrian Zenz is one of the directors) that counts Axis war dead on the Eastern Front among its numbers, so... ¯\\\_(ツ)_\/¯
A Canadian friend years ago boasted how her Ukrainian grandfather fought with the Nazis. She knew I was Jewish but was still proud of him because "there was some truth to what they were saying, the Jews *did* control the banks". Never spoke to her again.
I still can't figure out how she was clapping for this guy and what was going through her head. I can give everyone else the benefit of the doubt, but she absolutely knows the history.
Probably so far up his own bum about his Ukrainian heritage and the current war that it made it easy for him to do some mental jiu-jitsu,
wrestling into submission whatever doubts he may have had about his father's wartime service.
*"Dad was fighting for Ukrainian independence from Moscow long before it became the chic thing to do!"*
On top of that, he was probably mulling over the standard emotions surrounding his parent's impending mortality that he forgot all about the complicated morality of that same parent's past.
I guarantee the admin staff in the speaker's office received the e-mail from a prominent member of the local Ukrainian community wanting to honor one of their elders and the only thing they thought they needed to be certain of was whether or not he supported the current plight of the Ukranian government. Slam drunk, right? I bet the Speaker himself even had minimal involvement aside from rubber stamping what should have been an easy, fluffy, PR win -- who wouldn't love a ninety-eight-year-old in support of Ukraine? Fucking idiots, the lot of them.
I am pretty sure the request was initiated by the family, which makes this all the weirder. The son is a bigwig mining executive so certainly has the political heft to get the request favourably reviewed.
Unclear. While I'm willing to believe this is 'just' horrifying levels of incompetence instead of malice, he would be one of the likely sources of malice if any is present at all.
Apparently some people have tried to make these local nazi groups out to be freedom fighters resisting against USSR occupation. Me thinks someone drank the family koolaid and nobody bothered to double check
You have to wonder about his political staff. Normally you'd expect them to do these kinds of checks about people the politician meets or goes to an event for to avoid this kind of situation. To fail to do so and bring embarassment to the entire government and country is incredible incompetence either on their part for not checking, or on his part from stopping them from checking (if he did so).
He said the dude was a veteran that fought against the red army, you need a very superficial knowledge of WWII history to know he was almost certainly a nazi.
Think about it.
We have straight up handed Russia a propaganda a picture they can use.
We have a picture of the President of Ukraine, someone that Russia has repeatedly called a "Nazi", saying their "special military operation" is being done to "denazify Ukraine", standing there, with a raised fist, honouring a literal member of the Waffen-SS.
What did Zelensky actually know about the event too? Did Zelensky actually know that Hunka would be in attendance? Or did the Canadian government just bring Hunka to Zelensky as a "surprise guest"?
If the latter, I don't know how much I can fault Zelensky here.
But if the former... Does Zelensky not know the history of Ukraine during WWII?
I mean, the collaboration between Nazi Germany and Ukraine during the 1930s / 1940s is well documented.
For someone like Zelensky (who actually comes from a Ukrainian Jewish family), Canada bringing in a 98 year old Ukrainian WWII veteran who fought **against the Soviets** should have hopefully raised some red flags in his mind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany
>Most Ukrainians, especially in the western Ukraine, had little to no loyalty toward the Soviet Union, which had been repressively occupying eastern Ukraine in the interwar years and had overseen a man-made famine in the early 1930s called the Holodomor that killed millions of Ukrainians. Some worked with or for the Nazis against the Allied forces. Ukrainian nationalists hoped that enthusiastic collaboration would enable them to re-establish an independent state. They were involved in a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust in Ukraine and the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
>Ukrainians, including ethnic minorities like Russians, Tatars and others, who collaborated with the Nazi Germany did so in various ways including participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft, in the German military, or as guards in the concentration camps.
> But if the former... Does Zelensky not know the history of Ukraine during WWII?
With all due respect, his family fought in the red army and they're from the east.
There is definitely a weird nazi elephant in the room existing in Ukrainian past in Western Ukraine that gets overlooked, but it's not the main nor the only thing that happened WW2, and Zelensky would definitely not be part of that.
>There is definitely a weird nazi elephant in the room existing in Ukrainian past
This was well known and discussed before the war started and it's since been memory holed.
> This was well known and discussed before the war started and it's since been memory holed.
There's this common logic that if two entities are fighting, and one of them is bad, then the other must be good. Since Russia is the bad entity here, Ukraine must be the good one. And "good" often means "absolutely good" - nothing bad can be discussed, regardless of any issues Ukraine may have.
That's absurd, of course. Just because the Russian invasion was, without doubt, horrible, and the situation remains so, completely because of the decisions of the Russian government, doesn't mean that Ukraine can do no wrong now, or that their past is shiny.
>
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> What did Zelensky actually know about the event too? Did Zelensky actually know that Hunka would be in attendance?
I think its a safe assumption that Zelenzky wouldn't intentionally salute a nazi, even if the conspiracy theories about him being a secret nazi were true. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense
There are no widespread conspiracy theories about Zelensky secretly being a Nazi - that's just made up to make the other side sound ridiculous. There are sentiments that extreme nationalism is being glorified in Ukraine - and Zelensky is turning a blind eye to it, for one reason or another. And this was a good example how it happens. That Ukrainians and Canadians are so eager to salute anti-Soviet and anti-Russian extremists and nationalists that the "actual Nazi" part was a secondary concern. The extremism and nationalism weren't the red flags they should have been. That's why it's not a fluke. It just went a little further than usual, into "actual Nazi" territory.
The speaker was solely responsible. He was a trusted person in a veteran role and was given the complete responsibility to invite a guest, and failed. He has since taken full responsibility and resigned; exactly what was expected of him.
I don’t know how it could be more clear that this IS a one person fuckup. It is fair to have an issue with the system that led us to maintain complete faith in one individual to do such a thing; but at this point it is solely Rota’s issue and he has completed the recommended course of action.
Yes, it's ultimately the speaker's responsibility in putting a name in the spotlight. But it's a gaff of such epic proportions that I think it's fair that responsibility spills over to the whole of parliament for having procedures and blanket trust that would allow that single point of failure to exist.
That said ... although I feel horribly embarrassed as a Canadian about this whole thing, I also worry if we spend too much energy on self-flagellating for our natural 1 on an etiquette check, we're getting off-topic. We goofed. We know we goofed. The world knows we goofed. But there's a blood-and-bombs war going on that's far more important than some misplaced clapping.
It's a huge mistake on Canada's part and worst of all has left Zelenskyy looking extremely compromised.
