The decadent West’s attention span for anything that isn’t fun is two years max, and that’s generous. Bad guys everywhere know all they have to do is hang around and we will get distracted by something pretty and just wander off
Politically, what this means is that the Liberals can no longer use the photo/video of the lone Swastika flag at the convoy protests in their campaigns against the Conservatives - without the Tories pushing back with this fiasco.
And you bet the Conservatives will still definitely use this (lot more legitimate) debacle at the Parliament in their campaign against the Liberals.
I *think* Trudeau can skate by (domestically) if Rota resigns today. All parties stood up and applauded, so it's not something that can be easily brought up.
But you're right in that it absolutely torches any "Conservatives side with Nazis" tropes the Liberals want to use in the foreseeable future.
And if Rota doesn't resign? Then the Liberals will wear this and fall even further in the polls. They cannot try to pass this off as another "learning opportunity."
Agreed. The only thing I will say is that all parties applauded with the knowledge that that old man was indeed who the government said he was. And so that responsibility also falls on the Liberals ultimately.
I'm getting very tired of politicians apologizing and 'taking full responsibility' and then nothing further happening. Owning up to your mistakes is all well and good but unless your actions carry actual consequences, how is an apology actually meaningful?
This smacks of what happens when Poseur Culture replaces good government. Rota was too excited about the prospect of the photo op and almost-guaranteed social praise to follow that he forgot to do his job. The fact it wasn’t vetted beforehand is evidence how unserious a country Canada has become.
"The incomprehensible decision by Canada to honour a former Nazi, in our Parliament, in front of Zelenskyy, must have the Russians rolling on the floors laughing in their embassy down on Charlotte Street in Ottawa. You couldn’t devise a more perfect exercise in affirming the Kremlin position that Ukraine is a Nazi state, and thus deserves whatever genocide they have coming." - What a disingenuous line. Seriously. Zelensky is Ukrainian. He 100% knows the history of his country and their military history - and they revere some of these people as war heroes. The only thing not surprising in this debacle is how little the MPs know or care about the fine line between this: One country's war hero is another country's war criminal. Just because we don't think Nazi adjacent people are war heroes doesn't think their fellow countrymen agree. Typical of NATO states.... you all want an easy bad guy and don't know how to act when our "good guys" are actually shades of gray.
How does something like this happen? That seems egregious and far beyond an oops. Someone actually looked at the guys history and decided it was worth honouring? Since when do we respect nazis?
You could be right about that. Well, I guess if nothing else, it makes for good amusement watching the lack of questioning in advance fall flat on it's face. (Though it still shows a lack of understanding of history and why anyone in our government is trying to impress anyone on the Ukrainian file, I still don't know. I'm largely in the camp of we can't defend our own country if we had to so why are we spending so much money on Ukraine's military defense when our own military is underfunded and we'd be screwed if we were invaded?)
I think we are in the midst of a geopolitical shift and that there are countries other than Russia who might have interest. Look at China and their police stations on Canadian soil and the supposed murder that India carried out on Canadian soil. And if the US fell into civil war, do we have the resources to keep our border secure and deal with any violence that also occurred here? Nothing is a given in my opinion and preparation is always preferable to reaction.
I find it incomprehensible that there is not a procedure to check on people that are going to be honoured by Parliament. Most MPs probably didn’t know the guy from Adam, but he was presented by the Speaker as a ‘war hero’ so everyone stood and applauded. Another major gaff by this incompetent gang.
Where are the resignations, the firings? If Canada cannot hold anyone to account for this with removal from their job, we will never have accountability for egregious errors. Never.
The Waffen SS had foreign divisions formed by volunteers from Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. All these men were united not by their love of fascism but in their hatred of communism.
Does not dismiss the turd that Speaker Rota dropped in the Commons, just displays how amateurishly silly our federal government is.
From a messaging standpoint, this is a friendly fire incident. One of the Russian lines of propaganda against the Ukrainian government has been to allege that they're Nazis. A standing ovation for a former Waffen SS soldier at an official event meant to hail Zelenskyy plays right into that Russian propaganda. Honestly, that propaganda isn't going to persuade anybody who hasn't already bought the Russian line, but it's still a head-slappingly stupid mistake.
