Just when you think there cannot possibly be anything more black and white than Russia’s insidious invasion of Ukraine, straight-faced arguments are being put forward why it’s not such a bad idea to reduce Ukraine to rubble.
For the first time since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, a major issue is actually seen through the same lens by both Democrats and Republicans. But, alas, completely insignificant, and even intolerable, for the ideologues. Enter a contrarian lobby of mostly conservative voices advocating for the Ukrainian demise, citing everything from payback for historical antisemitism to illegitimate land title, to Russianized culture and even internal corruption - apparently all defensible reasons for Putin’s pulverizing of the country.
Among these Putin romantics and apologists, some believe that any agreement with Democrats on anything is reason enough to cheer on Vlad's resolve to annihilate Ukraine. Others are busy proclaiming this war is “not what it seems” and one day the ever-complex mystery of Putin's aggression will be revealed to all. Can't trust what we see by international journalism, they cite.
Not to be outdone, risible others are advocating for total and unconditional surrender of Ukraine in order to save face, save lives, and save the trouble. Putin's takeover of Ukraine is a fait accompli, they touted from the onset. Better yet, an especially gifted squad of thinkers are proclaiming the long-overdue Russian liberation of Ukraine from itself. Presumably, its Nazi self.
This, the egregious Nazi label, is the most popular tool of persuasion and defense of Russian atrocities in Ukraine today. Here, among North American conservatives and over there, in the Putin-owned Russian media, whether the first group realizes it or not. Surely, no one can object to doing away with "Heil Hitler!" salutes and pinned-to-the-lapel "Jude" yellow stars, could they?
Nothing stirs up emotion to tsunamic tumult like the word "Nazi". To Europeans, the word carries catastrophic imagery and loss. On North American soil, the word is often overused and abused to hyperbolize and halt all reasonable conversation. Liberal factions are especially fond of the word as it bursts with right-wing extremism in any parley one is eager to win and quickly.
Ukraine's past is Nazi and so is its present, they advocate, no need to shed tears for her homeless children. This far-off underdog is not our issue, not our war and certainly isn't ours to fund, according to hard-core conservative punditry. We look the other way, end of story.
Sound familiar?
These viewpoints reek of history we know well. Hitler was able to rally the public around faux narratives of Jewish corruption, disloyalty, illegitimate claim to German real estate and substandard lineage of less than German cultural traits. With extraordinary vigor and conviction, Hitler's propaganda machine painted German Jewry as the anti-German treacherous communists. And just as we can't stomach Nazism today, the German public couldn't stomach communism, then. Different word, same explosive emotion exploited, same 'moral' posturing.
Today, an entire 44 million-strong sovereign nation is slated for decimation on 'moral' grounds.
More than a few around the world have bought into this deceit and are busy parroting this extraordinary slander of a nation. History - busy repeating itself; guilt by unfounded accusation, courtesy of mouths of a different generation on a different continent.
Nevertheless. Let’s take each claim to task.
1. UKRAINE HAS NO RIGHT TO ITS BORDERS
Ukraine has been around since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, the area was made of East Slavic culture which lasted until the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The next 600 years invited many more external power invaders to the contested and divided area: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom of Russia and The Cossack Hetmanate. In the 17th century, the land was partitioned between Poland and Russia only to be ultimately absorbed by the Russian Empire entirely. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, an independent, Ukrainian People's Republic, emerged. Shortly after and once again, Russian colonialism forcibly reconstituted this sovereign nation into one of Soviet Socialist Republics.
From 1922, Ukrainians were required to speak Russian. Under the Soviet rule, from 1932 to 1933, the Holodomor (death by starvation), a man-made intentional famine, killed millions of ethnic Ukrainians. Today, the Holodomor is recognized world-wide as a genocide of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet regime.
In 1939, Western Ukraine was annexed by the USSR. It finally regained its independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The 1994 Budapest Agreement secured Ukraine’s borders against any future Russian land grab if the newly independent state agreed to give up its entire nuclear arsenal. It did, but here we are.