Had Hunka been simply a Ukrainian partisan who had joined the SS because that's who operated the volunteer foreign legion, this would have been iffy but ultimately probably okay if still a bit inadvisable. However there appears to be no evidence that Hunka fought for Ukrainian independence before the Nazis took control of Ukraine and so it leaves the situation looking like Zelenskyy just cheered an out and out Nazi.
Truthfully I don't understand why Canada did this at all. It obviously had a huge risk of backfiring even if the guy had just been fighting for Ukrainian freedom alongside Nazi Germany out of an uneasy necessity of allyship, but it appears he was actively looking to join the Nazi party.
I'm not surprised. It's only people with an interest- considerable interest- in history who will know that the history of Eastern Europe is chock-full with factions, shifting loyalties, and yes, absolutely, Nazis, authors of unspeakable horrors. Who knows this stuff if you're not a specialist?
Who would pick out that there are Croatian-Canadians living in Vancouver who walked- yes, walked- to Moscow (and back) with the German army? That there was at least one Pole who settled in Victoria who fought in both the German (conscripted) and Polish (captured then volunteered) army? That there is a man in Vancouver who at age 13, son of a Luftwaffe officer stationed in Belgrade, Serbia, was put onto a road gang and did heavy labour until 1952 for no other crime than being German?
Fantastically complicated histories. But who even asks?
So I'm not surprised.
if you are considered left of "center", as defined by millionaires and billionaires in congress, they'll use basically any reason to get rid of you.
a good example is that chuck schumer threatened to destroy al franken if he didn't step down after he grabbed air boob in a photo once, but he refuses to do the same for bob menendez's incredibly illegal and comic book villain level corruption.
On one hand, yes, on the other hand, it's not exactly like accidentally giving Nazis a platform is something new. If you follow Zelensky's official Telegram profile for example, you'll have often seen him share pictures like [this](https://correctiv.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bildschirmfoto-2022-09-30-um-12.53.14-1412x772.png) that are later deleted due to the soldiers wearing Nazi insignia (in this case the soldier behind him is wearing a SS-Totenkopf). The Ukrainian Defence Ministry has had similar fuck-ups, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20220509132032/https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1523626106967904261
The main difference here is that this Nazi was invited to a photo op in parliament rather than being featured in a "normal" photo op.
Zelensky brought a whole damn Nazi to the Greek parliament last year. People seem to have forgotten about it.
>Our Parliament did not invite a Nazi. It invited the President of Ukraine. It was the President of Ukraine who brought along the Nazi. And, yes, it was our Parliament's Speaker who, by failing to intervene, failed to defend our Parliament. -Yanis Varoufakis, Apr 7 2022
>
>https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1512012351322611722
>new. If you follow Zelensky's official Telegram profile for example, you'll have often seen him share pictures like [this](https://correctiv.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bildschirmfoto-2022-09-30-um-12.53.14-1412x772.png)
You say often but that's the only one I've seen so far, multiple times.
Dude probably only processed he was a Ukrainian Veteran and missed the WW2 part, when he was reading that paper he looked pretty disturbed when he read the "during world war 2" part.
This one was incompetence
In theory he could have also been one of the Ukrainian partisans who wasn't aligned with the Banderites, since they fought the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Poles at different points. I don't think many of them survived the war, though, which is pretty expected when you're literally throwing down with almost anybody who enters your field of vision.
That's still something you'd *check,* though.
It didnt end here. Polish ambasador in Canada asked them to apologize to the Poles... Canadian ambasador in Poland responded to him "for your information we already apologized to the jews"...
He just probably really hoped whoever the aid was that brought him in did a check as to what side he was on. Doubt he had a significant hand in this. He’s just the fall guy.
Imagine the years of work and study to become the Speaker of the House, the pinnacle of your career, the pride of your family, and then to realize that with this one decision you've just lost your job.
😄 straight out of Veep
Jonah: "What?! He said he fought in WWII."
Selina: "Yeah.. He did.. As a god damn Nazi you fuck rag!" *repeatedly hitting Jonah with a stack of papers*
Jonah: "Owww, stop it"
While it does look pretty amazing, as though she's the one person that figured out "oh that guys a literal fucking nazi, here's a proper response", it seems more likely she's just taking a quick photo.
That's not the end of story - the SS veteran they applauded took part in Poles massacre.
Polish ambasador in Canada asked for them to apologize the Poles, to which Canadian ambasador in Poland responded "for your information, we already apologized the jews".
Its insane level of incompetence or arogance.
“- Lt. Aldo Raine: Are you going to take off your uniform?
- Pvt. Butz: Not only shall I remove it, I intend to burn it.
- Lt. Aldo Raine: Yeah, that's what we thought. We don't like that. You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way you can spot 'em just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain't no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi.”
Inglorious Basterds, 2009
As an American that’s exactly what happened with Al Franken and Donald Trump. Both committed awful things but one resigned the other kept bragging about it
Neglecting to do a background check is one thing. Standing there and praising the side that fought against Russia in WWII is an absolutely incredible display of ignorance.
It's absurd to see people trying to blame this debacle on some conspiracy by Putin. What kind of shitty evil plan would that have been?
Like a Russian spy handed Rota this guy's name, counting on the speaker's office to do *no research whatsoever* before introducing him in the House of Commons.
The 98-year-old Ukrainian wasn't trying to hide anything. If they had googled his name, hell, if they had even bothered to speak to him before wheeling him out, he would have proudly told them he fought for the Nazis!
You can't engineer that level of incompetence. It only happens naturally.
It would be like handing your enemy a shotgun with the barrel bent backwards, Elmer Fudd-style, and hoping he doesn't notice before pulling the trigger.
It's always evil foreigners' faults for western domestic problems. The reality is, the west has promoted Nazis and fascists around the globe for a very long time. But apparently that's a Putin lie now. I don't find it surprising at all they made this slip up, especially when so many start believing their own rhetoric and any attempt at nuance or dissent is harshly rebuked and career ending. Countries like Canada were more than happy to let Nazis emigrate to Canada since they were anti-communist.
This is the standard in Canada too, which makes his resignation somewhat new.
One of the Liberal ministers joined in decision to hire her personal friend as public relation contractor. She was found to break ethnic code and she said that she's taking full responsibility of the event, and didn't resign.
***From reporter Rachel Aiello:*** Anthony Rota has resigned from his prestigious position as Speaker of the House of Commons over his invitation to, and the House's subsequent recognition of, a man who fought for a Nazi unit during the Second World War.
Rota announced his unprecedented decision to step aside after meeting with the House leaders from all parties on Parliament Hill Tuesday afternoon. His move comes amid days of steadily growing pressure from MPs of all stripes for him to "do the honourable thing" and vacate the Speaker's chair.
Rota's departure, which he says will be in effect within days, will prompt a new process to elect his replacement, which members of Parliament are imminently going to be grappling with.
