• OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I still really want to know how this even happened. It’s disgraceful, and makes Canada as a whole look bad. Who first brought up this guy’s name as a potential invite? Did no one check his background, or was it intentional?

    • BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      There’s absolutely zero evidence that anyone knew before he was invited. And after it was revealed, not one political figure in Canada has said something along the lines of “good people on both sides”.

      As a Canadian sure it’s a guff, and the guy paid a price for his mistake and didn’t fight it, but compared to America I’ll take shit like this 8 days a week.

    • Dom Poose@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I’m sure the speaker couldn’t wait to be ridiculed and resign. Intentional career highlight for sure.

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I’m also wondering what was going through the veterans mind. Did he just think the world was now honouring nazis? Did he think they knew or didn’t know? Why didn’t he decline??

    • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It could be that the libs are just so high on their own supply at this point that they genuinely did not understand how anyone could possibly have a problem with it.

      “Russia bad, so anyone who killed Russians in any context ever good” sounds perfectly fine to them now.

        • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I kind of envy them in a way, reality must be so much easier to deal with if you can just ignore the fact that history didn’t actually begin in february 2022.

      • concrete_baby@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        You just made this up. Unless you know what goes on behind the scenes with the decision to honor Hunka, which you don’t seem to, then I suggest you don’t pull stuff out of your ass. Are you even Canadian? You know that the conservatives are literally called the Liberal Party right?

        • Kbin_space_program@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Okay the last sentence isn’t true. Except in British Columbia where they just changed their name to BC United after taking control of the previously centrist Liberal party in the early 1990s.

          The CPC, led by Pierre Poilievre, is a mix of traditional conservatives(mostly Quebec and maritimes) and far right nutters(everywhere else). The latter tricked the sane conservatives into joining them roughly two decades ago.

          The PPC, is the even further right crazies. They haven’t been able to land a single seat.

          The Liberal Party is analogous to the Democratic party.

          The Bloq Quebecois wants to split Quebec from Canada, but keep all of the benefits the province currently gets.

          The NDP, led by Jagmeet Singh used to be the left wing party, but they’re led by a rich spoiled brat who just follows the Liberals.

          The Green Party was doing well and had several seats until its founder stepped down, then a fraudster got power and milked the party of all of its money for her own gain.

  • Tosti@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    Trudeau called it “deeply embarrassing” for Canada, but he has not apologized following calls from opposition parties. Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said Rota has “taken the fall for this massive shame and embarrassment.” But he said Rota’s resignation does not excuse the failure of the government to prevent honoring a Nazi, and called for hearings to investigate the vetting process.

    I don’t understand how the Canadian government found themselves in this situation. When a foreign head of state visits you don’t just randomly shove some dude out in front to have him honored. I really wonder what lobby arranged this.

    • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Well when you support Nazis, is it really that surprising that people would call you out for supporting Nazis?

      • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure the being called out part isn’t the bit he was confused about.

      • Tosti@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        I mean how did they select a nazi to be there up front. Apparently (hopefully) something went wrong in the selection and vetting process. And I got the life of me can’t figure out how they ended up with a nazi being applauded.

        Even if you might think for some deluded reason, this guy was not one of the bad guys… he was part of an SS division. Everything stops after that right? There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.

        • PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Everything stops after that right? There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.

          There are some rare cases where where individuals would breifly join SS divisions, specifically to fight the Soviets rather than due to alligence to the Nazi ideology. Larry Throne is a notable example. The First Galician seems to have had a significant number focused on fighting the Soviets in a similar matter, although elements of the division did commit atrocities in Poland. Canada’s 1986 investigation into the division after the war concluded that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to condem the whole group

          Of course, “not found guilty” doesn’t mean innocent. My point is purely addressing the, “There can be no saving grace for someone who was in the SS.” I still think this is a ridiculous situation, that he should not have been invited unless they can confirm with great certainty that he was not a supporter of the Nazi ideology and did not commit any crimes. If they can’t even check what division he served in, clearly anything more is outside their ability. Hopefully he is investigated properly given the spotlight, and extradited if needed.

          Edit: Worth noting that this was a Ukranian division after the Holodomor. Its no wonder that many would be willing to join a war against the country that had murdered millions of their people already. For scale, its estimated that the Holodomor killed 3-5 times as many as the holocost in Ukrane.

          • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Honestly if you signed up with the SS specifically to fight the Soviets, that is actually worse.

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    The news is true:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/canadas-house-speaker-apologises-after-praising-ukrainian-veteran-who-fought-for-nazis

    What happened is that this man was presented as Ukrainian war veteran

    Canada has become embroiled in an escalating political controversy after members of its House of Commons were encouraged to join in a standing ovation for an individual who fought in Ukraine with a Nazi military unit accused of war crimes during the second world war.

    The ovation took place shortly after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, delivered an address to the parliament on Friday, when the assembly’s speaker, Anthony Rota, called lawmakers’ attention to 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, whom he described as a “war hero” who fought for the First Ukrainian Division.

    But later according to Rota, he learned about his Nazi history. That eventually led to Rota’s resignation

    At the weekend, Rota issued a statement apologising for what occurred. “In my remarks following the address of the president of Ukraine, I recognised an individual in the gallery. I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so,” he said.

  • Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Woops, but WTF. How does anyone screw up that bad?

    Guess they believed Putlers storyline about Ukraine being full of Nazis.

    • prenatal_confusion@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      The story of fascist Ukraine is bullshit, but there is some right wing populism potential in the government and some people there. But show me a country that doesn’t have that problem

      Then there is the normalization of nationalism, also pretty normal whilst being attacked as a country.

      But the asow brigade for example are an extreme right militia group. And they are national heroes now. Not good!

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Maybe they were hoping corporate media wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t cover it, and that social media algorithms would squelch it if anyone outside corporate media noticed it. Maybe the lower house speaker was the designated fall guy as a plan B.

      • CA0311 [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        it took 2 days for it to get picked up by msn, all the articles about it are from sunday morning, it happened on friday and i was already seeing people online talking about it then. anyway, guy still gets to be in parliament he only resigned as speaker lol

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        His name is “marx_mentat” and he’s from Hexbear, so I think “Russian propaganda” is an obvious answer. If you believe (or pretend to believe) the Russian claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis then western support for Ukraine is trivially spun as support for Nazis.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        That’s what’s funny about the incident … whatever you want to think about claims from far leftists or tankies that there is actually a problematic facism presence in Ukraine … this happens where we can only ask “how in the world” while the tankies or whatever are just like “yep told you” and we’ve got pikachu face.