Putin’s footprint in Ukraine today is a page out of the same never-ceasing conquering of Ukraine script. He loves nothing more than the “NATO is taunting Russia” history-ignorant narrative his western apologists advance. Its a song and dance routine he repeats for his own people in daily media addresses. It’s become apparent that his crafty words reached far off shores with the same contagion. Hitler had the same methods and the same effectiveness. Only his complaint was about too many economic sanctions resulting from WW1. “They made me do it”, is the statement to the world.
Truth be told, Russia’s insatiable appetite for Ukrainian real estate, by way of repeated annexations, territorial evolution and border redefinition, has always had the same main goal; acquisition of vast resources, soil-rich farmland, and sea-port-gateways to the world. The breadbasket of Europe, first and foremost, has always fed Russian stomachs; Putin needs the same insurance policy in the face of Ukrainian love fest with the Democratic west. Subjugation of Ukraine must and will continue.
Those who suggest Ukraine isn't ethnically valid to stake claim to its sovereignty and territorial legitimacy are sweeping centuries of preceding Russian aggression and occupation under the table and don’t have a good grasp on what Ukraine represents to Russia economically. An ugly sequel to the same old history is what's unfolding before us today.
Furthermore…
Forced Russianization of Ukraine over generations didn’t sanitize Ukrainian ethnicity, nor succeeded into welcoming the big Russian brother into Ukrainian homes. Nothing is more insulting to a Ukrainian than to suggest that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, an interchangeable culture. Ask any Ukrainian, dead or alive, at any point in history.
To the extent that Ukraine has no right to sovereignty, does Canada? The French and the English came to inhabit the land only in the late 1700s. "Canada" is a native Iroquoian word meaning "settlement". It became a nation (made up of European settlers) only in 1867. Moreover, many of Hitler’s Nazis settled in Canada post-WW2. Shouldn’t Putin liberate the glorious Rockies since we can much easier make the case for Canadian illegitimacy and Nazi safe-haven, over that of Ukraine?
If Ukraine has no right to exist and Canada is in question, certainly California and Texas have no foot to stand on.
And what of Israel? Centuries of occupiers trampled over the land before indigenous Jewish populations made a return en masse.
The fallacy, hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty by purveyors of this particular argument is nothing less of astonishing.
2. UKRAINE HAS NO DISTINCT CULTURE.
Curiously, some view the cyclical nature of Russian historical dominance over Ukraine as reason-enough to completely dismiss Ukraine's ethnic specificity rich with language, traditions, gastronomy and the arts. For this culture-streamlining American conservative cabal, the conqueror has all the rights, Ukrainians-none. (...and just as long as their own culture isn't up for grabs with the preposterous suggestion that the American culture is nothing more than a British derivative!)
Russian version of the same culture-quash authority views Ukrainian heritage as provincial and unsophisticated. Ukrainian, as a language, is often made fun of by Russian entertainers and literary experts. On the generous end, many Russians believe Ukrainian culture is indistinguishable from their own on the account of Russian superiority coming to its necessary rescue and elevation. In reality, it is entirely arguable that evolution of Russian heritage was highly influenced by Ukrainian traditions and rites. Ukrainian headdress, language, costuming, food, music and dance has long made its way into the Russian cultural vocabulary. So much so that those not aware of Ukrainian customs easily mistake it for Russian.
This past March, the curators at National Gallery of London had a closer look at a painting by Edgar Degas and decided that the title, "Russian Dancers", was given to the canvas in error. Once the experts correctly spotted Ukrainian blue and yellow in the traditional Ukrainian dress and the prototypical wreath headdress on the two women, the painting was quickly renamed "Ukrainian Dancers". For 150 years none of these so-called experts, nor any member of the viewing public numbering in the millions, questioned the Russian appropriation of a distinctly Ukrainian storyline.
Whether American or Russian at source, sequestering and dismissing ethnically Ukrainian customs and hallmarks smacks of elitism, obfuscation of evidentiary history and outright bootlegged appropriation.
Blurring lines between two distinct heritages aids in nothing more than the erasure of past and present dominance and occupation of Ukraine by its mighty neighbor. This is not a good look on conservatives who have taken up this argument.