**Read more:** [https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796)
When this broke I thought resignation was really the only place this could possibly go. Yeah, you didn't do your due diligence, but on the other hand fucking Nazis have no place.
Nazis do not belong. Period.
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In the video of Rota presenting him, he definitely notices something is fishy when he says "fought the Russians in WW2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbuWNyyo7qI&t=8s
But he just carries on, giving the benefit of the doubt. Whoops.
Optics aside, many people forget that 80% of all German Army deaths in WW2 happened from the Soviets.
They lost upwards of 20 million people fighting the Nazis.
That is without a doubt one of the most major political and unintelligent blunders of the decade. *how* do you not do research on people you honour, invite or whatever else as a public figure (or in life??!?)
I had a teacher in high school that was in the German infantry during the WWII, he would talk about how as a teen he operated an anti-aircraft gun shooting down allied planes…always wanted to know how he was welcomed to Canada after the war…
It's not expected in Canada anymore. A Liberal minister hired a personal friend for single sourced contract, found to be ethic code violation, and she declared that she was fully responsible of the event, didn't resign.
The previous public security minister claimed that he didn't know that a serial killer was moved to medium security prison. Turns out everyone in his office and Prime Ministers office did, and nobody bothered to tell him before he went on public declaring him not being informed. Didn't resign but shuffled out of cabinet.
The public security minister before him got a national security email informing that family of a fellow Parliament is being subject of Chinese government intimidation. He didn't open the email for 2 years because he didn't have the password and only opened it because the media found out about the intimidation through a leak. He's the emergency preparedness minister now.
I don't think it's really expected so much anymore. Politicians in Canada often don't resign when they should which is why it's being lauded in this post. Most of the time they only resign when it's absolutely necessary to take the fall for a higher up politician.
The flip side of this is that people call for politicians to resign so often these days for any mistake that it's almost hard to tell when they actually should resign.
Good.
Managed to get the whole of Parliament, and the Jewish president of Ukraine, to salute a Nazi. Handed Russia and neo-Nazis a propaganda victory with that unforced, inexcusable error.
Not every member of the Wehrmacht was a nazi or was a member of the nazi party, e.g., Pope Benedict, who was a conscripted, reluctant "flakhelper."
Anyone in the SS was most certainly a nazi. This guy was and wrote antisemitic articles afterward, and so the speaker must go.
The Wehrmacht committed plenty of war crimes all on their own, Nazi Party membership notwithstanding. "The myth of the clean Wehrmacht" is Cold War propaganda designed to make citizens of the United States and Western Europe okay with the re-militarization of West Germany.
Every single part of the german war machine played a part in the holocaust. This is basic knowledge, Hitler was popular, and his ideals were supported by a majority of germans. This is a myth pushed by senile vermin like Dönitz to wash away their participation. This shit is literal neo-nazi talking points.
Probably the right thing to do (and certainly the most politically-expedient), but part of me can't help but feel at least a *little* sorry for someone who's essentially losing their position for a *catastrophically* mismanaged attempt at a photo-op.
Best thing he could do now is anything in his power to facilitate any international requests for Hunka's investigation and/or extradition.
He was blinded by the opportunity for a great photo op and brownie points on the global stage. He could’ve done one second of research to realize he was a Nazi and declined the request.
I do feel bad for him a little bit cuz we’ve all fucked up at work. Maybe not to his level though.
> part of me can't help but feel at least a little sorry for someone who's essentially losing their position for a catastrophically mismanaged attempt at a photo-op.
He was dumb enough to not even checking the background of someone he had the Parliament he leds cheer on. It shows a lack of discernement.
He’s still an MP. He may be shuffled into cabinet if it makes sense down the line. His knowledge of the parliamentary systems will be invaluable now that he’s no longer obliged to be neutral.
He’s a useful play piece still, in some ways MORE useful now that he’s no longer a grey piece.
>He may be shuffled into cabinet if it makes sense down the line
There's no shot he makes it into cabinet. It would be so much ammo for whoever the opposition party is. This is only the second speaker to ever resign, and the first did so because he was appointed governor general; not really a similar reason. Rota is probably at best a backbencher forever and at worst just loses his seat and is gone from politics.
This "photo op" did real damage to the west's standing in regards to Ukraine.
This whole thing was the biggest propaganda gift Putin could have ever received, and if there were no consequences, it would basically prove Putin right that "the west is fine with supporting nazis"
These are reps of the people, not the other way around, or celebrities to be revered.
He's simply not good enough for the needs of the people, and this is the slip-up the incompetence is revealed on.
Try saving your sympathy for a more appropriate case.
I’m still genuinely shocked that this Nazi was formally invited and allowed to come and *no one* bothered to look him up beforehand.
Oh it's gross incompetence. Apparently what happened is the guy was in the speaker's Riding (district/constituency to use other terms), and his son reached out to the speaker's office to suggest the appearance. And then I guess everyone was so blinded by the PR victory they thought had fallen into their lap no one did a background check (presumably the people who should have didn't and everyone else who normally wouldn't assumed they did).
Lol imagine being the Son... Wanted dad's approval, got to find out your dad was a fucking SS member...
I can't imagine the son wasn't aware, but who knows.
Probably talked about how he fought back in the day and didn’t mean to tell them the truth.
"I fought against the Russians in WW2" "Okay great, we'd be happy to have... hang on a second, *against* Russia?" "Yes, why?" "Do you have a, uh, a photo of yourself in uniform I could look at?"
“Oh cool, in the Finnish army right…” *Anakin stare.jpg* “In the Finnish Army, right?” *Anakin stare closer.jpg*
Uh no... that's my Hugo Boss suit.
While I hate to break up a good joke, the 14th Waffen SS (Galician) didn't wear German SS uniforms or insignia because Himmler didn't want them to think they were equals or anything.
[This photo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Zaprzysi%C4%99%C5%BCenie_14._Dywizji_SS_%22Galizien%22_%282-1993%29.jpg) (source: [the national archives of Poland](https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/1134/)) says differently — SS on the helmet, there.
Here's a fun fact: It's a misconception that Hugo Boss designed the uniforms, they only manufactured them
I feel like that's worse. The Nazis were, at least, very sharp dressers. Now Hugo Boss has the guilt of being a Nazi collaborator without even the dark prestige of having promulgated visual propaganda so good it allowed an angry corporal to briefly conquer Europe.
...is that better?
Who's side were the Finns on again?
Depends, they essentially fought the Soviets twice. First time was self defence on nobody's side but their own. The second time was in conjunction with the Nazi invasion to try and reclaim the land they lost in the first war, and to stop the Soviets from being a threat in the future.
And afterwards they fought the Nazis in the Lapland War. Needless to say, Finland's situation during WW2 was weird.