The real Ukrainian history is more complicated, of course. I don't know anything about the story of this particular soldier, but many Ukrainians fought for the Germans because they saw the Nazis as a better alternative to the Soviets. That's a historical fact that the Russians don't care to dwell on much in their nostalgic reverie for the glories of the Stalinist past. It speaks to the enduring horrors of Russian conquest and occupation, and provides context on why Ukraine resists the Russian invasion. It's an important part of the whole story, but I think any political consultant would tell you that nuance tends to get lost anytime you mention Nazis.
I think anybody physically caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia deserves enormous sympathy, because those are two horrible choices. We don't hold it against the Finns, for example, that they fought the Winter War with swastikas on the tails of their aircraft.
Interestingly, I spoke to a guy who mentioned (which I confirmed via Wikipedia) that the 1st Galician Regiment that this guy belonged to wasn't particularly Nazi, nor was it especially implicated in anything horrific, although as you'd expect there's a few ugly incidents.
It was a regiment of Poles and Ukrainians willing to fight Soviet Russia more than anything else, which the Canadian government actually confirmed via an inquiry in the 1980s the last time this subject came up. It gave the directive that for members of that regiment, you had to prove they participated in war crimes, the mere fact of membership wasn't enough.
As you said, this doesn't make it less of a blunder that this guy was honoured in Parliament, but the reality is probably a lot more murky than "this dude was hardcore Nazi".
What does it mean to take full responsibility for his actions? Rota is still on the job! How can someone who made such a harmful (to Ukraine) mistake continue as Speaker of the House? How can any party have confidence in his decisions? I wouldn’t.
It is worth mentioning, that Ukraine's contribution to the defeat of nazism is far greater than any other ethnicity in USSR except russians. About 800K perished as members of Red Army only. Not counting the partisans.
And I don't believe anyone could invite a veteran of Waffen-SS (even if it was deemed not responsible for nazi crimes as a group) in error. It was done on purpose. Would be interesting to know why. Simple bribe by russians would be too simple, wouldn't it?
Yes, obviously he should resign , but the damage is done. (he, along with everyone else who had anything to do with this decision, should be loaded into a cannon and fired into the sun, but that's not an option).
The decadent West’s attention span for anything that isn’t fun is two years max, and that’s generous. Bad guys everywhere know all they have to do is hang around and we will get distracted by something pretty and just wander off
Politically, what this means is that the Liberals can no longer use the photo/video of the lone Swastika flag at the convoy protests in their campaigns against the Conservatives - without the Tories pushing back with this fiasco.
And you bet the Conservatives will still definitely use this (lot more legitimate) debacle at the Parliament in their campaign against the Liberals.
I *think* Trudeau can skate by (domestically) if Rota resigns today. All parties stood up and applauded, so it's not something that can be easily brought up.
But you're right in that it absolutely torches any "Conservatives side with Nazis" tropes the Liberals want to use in the foreseeable future.
And if Rota doesn't resign? Then the Liberals will wear this and fall even further in the polls. They cannot try to pass this off as another "learning opportunity."
Agreed. The only thing I will say is that all parties applauded with the knowledge that that old man was indeed who the government said he was. And so that responsibility also falls on the Liberals ultimately.
I'm getting very tired of politicians apologizing and 'taking full responsibility' and then nothing further happening. Owning up to your mistakes is all well and good but unless your actions carry actual consequences, how is an apology actually meaningful?
This smacks of what happens when Poseur Culture replaces good government. Rota was too excited about the prospect of the photo op and almost-guaranteed social praise to follow that he forgot to do his job. The fact it wasn’t vetted beforehand is evidence how unserious a country Canada has become.
"The incomprehensible decision by Canada to honour a former Nazi, in our Parliament, in front of Zelenskyy, must have the Russians rolling on the floors laughing in their embassy down on Charlotte Street in Ottawa. You couldn’t devise a more perfect exercise in affirming the Kremlin position that Ukraine is a Nazi state, and thus deserves whatever genocide they have coming." - What a disingenuous line. Seriously. Zelensky is Ukrainian. He 100% knows the history of his country and their military history - and they revere some of these people as war heroes. The only thing not surprising in this debacle is how little the MPs know or care about the fine line between this: One country's war hero is another country's war criminal. Just because we don't think Nazi adjacent people are war heroes doesn't think their fellow countrymen agree. Typical of NATO states.... you all want an easy bad guy and don't know how to act when our "good guys" are actually shades of gray.
