Victory day 2025 Statement
The Recolonisation of History & Erasure of Victory Day
The 80th anniversary of the heroic victory proclaimed on May 9th of 1945 which marked the defeat of Nazi fascism represents a vital opportunity for humanity to reflect thoughtfully on the significance of this world-historic event, and in particular, its meaning today in the context of conflicts in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Sudan, and the threat of new wars between world powers on various fronts, as well as reinvigorated fascist and far-right movements taking ever more prominence on every continent. American historian Dr. Michael Parent writes that "those who control the present take great pains to control our understanding of the past," and this trend is abundantly clear in western scholarship and cultural misrepresentations of World War Il, as it is called in North America. The struggle to reveal and understand historical truth therefore is not only a battle for intellectual emancipation, but for emancipation and progress for society much more broadly, not least of all the working class and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism.
The defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis powers representing the vanguard of imperialism directly facilitated the wave of anti-colonial national liberation movements which would permanently alter the world map in ways unimaginable even a few years prior. The gratitude towards the unthinkable sacrifices made by the Soviet people and the victorious Red Army - 27 million lives annihilated and incalculable devastation across the USSR - in the period immediately following the war was prolific, widespread, and unquestioned. It is for this reason that a psychological warfare campaign of unprecedented scale was begun by the remaining forces of imperialism led by the United States across all aspects of society, involving academics, journalists, politicians, artists, leaders of social movements, as well as more violent and coercive state mechanisms. The goal of this campaign was to rewrite history, to obscure it, and ultimately to erase from memory both the causes of the Holocaust and the war, as well as the prestige bestowed upon those who had given so much to end them.
The Bolsheviks had long recognised that colonialism and fascism shared their objective material foundations in the advanced stages of festering and gangrenous capitalist decay, and that through racism they shared an ideological unity. The experience in the colonies had once been a vital reference to understanding Hitler for authors like Padmore, Césaire, Fanon and many black civil rights activists in the United States - an apartheid, white supremacist state in which Jim Crow, lynching, segregation, and miscegenation laws continued well into the 1960s. Alfred Rosenberg openly praised the United States as the inventors of the first 'racial state. But with the onset of the Cold War this understanding was quickly and deliberately obscured, and the role played by imperialism and profit-driven capitalism forgotten. The methods applied on Europeans by Hitler were not invented by the Nazis, but were the result of practices which had long been applied and refined in the colonies by European powers. Neither did the racist ideology and inhumane logic which informed these methods spring from the mind of the Fuhrer, but as Italian author Domenico Losurdo argues, it is rather these traditions which had invented him.
Indeed, all Nazi keywords may be found pre-existing in the colonial lexicon. For example, even the term 'final solution' was coined not by the Nazis, but Canada's deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, Duncan Scott Campbell, in reference to the elimination of Indigenous peoples and their culture. Canada's own history as a settler-colony, including the oppression and extermination of Indigenous peoples is one which the Nazis hoped similarly to emulate. Hitler himself compared Polish and Russian "natives" with "redskins," and through such despecification hoped to achieve in Europe what the United States and Canada had carried out with impunity against Indigenous peoples in North America. Canada's first prime minister John A. Macdonald was an open promoter of the cult of the Aryan race long before Hitler arrived on the scene, enacting brutally repressive policies and waging military campaigns against Indigenous populations which resisted. As with Hitler, Macdonald's view of race was as an immutable biological category. Macdonald proposed that "Chinamen" should not have the right to vote on the grounds that they were "foreigners," introducing legislation to ban them from ever being able to vote in Canada. When asked whether naturalised Chinese ceased to be "Chinamen", Macdonald clarified the legislation to exclude any "person of Mongolian or Chinese race." He later concluded that this piece of legislation was his "greatest triumph."
In June of 1937, by which time the brutal policies of the Nazis were perfectly well-known, Canada's then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King made a state visit to Nazi Germany. He had long believed that he had been elevated to the prime minister's office for a 'higher purpose,' and as a 'holy feeling' seemed to enshroud King as he entered the Third Reich, he determined that this meeting with the Fuhrer was it; the pinnacle of his spiritual journey - "the day for which I was born." "As I talked with him, I could not but think of Joan of Arc," wrote King in his diary that night. During the war, the Canadian government enacted a policy of mass internment of Japanese Canadians on a purely racial basis, along with the expropriation of their properties and businesses in the interests of private capital.
Towards the end of WWII, as the Soviets advanced and collaborators from Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and elsewhere fled westwards with the retreat of the Nazis, tens of thousands took refuge in West Germany, Canada, South America and the United States, where they would be employed in propaganda, intelligence agencies, as university professors, as scientists, as CIA "stay behind" agents and more. The United States, Canada, and the old European colonial powers went further than the rescue and rehabilitation of Nazis however, a project which went well beyond simply 'pragmatism.' They wanted to ensure that history forgot entirely the origins of fascism in colonialism and in the logic of imperialism in order to delay the process of national liberation for as long as possible, and to revive their own colonial histories and imperialist ambitions without embarrassment.
In Canada, it is Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who have in many cases monopolised historical narratives. This is not because they have dominated political and historical discourse on this subject on their own, but precisely because the campaigns of Ukrainian fascists have coincided with those of the broader right-wing, which has given them more or less free reign to pitch propaganda as history. Even before the war, an October 1938 issue of Church Life, the organ of the Ukrainian Catholics published in Winnipeg, described Hitler as "saving Europe...I from the Bolsheviks." but saving what exactly? Certainly not 'democracy,' despite hypocritical claims by imperialist states, as Europe was at this time ruled largely by fascist dictators and colonial empires. The mine owners and big capitalists were only interested in fighting for 'democracy' insofar as it furthered the possibilities for imperialist profits.
Christya Freeland, who until recently has served in various ministerial positions, including as Deputy Prime Minister, has repeatedly stated her pride in her grandfather, Mykhailo Chomiak, who had worked for the Nazis as editor of a Ukrainian newspaper celebrating Hitler and promoting antisemitism. Chomiak, like many other collaborators and SS officers was accepted into Canada immediately following the war, evading justice at Nuremberg, and continuing to work promoting far-right causes and anti-communist ideology. Freeland herself has never hesitated to wave the red and black banners of the Banderite OUN, prominently emblazoned with the fascist slogan of "Glory to Ukraine"
In September of 2023, the Canadian parliament rose to its feet in a roaring standing ovation during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky, honouring Yaroslav Hunka, a 98 year-old veteran and "hero" who had fought for "Ukrainian independence." Zelensky raised a triumphant fist of solidarity amidst the applause for a man who had fought in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. On December 12, 2024, a multi-million dollar monument ironically referred to as a "wall of memory" was unveiled in Ottawa. The monument, a memorial to the "victims of communism" was notably blank however, as in the leadup to its completion, well over half of the 550 names which were to be inscribed had been revealed to be Nazi collaborators.
In summary, the fight against fascism is far from over, and the efforts to recolonise even history and memory itself have had and will continue to have serious consequences for working class people and democratic institutions if left unchecked. It is abundantly clear that there is a link between the historiographical category of historical revisionism and the corresponding political category of neoliberalism, along with the growth of far-right and reactionary ideologies, evident in the rise of racism, xenophobia, and support for militarism and war which has been festering in Canada. Therefore, if we are to change course, then let us honour the legacy of the victory over Nazi fascism by fighting for truth. The ideology of fascism is an ideology of deceit and obscurantism, whereas the truth is partisan, and on the side of all progressive struggles and peace-loving peoples.
Central Executive Committee
Popular Democracy Movement