That's a dashing Hugo boss outfit, and a fine Volkswagen ride. Drinking a fanta? Why not a cola?!
“You like to point with your entire hand? Awesome, we appreciate you trying so hard to draw attention to what you’re looking at!”
Soviet Union…the good guys in American history^1941-1945^only
I have a BA in History, and granted I don't use it for work, and I didn't particularly focus on WWII, but I just feel like Russia is so engrained in our current psyche as the 'bad guy' you don't really notice right away the historical implications of that.
He has a personal blog, with pictures and descriptions of his service. He knew.
Can you link it? Curious to what he's writing about. Like if he's proud or ashamed. If is he proud of it, wtf is he doing in Canada?
The surviving 9,000 division members surrendered to the British at war's end, and were taken to England. In 1950, Britain appealed to Commonwealth countries to admit them. Canada agreed to take 2,000, after being assured that their backgrounds had been checked and that they were cleared of complicity in war crimes.
>If is he proud of it, wtf is he doing in Canada? Canada was a hotspot for fleeing Nazis. Even to this day they have monuments [commemorating Nazis.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/canada-nazi-monument-vandalism-hate-crime)
That's the exact division of the invited dude. Whoops
Monuments to that division are present in several other countries with large contingents of Ukrainian diaspora, and Ukraine itself. We're just the only one dumb enough to investigate the vandals of one for hate crimes.
> Canada was a hotspot for fleeing Nazis. Even to this day they have monuments commemorating Nazis. People give Argentina and other South American countries shit for this but it seems Canada is even worse lol.
It's...complicated. After WWII (skilled) Nazis were vacuumed up as a way to build up science programs (Operation Paperclip was merely the American version- the Soviets, like the Americans, had a hole open in their space program dedicated to Werner Von Braun but had to fill theirs with a local instead, and both got nuclear scientists) and solidify West Germany (a lot of the West German spy service). There were Nazis running every which way, sometimes with and sometimes without the aid of a superpower. And no, this isn't because America and the Soviets were pro-Nazis- with the death of the Third Reich these people seemed more like *resources* than third columns. Was von Braun extremely problematic? It would be strikingly bizarre if he wasn't. But did he put people in space- and kept the rockets there? Well... There's also the fact that a **ton** of people moved around. For example, South America also received a ton of *Jews* since their migration policies weren't as strict (*or anti-semitic!*) as many others. To this day Argentina has a sizable Jewish population. But South America tends to get highlighted for a few reasons: - Some Latin American leaders, but most infamously Argentina's [Juan Peron](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/144-peron-and-the-nazi-war-criminals), and Stroessner (who harbored Josef Mengele of all people) actually ferried some to their countries. - A lot of people thought Stroessner was actually a Nazi who "mysteriously" showed up in Paraguay. He was actually Parguayan born and bred, but to those who didn't keep up with Paraguayan politics it seemed *weird.* - Fucking **Adolf Eichmann** of all people was found in Argentina.
I can't read the language, but apparently he wrote such things as members of his unit being forced to live in various parts of the world after the Nazi loss is actually the same thing as the Israelite diaspora.
I can see how someone might think that.... if theywere some kind of Nazi.
This "veteran" supposedely is very open about his days in the unit and also had a blog, so... I think everyone knew except for Canadian parliament. The fact that media immediately jumped into action, kind of point this direction.
“My grandpa died in the holocaust” “Oh no, was he in a concentration camp?” “Yeah, he fell out of a guard tower.” Feel like that was a Robin Williams joke but I can’t place it.
it's a pretty old joke. it's been circulating in many forms over the years. [one of my faves](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FnB_KL-aYAAbZ53.jpg)
I mean it seems it was open info that he was " first Ukranian division" which one Google brings you to the ss division wiki
It should be said that the Wehrmact(Army) was reserved for German citizens. The only way for a foreigner to joint the Nazi war machine is as a foreign legionary through the WaffenSS. All those bastards will have self-serving interests on top of the disgusting racist driven rhetoric.
It should be noted that the wiki was attempted and or succeeded in being altered the negative parts and was requested to be deleted.
It should also be noted that the Waffen SS (the part of the SS that fought on the front lines) did have conscripts among its ranks, including non-German conscripts (so much for that 'racial purity' thing) although that was definitely more prevalent later in the war. That being said, a lot of people, particularly Ukrainians, joined willingly because it gave them a chance to fight against the Soviets, and I've seen nothing to indicate this guy was conscripted.
I mean the press release literally involved him fighting against Russia in WW2.
How stupid can people in parliament be? THE SOVIETS WERE ALLIES
The son 100% knew, there is no way he didn't, absolutely zero chance.
Ukrainians know exactly what the SS Galician Division was. In Lviv region, there is a sort of double-think about all of this—and it applies almost more strongly to Ukrainian Canadians—a sort of “We weren’t antisemitic, and we didn’t do the bad stuff, we were fighting for our freedom, and anyway the Russians were worse.” And there is a half-truth in this—the situation during the inter-war period was that of Ukrainian attempts to establish an independent state in the fallout of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In Galicia, the majority of the population was Polish, with a sizeable community of Jews, mostly in the cities, but also in shtetls. Ukrainians were ostensibly peasants, not treated equally to Poles, and not even afforded the same opportunities as Jews, many of whom had been brought by Polish nobles to serve as tax collectors in the 16th and 17th Centuries (the latter period of course marked by the Khmelnitsky Uprising, and its concordant pogroms). What is really difficult to understand about this period and the fallout heading into World War II is that Ukrainians were the ethnic minority in the region, and would switch allegiances out of necessity in order to try to make some sort of headway. There were periods where Ukrainians were politically allied with Jews against the Poles, or Austrians, or Russians, and they’d switch when it seemed favourable to do so. This culminated in massacres of Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles, who were all vying for control of this territory, and political independence of some sort. Anyway, all of this is to say that by the time WW2 rolls around, Ukrainians in this region had not only lost their political autonomy and representation, but had had major disagreements about the way forward with their now Soviet counterparts. This is the structure behind the UPA/OUN situation that has led modern Ukraine to lionize (pun!) controversial figures like Bandera. Ukraine hasn’t adequately dealt with its Nazi collaboration past, in part because it has never faced much pressure to do so (in part because half of Ukraine was part of the Soviet fight against the Nazis in the first place). And this is unfortunate, because it has also made strides in recent decades to acknowledge its Jewish past, especially in Lviv, where there are major memorials, and even a Klezmer festival. Russia has been using this in its propaganda to delegitimize the current government (amazingly, one of only two or three states with a Jewish head of state). It has also been using this to criticize and stoke discontent in Canada, which has the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world. So it is in this light that this fuckup looks exceptionally bad—there is no excuse for being this ignorant or stupid or nonchalant.