How does something like this happen? That seems egregious and far beyond an oops. Someone actually looked at the guys history and decided it was worth honouring? Since when do we respect nazis?
You could be right about that. Well, I guess if nothing else, it makes for good amusement watching the lack of questioning in advance fall flat on it's face. (Though it still shows a lack of understanding of history and why anyone in our government is trying to impress anyone on the Ukrainian file, I still don't know. I'm largely in the camp of we can't defend our own country if we had to so why are we spending so much money on Ukraine's military defense when our own military is underfunded and we'd be screwed if we were invaded?)
I think we are in the midst of a geopolitical shift and that there are countries other than Russia who might have interest. Look at China and their police stations on Canadian soil and the supposed murder that India carried out on Canadian soil. And if the US fell into civil war, do we have the resources to keep our border secure and deal with any violence that also occurred here? Nothing is a given in my opinion and preparation is always preferable to reaction.
I find it incomprehensible that there is not a procedure to check on people that are going to be honoured by Parliament. Most MPs probably didn’t know the guy from Adam, but he was presented by the Speaker as a ‘war hero’ so everyone stood and applauded. Another major gaff by this incompetent gang.
Where are the resignations, the firings? If Canada cannot hold anyone to account for this with removal from their job, we will never have accountability for egregious errors. Never.
The Waffen SS had foreign divisions formed by volunteers from Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. All these men were united not by their love of fascism but in their hatred of communism.
Does not dismiss the turd that Speaker Rota dropped in the Commons, just displays how amateurishly silly our federal government is.
From a messaging standpoint, this is a friendly fire incident. One of the Russian lines of propaganda against the Ukrainian government has been to allege that they're Nazis. A standing ovation for a former Waffen SS soldier at an official event meant to hail Zelenskyy plays right into that Russian propaganda. Honestly, that propaganda isn't going to persuade anybody who hasn't already bought the Russian line, but it's still a head-slappingly stupid mistake.
The real Ukrainian history is more complicated, of course. I don't know anything about the story of this particular soldier, but many Ukrainians fought for the Germans because they saw the Nazis as a better alternative to the Soviets. That's a historical fact that the Russians don't care to dwell on much in their nostalgic reverie for the glories of the Stalinist past. It speaks to the enduring horrors of Russian conquest and occupation, and provides context on why Ukraine resists the Russian invasion. It's an important part of the whole story, but I think any political consultant would tell you that nuance tends to get lost anytime you mention Nazis.
I think anybody physically caught between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia deserves enormous sympathy, because those are two horrible choices. We don't hold it against the Finns, for example, that they fought the Winter War with swastikas on the tails of their aircraft.
Interestingly, I spoke to a guy who mentioned (which I confirmed via Wikipedia) that the 1st Galician Regiment that this guy belonged to wasn't particularly Nazi, nor was it especially implicated in anything horrific, although as you'd expect there's a few ugly incidents.
It was a regiment of Poles and Ukrainians willing to fight Soviet Russia more than anything else, which the Canadian government actually confirmed via an inquiry in the 1980s the last time this subject came up. It gave the directive that for members of that regiment, you had to prove they participated in war crimes, the mere fact of membership wasn't enough.
As you said, this doesn't make it less of a blunder that this guy was honoured in Parliament, but the reality is probably a lot more murky than "this dude was hardcore Nazi".
What does it mean to take full responsibility for his actions? Rota is still on the job! How can someone who made such a harmful (to Ukraine) mistake continue as Speaker of the House? How can any party have confidence in his decisions? I wouldn’t.
It is worth mentioning, that Ukraine's contribution to the defeat of nazism is far greater than any other ethnicity in USSR except russians. About 800K perished as members of Red Army only. Not counting the partisans.
And I don't believe anyone could invite a veteran of Waffen-SS (even if it was deemed not responsible for nazi crimes as a group) in error. It was done on purpose. Would be interesting to know why. Simple bribe by russians would be too simple, wouldn't it?
Yes, obviously he should resign , but the damage is done. (he, along with everyone else who had anything to do with this decision, should be loaded into a cannon and fired into the sun, but that's not an option).
Correction: her name is Olena Zelenska, not Zelensk.
Great government we have eh ! They are not happy to just screw us over, they export their particular brand of goodness
“.. and Ukrainians would eventually get tired of dying.”
Not exactly the luxury of a choice when one is facing genocide.