{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "Press for Conversion! magazine",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/press-for-conversion-magazine",
"title": "Stop Canadian government funding of groups glorifying Nazi collaborators",
"thumbnail_url": "https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/share_options/facebook_images/000/318/637/original/70a_cover.jpg",
"description": "We call upon the government of Canadian to put an end to its decades-long support for organizations that still glorify their community's racist, fascist political leaders and military commanders from World War Two even though they collaborated with Nazi Germany. (Click here to learn more.) Although the fascist heroes of these Canadian associations willingly aided and abetted the Nazi's genocidal war efforts, they are still proudly venerated by some government-funded groups as noble "freedom fighters." The founders and leaders of these state-financed Canadian organizations have included veterans of fascist guerrilla armies, officers of Waffen SS divisions, and top bureaucrats of Nazi puppet regimes who fled justice after WWII and were given safe haven from prosecution by the Canadian government throughout the Cold War. Canada's ongoing assistance to these rightwing groups includes providing generous financial support for their propagandistic publications, funding their public events (such as parades in which neofascists have marched with banners hailing their war-time leaders), bankrolling the "Tribute to Liberty" anticommunism monument in Ottawa and paying for renovations of their community centres in Canadian cities. These hallowed meeting places often display portraits, fascist WWII battle flags and/or statues of their much-adored fascist statesmen, racist ideologues and ethnic-cleansing military commanders. In this era of truth and reconciliation, when state authorities have finally been forced to apologize for the Canada's key role in orchestrating and financing the genocide of First Nations' peoples, the Canadian government should also begin the painful process of acknowledging and atoning for its close ongoing collaboration with Cold War organizations that are linked not only to the Holocaust but to other genocidal ethnic- and political-cleansing programs that massacred millions of innocent people. As a first step, the Canadian government should immediately stop its longstanding financial support for ethnonationalist organizations that continue to whitewash their deep historic ties to fascist movements that collaborated with Canada's enemies during World War Two. Context Before and during WWII, the Canadian government deliberately prevented the entry of most refugees, including Jews and antifascist activists, who were trying to flee persecution by Nazi Germany; Among the innocent Jewish and other refugees who did manage to enter Canada during the war, at least 2,300 of them were interned behind barbed wire at army-run POW camps in four provinces throughout much of WWII; Then, immediately after the war, despite strong opposition from the Canadian Jewish Congress and from leftwing antifascist Ukrainian groups and others, the government went out of its way to bring in thousands of veterans from various Nazi Waffen SS divisions and from other fascist, East European military formations that had taken up arms to fight against Canada's war-time allies; Although obligated by international law to track down any Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada, the federal government and the RCMP refused to even investigate, let alone prosecute or extradite, many new Canadians who were accused of war crimes, including participation in the Holocaust; Throughout the Cold War, the Canadian government's allies within these fascist-linked emigre groups gave their public support for the McCarthyesque domestic policies that were promoted by both the Liberal and Conservative parties; and Since WWII, these Canadian emigre groups have continued to rally many within their communities to support the government's regressive foreign policies. In particular, these organizations have bolstered public support for Canada's deep complicity in a variety of US-led invasions, occupations, regime change operations and wars waged in the Third World. For example, Canada's fascist-linked emigre groups publicly applauded the Canadian government's deep involvement in the US war against Vietnam, in which several million people were killed during their struggle for independence. Learn more For more information on the specific, fascist-linked groups in Canada that continue to receive generous government funding, please access this publication online or order a 64-page, full-colour print copy. This document (Issue #70 of Press for Conversion! magazine) contains many detailed articles, with hundreds of footnotes, that carefully document this shameful, ongoing Canadian history.... Defunding the Myths and Cults of Cold War Canada: Ongoing state support for East European émigré groups with deep fascist roots (Collaborators, Crusades and Coverups in an era of “truth and reconciliation”) http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/70.htm",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/defund_nazi-glorifying_grps"
}