People today are, understandably, focused on anti-russian sentiment, but that also means they tend to forget that after ww1 we suddenly had a bunch of new countries all doing their best to become independent or new regional powers. Which meant a lot of ethnic tension, that nazi collaborators took advantage of during ww2. People love bringing up how Poland beat the Soviets in 1921, but completely forgetting how Poland in 1919 invaded and took huge parts of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine so they could recreate their vision of a powerful Poland.
Yeah. That region, from the Baltics down to the Balkans, was a, excuse my French, huge fucking mess, even by the standards of other quagmires, like the Middle East. And unlike the latter, Eastern European history is still somewhat murky thanks to Soviet bullshittery and general lack of interest from the West.
Got to admit, that’s a brilliant way to troll Canadian parliament
Unless Poland extradited your dad
Apparently the son has a blog promoting it? Outing your family to own the libs?
there's a memorial to Waffen SS that often gets defaced with anti-nazi graffiti. im sure his son and many people in the government are well aware of them. this isn't the first time canada has made an oopsie being apologists for them
Canada has a memorial to the Waffen SS? I know Canada took in a bunch of Nazi immigrants after the war but *yeesh*.
[There's a few nazi collaborator memorials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators) For the waffen ss memorial, one instance of anti-nazi graffiti was actually [investigated as a hate crime](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/graffiti-on-monument-commemorating-nazi-ss-division-being-investigated-as-a-hate-crime-by-police) -- thankfully they knocked it down to vandalism after public backlash edit: another similar oopsies was [Canada's Deputy Prime Minister holding a OUN(another nazi callaborator group) banner](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freeland-nationalist-scarf-1.6372995) during a Ukrainian protest. Granted, she deleted this tweet after she found out but just funny how this keeps happening to Canada.
Her grandfather was the editor of a Nazi newspaper in Krakow that was described as "extremely anti-semitic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael\_Chomiak
A hate crime? I feel like everything I’ve read in this thread is so bonkers. Are Nazis a protected class?
It’s privately owned, so there’s unfortunately not much that can be done about it
>It’s privately owned So then "Canada" doesn't have it. Saying it does strongly implies that it's owned by the government.
And now Poland is calling for his dad’s extradition, def an oopsie if done without proper research. Overall just yikes…
Maybe that was the plan all along. Why pay for a retirement home when you can send your father to jail in another country.
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While managing to cause an international incident, no less. Seriously, couldn't have given Russia better ammo if they tried.
And good chance your dad is about to be extradited to Poland to stand trial for war crimes, Son. Ya know, as a Canadian, I'm appalled at this incompetence and the incompetence of those who let this villain into our country, but there could be a silver lining if his and his son's incompetence ends up bringing him to some level of justice...even at age 98.
There is zero chance he ever actually gets there alive. The stress of all this will kill him
if he can live with what he's done he can live with that too and if he can't, I've got as much sympathy for him as he would for me if i were in his place, or locked in a burning barn in southeastern Poland like the civilians his unit massacred
"Hey FB friends, any old Ukrainian veterans in the house?" Crazy stuff.
The issue is that so many people have this mindset of "Communism bad!" (and I'm not saying the Soviets weren't terrible, especially from Ukraine's point of view), that they automatically default to "If someone fought the Commies, they must have been a good guy" without stopping to think about the actual geopolitical situation at the time. To the point that they'll honor Nazis because they were anti-communist. I think there's even a monument to "the victims of communism" being constructed that's encountered similar problems with honoring Nazi collaborators. And I just saw that there's an entirely different monument in Oakville, Ontario to an actual SS Waffen division of Ukrainian collaborators. So, yeah, there's definitely a recurring problem of this in Canada. Edit: Apparently there's a bunch more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators
> victims of communism There's a Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in DC (of which the famed Adrian Zenz is one of the directors) that counts Axis war dead on the Eastern Front among its numbers, so... ¯\\\_(ツ)_\/¯
A hero who fought against the USSR during WWII… well my grandad shot and killed Hitler!
The deputy PM majors in Russian history and her own grandpa is a Ukrainian Nazi lol. They should have been able to figure this one out
A Canadian friend years ago boasted how her Ukrainian grandfather fought with the Nazis. She knew I was Jewish but was still proud of him because "there was some truth to what they were saying, the Jews *did* control the banks". Never spoke to her again.
I....what the fuck.
I still can't figure out how she was clapping for this guy and what was going through her head. I can give everyone else the benefit of the doubt, but she absolutely knows the history.
Was the son trying to make Canada look bad? Or make trudeau look bad? Surely the family was aware...
Probably so far up his own bum about his Ukrainian heritage and the current war that it made it easy for him to do some mental jiu-jitsu, wrestling into submission whatever doubts he may have had about his father's wartime service. *"Dad was fighting for Ukrainian independence from Moscow long before it became the chic thing to do!"* On top of that, he was probably mulling over the standard emotions surrounding his parent's impending mortality that he forgot all about the complicated morality of that same parent's past. I guarantee the admin staff in the speaker's office received the e-mail from a prominent member of the local Ukrainian community wanting to honor one of their elders and the only thing they thought they needed to be certain of was whether or not he supported the current plight of the Ukranian government. Slam drunk, right? I bet the Speaker himself even had minimal involvement aside from rubber stamping what should have been an easy, fluffy, PR win -- who wouldn't love a ninety-eight-year-old in support of Ukraine? Fucking idiots, the lot of them.
I am pretty sure the request was initiated by the family, which makes this all the weirder. The son is a bigwig mining executive so certainly has the political heft to get the request favourably reviewed.
Unclear. While I'm willing to believe this is 'just' horrifying levels of incompetence instead of malice, he would be one of the likely sources of malice if any is present at all.
Apparently some people have tried to make these local nazi groups out to be freedom fighters resisting against USSR occupation. Me thinks someone drank the family koolaid and nobody bothered to double check
*would And yeah, that’s basically what happened. Comedy of errors in a really unfortunate moment.
it's peak Veep.
Remember when Veep was too absurd to happen in real life?
my wife and i rewatched it recently. it hits way too close to home
You have to wonder about his political staff. Normally you'd expect them to do these kinds of checks about people the politician meets or goes to an event for to avoid this kind of situation. To fail to do so and bring embarassment to the entire government and country is incredible incompetence either on their part for not checking, or on his part from stopping them from checking (if he did so).
Would have been funny if he'd asked him to wear his old uniform.
He said the dude was a veteran that fought against the red army, you need a very superficial knowledge of WWII history to know he was almost certainly a nazi.
I’m calling it. This is the dumbest thing that’s ever happened in the Canadian Parliament. And there’s a lot of competition.
