Chrystia Freeland’s Nazi Problem
Scott Ritter responds to a subscriber's criticism
One of the interesting aspects of publishing on Substack is the feedback loop that exists, where subscribers can (and often do) submit comments which are then forwarded to the writer’s email account.
While this inevitably results in an increase in traffic to an account already overflowing with spam and other forms of less than vital communications, I respect those who subscribe enough to take the time to read each and every comment that is sent to my inbox.
Some are positive, offering words of support and encouragement. For those who have written such, I thank you.
Others are just the opposite, offering the kind of blustery insults that are the stock and trade of the unique class of keyboard hero that anonymous social media has given rise to.
Delete.
And then there are the comments offered by those who, rather than sling vitriolic insults, instead take the time to give honest voice to their concerns.
One subscriber, Monica, did just that.
“I was shocked,” Monica wrote, “to hear you on Anna K's program [Ania Konieczek, a Polish on-line blogger who hosts a show, “Through the Eyes of…”, on which I have been a guest several times, most recently on November 11], a man so attached to the respect of the Constitution and its laws, call Chrystia Freeland a Nazi and mutter something under your breath about Azov.”
I understand that this outburst was made in the heat of passion, an emotion you exhibit perhaps too often to your oratorial detriment, as I understand it to be one of the risks of live broadcasts. I further understand that her grandfather's editorship of a Nazi newspaper in Ukraine is an "embarrassment." Still, we know that the sins of a grandfather should not be visited on the granddaughter. As we know that calling people names without hard-hitting proof is school yard bullying unbecoming of any adult and even less becoming of an adult of your stature. Please don't misunderstand me. I've no sympathy for Chrystia Freeland nor am I in sympathy with the Liberal Party of Canada. I deplore this government's Russophobia, its solidarity with Ukraine and its submission to the policies of the USA. I'm, however, in sympathy with you and I believe that making such unsubstantiated accusations is not only undignified but much more importantly it detracts from your credibility.
Yours sincerely, Monica [xxxxx]
Monica, you are correct. I should not have mumbled anything that linked Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, to Nazi ideology or the odious Ukrainian ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist military movement, the Azov Regiment. For that I apologize.
I should have shouted it out loud at the top of my voice.
If you have, as you claim, been following me for any period, you’ll know two basic truths about how I act, what I say, and how I say it.
I don’t bully people.
While at times passionate (especially when condemning Nazis), I rarely commit to a line of reasoning without first doing my research.
And when I do speak, I’m as straight to the point as I can possibly be.
Chrystia Freeland is a Ukrainian nationalist of the worst kind, an apologist for the Nazi affiliations of that movement’s past (including the role played by her grandfather), and an active facilitator of the ideology and symbology of hate that is the Azov movement.
In short, she’s a Nazi.
Substantiation? You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not be able to readily access all the corroboration you could ever want or need to substantiate Freeland’s Nazi-supporting positions.
Let’s start with Exhibit A, a photograph (see above) taken during a pro-Ukrainian rally held in Toronto on February 27 that shows the Canadian Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, holding a scarf bearing the black-and-red colors associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B), a far-right Ukrainian paramilitary group which fought alongside Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The Ukrainian phrase “Slava Ukraini,” which translates to “Glory to Ukraine,” was written in gold Cyrillic letters on the front of the scarf, while the other side of the scarf had the phrase “Heroyam Slava,” or “Glory to heroes.”
The greeting “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” became an official slogan of Stepan Bandera's OUN-B in April 1941.
Chrystia Freeland has used the phrase “Slava Ukraini” while addressing the Canadian Parliament (and did not flinch when someone, off camera, responded “Heroyam Slava”).
Freeland has tweeted out the two phrases together on several occasions.
One might try and make the case that Chrystia Freeland was simply being a patriotic Canadian-Ukrainian, repeating phrases without fully understanding the controversy attached.
But Chrystia Freeland has no such excuse. You see, as a child Chrystia was an active member in the Plast organization.
On the surface, membership in Plast seems like a harmless enough activity—it is a mainstream scouting organization. Indeed, in June 2019 the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) adopted a law—“On State Recognition and Support of Plast.”
Plast is the National Scout Organization of Ukraine.