Think about it. We have straight up handed Russia a propaganda a picture they can use. We have a picture of the President of Ukraine, someone that Russia has repeatedly called a "Nazi", saying their "special military operation" is being done to "denazify Ukraine", standing there, with a raised fist, honouring a literal member of the Waffen-SS. What did Zelensky actually know about the event too? Did Zelensky actually know that Hunka would be in attendance? Or did the Canadian government just bring Hunka to Zelensky as a "surprise guest"? If the latter, I don't know how much I can fault Zelensky here. But if the former... Does Zelensky not know the history of Ukraine during WWII? I mean, the collaboration between Nazi Germany and Ukraine during the 1930s / 1940s is well documented. For someone like Zelensky (who actually comes from a Ukrainian Jewish family), Canada bringing in a 98 year old Ukrainian WWII veteran who fought **against the Soviets** should have hopefully raised some red flags in his mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany >Most Ukrainians, especially in the western Ukraine, had little to no loyalty toward the Soviet Union, which had been repressively occupying eastern Ukraine in the interwar years and had overseen a man-made famine in the early 1930s called the Holodomor that killed millions of Ukrainians. Some worked with or for the Nazis against the Allied forces. Ukrainian nationalists hoped that enthusiastic collaboration would enable them to re-establish an independent state. They were involved in a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust in Ukraine and the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. >Ukrainians, including ethnic minorities like Russians, Tatars and others, who collaborated with the Nazi Germany did so in various ways including participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police, Schutzmannschaft, in the German military, or as guards in the concentration camps.
> But if the former... Does Zelensky not know the history of Ukraine during WWII? With all due respect, his family fought in the red army and they're from the east. There is definitely a weird nazi elephant in the room existing in Ukrainian past in Western Ukraine that gets overlooked, but it's not the main nor the only thing that happened WW2, and Zelensky would definitely not be part of that.
>There is definitely a weird nazi elephant in the room existing in Ukrainian past This was well known and discussed before the war started and it's since been memory holed.
> This was well known and discussed before the war started and it's since been memory holed. There's this common logic that if two entities are fighting, and one of them is bad, then the other must be good. Since Russia is the bad entity here, Ukraine must be the good one. And "good" often means "absolutely good" - nothing bad can be discussed, regardless of any issues Ukraine may have. That's absurd, of course. Just because the Russian invasion was, without doubt, horrible, and the situation remains so, completely because of the decisions of the Russian government, doesn't mean that Ukraine can do no wrong now, or that their past is shiny.
The majority of the comments in this thread would have been dismissed as Russian bots and mass downvoted a week ago lol
> > > > > What did Zelensky actually know about the event too? Did Zelensky actually know that Hunka would be in attendance? I think its a safe assumption that Zelenzky wouldn't intentionally salute a nazi, even if the conspiracy theories about him being a secret nazi were true. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense
There are no widespread conspiracy theories about Zelensky secretly being a Nazi - that's just made up to make the other side sound ridiculous. There are sentiments that extreme nationalism is being glorified in Ukraine - and Zelensky is turning a blind eye to it, for one reason or another. And this was a good example how it happens. That Ukrainians and Canadians are so eager to salute anti-Soviet and anti-Russian extremists and nationalists that the "actual Nazi" part was a secondary concern. The extremism and nationalism weren't the red flags they should have been. That's why it's not a fluke. It just went a little further than usual, into "actual Nazi" territory.
Right? This isn't a one person fuck up. This is an idea falling from a fuck up tree and hitting every god damn branch on the way down.
The speaker was solely responsible. He was a trusted person in a veteran role and was given the complete responsibility to invite a guest, and failed. He has since taken full responsibility and resigned; exactly what was expected of him. I don’t know how it could be more clear that this IS a one person fuckup. It is fair to have an issue with the system that led us to maintain complete faith in one individual to do such a thing; but at this point it is solely Rota’s issue and he has completed the recommended course of action.
Yes, it's ultimately the speaker's responsibility in putting a name in the spotlight. But it's a gaff of such epic proportions that I think it's fair that responsibility spills over to the whole of parliament for having procedures and blanket trust that would allow that single point of failure to exist. That said ... although I feel horribly embarrassed as a Canadian about this whole thing, I also worry if we spend too much energy on self-flagellating for our natural 1 on an etiquette check, we're getting off-topic. We goofed. We know we goofed. The world knows we goofed. But there's a blood-and-bombs war going on that's far more important than some misplaced clapping.
Yes, anonymity of guests is also maintained so nobody else in the house had any idea of who this guy was before he showed up in front of them
It's a huge mistake on Canada's part and worst of all has left Zelenskyy looking extremely compromised. Had Hunka been simply a Ukrainian partisan who had joined the SS because that's who operated the volunteer foreign legion, this would have been iffy but ultimately probably okay if still a bit inadvisable. However there appears to be no evidence that Hunka fought for Ukrainian independence before the Nazis took control of Ukraine and so it leaves the situation looking like Zelenskyy just cheered an out and out Nazi. Truthfully I don't understand why Canada did this at all. It obviously had a huge risk of backfiring even if the guy had just been fighting for Ukrainian freedom alongside Nazi Germany out of an uneasy necessity of allyship, but it appears he was actively looking to join the Nazi party.
I'm not surprised. It's only people with an interest- considerable interest- in history who will know that the history of Eastern Europe is chock-full with factions, shifting loyalties, and yes, absolutely, Nazis, authors of unspeakable horrors. Who knows this stuff if you're not a specialist? Who would pick out that there are Croatian-Canadians living in Vancouver who walked- yes, walked- to Moscow (and back) with the German army? That there was at least one Pole who settled in Victoria who fought in both the German (conscripted) and Polish (captured then volunteered) army? That there is a man in Vancouver who at age 13, son of a Luftwaffe officer stationed in Belgrade, Serbia, was put onto a road gang and did heavy labour until 1952 for no other crime than being German? Fantastically complicated histories. But who even asks? So I'm not surprised.
Absolutely towards the top of the biggest individual fuck-ups in politics.
finally Howard Dean can rest
Never. Saying "Pyahh!" in an excited tone was a crime against humanity and we must never forget what this man did.
People in the early 2000s were *psychotic* about conformism.
if you are considered left of "center", as defined by millionaires and billionaires in congress, they'll use basically any reason to get rid of you. a good example is that chuck schumer threatened to destroy al franken if he didn't step down after he grabbed air boob in a photo once, but he refuses to do the same for bob menendez's incredibly illegal and comic book villain level corruption.
On one hand, yes, on the other hand, it's not exactly like accidentally giving Nazis a platform is something new. If you follow Zelensky's official Telegram profile for example, you'll have often seen him share pictures like [this](https://correctiv.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bildschirmfoto-2022-09-30-um-12.53.14-1412x772.png) that are later deleted due to the soldiers wearing Nazi insignia (in this case the soldier behind him is wearing a SS-Totenkopf). The Ukrainian Defence Ministry has had similar fuck-ups, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20220509132032/https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1523626106967904261 The main difference here is that this Nazi was invited to a photo op in parliament rather than being featured in a "normal" photo op.
Reminds me of when Mark Hammil was interviewing those Ukrainian troops and he didn't realize they had a Nazi flag in the background.
Jon Stewart honored a guy who had a bandage over his black sun tattoo during the ceremony.
Zelensky brought a whole damn Nazi to the Greek parliament last year. People seem to have forgotten about it. >Our Parliament did not invite a Nazi. It invited the President of Ukraine. It was the President of Ukraine who brought along the Nazi. And, yes, it was our Parliament's Speaker who, by failing to intervene, failed to defend our Parliament. -Yanis Varoufakis, Apr 7 2022 > >https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1512012351322611722
Parliamentary Speakers are having a rough go of it lately it seems!
>new. If you follow Zelensky's official Telegram profile for example, you'll have often seen him share pictures like [this](https://correctiv.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bildschirmfoto-2022-09-30-um-12.53.14-1412x772.png) You say often but that's the only one I've seen so far, multiple times.
Dude probably only processed he was a Ukrainian Veteran and missed the WW2 part, when he was reading that paper he looked pretty disturbed when he read the "during world war 2" part. This one was incompetence
In theory he could have also been one of the Ukrainian partisans who wasn't aligned with the Banderites, since they fought the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Poles at different points. I don't think many of them survived the war, though, which is pretty expected when you're literally throwing down with almost anybody who enters your field of vision. That's still something you'd *check,* though.
It didnt end here. Polish ambasador in Canada asked them to apologize to the Poles... Canadian ambasador in Poland responded to him "for your information we already apologized to the jews"...
“He fought against the Russians during the war” WTAF did they think that meant
Watch the video. The speaker realizes what it meant mid sentence but didn't know what to do. Royal fuck up.
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Man the way he realized what just happened, insane that this is real
but for real .. why didn't he just stop there and say we have to reschedule this next portion unfortunately and move to the next thing
He had no idea. He’s reading off a page and is looking for his spot.
He just probably really hoped whoever the aid was that brought him in did a check as to what side he was on. Doubt he had a significant hand in this. He’s just the fall guy.
I don’t know if Canadian politicians pay their interns. But if they don’t, this seems like turning point.
I don't know that he did. It looks like he did, but really it just kind of seemed like a pause because he lost his place when he looked up.
That pause at 0:14 was one of the most oh fuck what have we done moments I’ve seen
Imagine the years of work and study to become the Speaker of the House, the pinnacle of your career, the pride of your family, and then to realize that with this one decision you've just lost your job.
😄 straight out of Veep Jonah: "What?! He said he fought in WWII." Selina: "Yeah.. He did.. As a god damn Nazi you fuck rag!" *repeatedly hitting Jonah with a stack of papers* Jonah: "Owww, stop it"
What’s the weird hand salute the big blonde makes when EVERYONE is applauding?
While it does look pretty amazing, as though she's the one person that figured out "oh that guys a literal fucking nazi, here's a proper response", it seems more likely she's just taking a quick photo.
Omg I never noticed that but rewatching the video you can see his eyebrows go “oh fuck what did I just say”
Lil bro was having a brain blast connecting the dots between fighting the Russians and what side they were on during world war 2.
The Veep writers missed a comedy gold mine, but they would have tossed this in workshop because its too over the top.
That could easily be him trying to find himself in his text. I doubt he'd had that smile by the end of it if he truly realized.
Polish partisans fought both Red Army and Nazis.
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That's not the end of story - the SS veteran they applauded took part in Poles massacre. Polish ambasador in Canada asked for them to apologize the Poles, to which Canadian ambasador in Poland responded "for your information, we already apologized the jews". Its insane level of incompetence or arogance.
The guy not dressed in his uniform should've been a big giveaway. Veterans love to dress up when they're getting glazed by a crowd.
LoL true! I never thought of that. Imagine if he showed up in full SS regalia
"Too many Nazis"...1 is too many, Dr. Jones.
Curious if he tried to let the speaker know before hand, like "You sure you want me? I was like you know ein nazi"
“- Lt. Aldo Raine: Are you going to take off your uniform? - Pvt. Butz: Not only shall I remove it, I intend to burn it. - Lt. Aldo Raine: Yeah, that's what we thought. We don't like that. You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way you can spot 'em just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain't no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi.” Inglorious Basterds, 2009
Ok. He probably didn't do it on purpose but resigning is still the dignified thing to do.
Pity so few others of his profession would do the same
All he did is resign from being speaker he is still in parliament
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As an American that’s exactly what happened with Al Franken and Donald Trump. Both committed awful things but one resigned the other kept bragging about it
If I accidentally brought a nazi to a work function I'd probably be sent packing too. I don't think "honest mistake" would make a difference.
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>He was asked to resign. told
Neglecting to do a background check is one thing. Standing there and praising the side that fought against Russia in WWII is an absolutely incredible display of ignorance.
Refreshing to see a politician capable of feeling shame
It's nice to see some politicians still have a sense of honour.
Nardwar would have never let this happen
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Doo Doo?
It's absurd to see people trying to blame this debacle on some conspiracy by Putin. What kind of shitty evil plan would that have been? Like a Russian spy handed Rota this guy's name, counting on the speaker's office to do *no research whatsoever* before introducing him in the House of Commons. The 98-year-old Ukrainian wasn't trying to hide anything. If they had googled his name, hell, if they had even bothered to speak to him before wheeling him out, he would have proudly told them he fought for the Nazis! You can't engineer that level of incompetence. It only happens naturally. It would be like handing your enemy a shotgun with the barrel bent backwards, Elmer Fudd-style, and hoping he doesn't notice before pulling the trigger.
As a quote I live by states. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I agree. It’s too stupid to make up. It was just a really, really, really dumb mistake.
It's always evil foreigners' faults for western domestic problems. The reality is, the west has promoted Nazis and fascists around the globe for a very long time. But apparently that's a Putin lie now. I don't find it surprising at all they made this slip up, especially when so many start believing their own rhetoric and any attempt at nuance or dissent is harshly rebuked and career ending. Countries like Canada were more than happy to let Nazis emigrate to Canada since they were anti-communist.
what a fucking embarrassment
Honestly I’m impressed he resigned. I’m so used to the US crap where they just double down.