While there were other Scout-like organizations in Ukraine, the new law made Plast the only one authorized to operate throughout Ukraine. “The purpose of the state recognition of Plast is the institutional support of Plast so that Plast becomes accessible to every child and young person in Ukraine, while the Plast movement is accessible to all children and youngsters who permanently reside outside of Ukraine.”
Plast branches were ordered to be formed in every city, town and village in Ukraine, and obliges all “local self-government bodies” to incorporate Plast into “programs of local significance regarding children and young people.”
The Ukrainian Plast organization was established in Lvov in 1911-1912. Its purpose was to prepare its membership—children—for war, mainly through combat training and weapons handling.
Both Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, two notorious Ukrainian nationalists who fought alongside Nazi Germany, came up through the ranks of Plast.
Bandera and Shukhevych drew upon Plast to recruit the manpower they used to fill the ranks of the Roland and Nightingale battalions, which in 1939 swept into Poland under the operational control of Nazi Germany where they carried out the systemic rape, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Plast veterans filled the ranks of the legion of Ukrainian youth who flocked to the Nazi cause throughout World War Two and were responsible for some of the most horrific war crimes imaginable, including the murder in 1941 of tens of thousands of Jews at Babi Yar, in Ukraine, and more than 100,000 poles in Volhynia, Poland, in 1943.
Plast venerates both Bandera and Shukhevych as Ukrainian national heroes. To Plast members, the red and black colors on the scarf Freeland held in Toronto hold a special meaning: “Ukrainian red blood spilled on Ukrainian black earth.”
Plast is to Ukrainian nationalists like the Hitler Youth was to German Nazis.
It is an organization designed to brainwash the future generations of Ukrainian youth, whether in Ukraine or diaspora, on the white supremacist ultra-nationalistic dogma originated by its heroes, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych.
This modern-day Hitler Youth-like movement is now mainstreamed, by law, in Ukrainian society.
And, as a child growing up in Edmonton, Canada, Chrystia Freeland was an active member. “Plast,” she told a reporter in 2013, “was a very important part of my life growing up.”
Plast was an important part of the Ukrainian diaspora in Edmonton. Freeland was introduced to the organization by her maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, a notorious Nazi collaborator who edited a newspaper, Krakivs'ki Visti, in the German-occupied Polish city of Krakow. Chomiak helped glorify membership in the Waffen-SS “Galicia” division, where tens of thousands of Bandera’s OUN-B Plast veterans served implementing the murderous policies of Nazi Germany. Chomiak also helped fuel the flames of antisemitism in 1943, during the brutal Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto.
As a Plast member in Edmonton, Freeland was familiar with Bandera, Shukhevych, and the Galicia division, for no other reason than she and her fellow Plast scouts would visit monuments erected to these men, venerating their memory.
Freeland’s whitewashing of her grandfather’s collaborationist history isn’t simply about keeping a family skeleton from public view, but about obscuring her own ideological upbringing as a follower of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych.
When Chrystia Freeland utters the words “Slava Ukraini,” she knows only too well the origins of that phrase and its relationship with Bandera and Shukhevych.
She knows all-too-well the meaning behind the colors on the scarf she held during the February 27, 2022, parade in Toronto.
She knows because she grew up flying those colors, and speaking those words, knowing they were seeped in the blood of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish, Polish, and Russian victims of Bandera and Shukhevych’s OUN-B.
She knows because she, like her grandfather, is a Nazi apologist.
So there, Monica.
No muttering asides.
No obfuscation.
You have my proof.
Chrystia Freeland is a Nazi at heart.
And I will shout that fact out at the top of my lungs for all the world to hear.
Thank you for speaking truth to power, Scott. This informative post is factual, well written and bracingly cuts through the clouds of toxic obsfucation swirling around.
I'd like to add that Canada Files (Aidan Jonah: Editor-in-Chief) an independent, user financed investigative news service has many files on Freeland's use of Ukraine Nazi "support" to help "get out" the vote, to launder money, etc. She in turn has helped them worm their way up the military services into better pay and better opportunities to misdirect Canadian resources to their mutual benefit. Nazis are about racist ideology, but that doesn't stop them from being crooks at the same time.
https://www.thecanadafiles.com/