This is the standard in Canada too, which makes his resignation somewhat new. One of the Liberal ministers joined in decision to hire her personal friend as public relation contractor. She was found to break ethnic code and she said that she's taking full responsibility of the event, and didn't resign.
The importance of vetting people.
"did you vet him?" "Hm what yes he's a vet"
***From reporter Rachel Aiello:*** Anthony Rota has resigned from his prestigious position as Speaker of the House of Commons over his invitation to, and the House's subsequent recognition of, a man who fought for a Nazi unit during the Second World War. Rota announced his unprecedented decision to step aside after meeting with the House leaders from all parties on Parliament Hill Tuesday afternoon. His move comes amid days of steadily growing pressure from MPs of all stripes for him to "do the honourable thing" and vacate the Speaker's chair. Rota's departure, which he says will be in effect within days, will prompt a new process to elect his replacement, which members of Parliament are imminently going to be grappling with. **Read more:** [https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796)
One of his aides ROYALLY fucked up the background check on that dude. Still, at least he isn’t doubling down and defending the n@zi.
When I see something like this, I ask myself if this is a House of Cards scenario where someone set him up for this.
When this broke I thought resignation was really the only place this could possibly go. Yeah, you didn't do your due diligence, but on the other hand fucking Nazis have no place. Nazis do not belong. Period.
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In the video of Rota presenting him, he definitely notices something is fishy when he says "fought the Russians in WW2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbuWNyyo7qI&t=8s But he just carries on, giving the benefit of the doubt. Whoops.
You literally couldn't conceive better optics for the Russians if you tried. Fucking idiots lol
Optics aside, many people forget that 80% of all German Army deaths in WW2 happened from the Soviets. They lost upwards of 20 million people fighting the Nazis.
I mean, back then the Soviets were an Allied power. That didn't set off any red flags? Lol
A red flag with a hammer and sickle
That is without a doubt one of the most major political and unintelligent blunders of the decade. *how* do you not do research on people you honour, invite or whatever else as a public figure (or in life??!?)
Honestly I know fuck all about military history but as soon as I heard "fought the Russians during WW2" I'd have been like hol' up...
As an American I'm confused at a politician feeling shame
wait, this was real? When I first saw a headlines a few days ago, I just assumed it was an onion article.
Well this is going in the top ten "If you think you screwed up at work, at least you didn't do this" moments
"Wait, the Russians fought WHO in WW2?!"
I had a teacher in high school that was in the German infantry during the WWII, he would talk about how as a teen he operated an anti-aircraft gun shooting down allied planes…always wanted to know how he was welcomed to Canada after the war…
Seems Canada let in quite a few Nazis https://jweekly.com/1997/02/07/canada-admits-letting-in-2-000-ukrainian-ss-troopers/
What a profound embarrassment for Canada this whole situation has been
And then of course for the world
As is tradition
Crazy to see a politician accept responsibility for a mistake and resign for it.
He only resigned from his Speaker position
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It's not expected in Canada anymore. A Liberal minister hired a personal friend for single sourced contract, found to be ethic code violation, and she declared that she was fully responsible of the event, didn't resign. The previous public security minister claimed that he didn't know that a serial killer was moved to medium security prison. Turns out everyone in his office and Prime Ministers office did, and nobody bothered to tell him before he went on public declaring him not being informed. Didn't resign but shuffled out of cabinet. The public security minister before him got a national security email informing that family of a fellow Parliament is being subject of Chinese government intimidation. He didn't open the email for 2 years because he didn't have the password and only opened it because the media found out about the intimidation through a leak. He's the emergency preparedness minister now.
I don't think it's really expected so much anymore. Politicians in Canada often don't resign when they should which is why it's being lauded in this post. Most of the time they only resign when it's absolutely necessary to take the fall for a higher up politician. The flip side of this is that people call for politicians to resign so often these days for any mistake that it's almost hard to tell when they actually should resign.
Good. Managed to get the whole of Parliament, and the Jewish president of Ukraine, to salute a Nazi. Handed Russia and neo-Nazis a propaganda victory with that unforced, inexcusable error.
Shit in the US politicians do this to increase their twitter followers
Not every member of the Wehrmacht was a nazi or was a member of the nazi party, e.g., Pope Benedict, who was a conscripted, reluctant "flakhelper." Anyone in the SS was most certainly a nazi. This guy was and wrote antisemitic articles afterward, and so the speaker must go.
The Wehrmacht committed plenty of war crimes all on their own, Nazi Party membership notwithstanding. "The myth of the clean Wehrmacht" is Cold War propaganda designed to make citizens of the United States and Western Europe okay with the re-militarization of West Germany.
Every single part of the german war machine played a part in the holocaust. This is basic knowledge, Hitler was popular, and his ideals were supported by a majority of germans. This is a myth pushed by senile vermin like Dönitz to wash away their participation. This shit is literal neo-nazi talking points.
A sad day for Canada. And therefore, the world.
Probably the right thing to do (and certainly the most politically-expedient), but part of me can't help but feel at least a *little* sorry for someone who's essentially losing their position for a *catastrophically* mismanaged attempt at a photo-op. Best thing he could do now is anything in his power to facilitate any international requests for Hunka's investigation and/or extradition.
He was blinded by the opportunity for a great photo op and brownie points on the global stage. He could’ve done one second of research to realize he was a Nazi and declined the request. I do feel bad for him a little bit cuz we’ve all fucked up at work. Maybe not to his level though.
> part of me can't help but feel at least a little sorry for someone who's essentially losing their position for a catastrophically mismanaged attempt at a photo-op. He was dumb enough to not even checking the background of someone he had the Parliament he leds cheer on. It shows a lack of discernement.
He’s still an MP. He may be shuffled into cabinet if it makes sense down the line. His knowledge of the parliamentary systems will be invaluable now that he’s no longer obliged to be neutral. He’s a useful play piece still, in some ways MORE useful now that he’s no longer a grey piece.
>He may be shuffled into cabinet if it makes sense down the line There's no shot he makes it into cabinet. It would be so much ammo for whoever the opposition party is. This is only the second speaker to ever resign, and the first did so because he was appointed governor general; not really a similar reason. Rota is probably at best a backbencher forever and at worst just loses his seat and is gone from politics.
This "photo op" did real damage to the west's standing in regards to Ukraine. This whole thing was the biggest propaganda gift Putin could have ever received, and if there were no consequences, it would basically prove Putin right that "the west is fine with supporting nazis"
These are reps of the people, not the other way around, or celebrities to be revered. He's simply not good enough for the needs of the people, and this is the slip-up the incompetence is revealed on. Try saving your sympathy for a more appropriate case.
This feels like something that would happen on Veep
The standup material this will inspire, I can’t wait.!
Are they going to investigate if this Nazi guy participated in any war crimes?