Whitewashing Bandera for a US Audience

Original article: Washington’s Blog
Author: George Eliason / Edited by @GBabeuf

In an article published at the New Atlanticist, Political Science Professor Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University wrote the strongest justification a Ukrainian nationalist scholar can mount in defence of the Ukraine’s love affair with the nationalism of Stepan Bandera.

Bandera—a mass murderer, torturer, and assassinated former leader of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist émigré political movement—is the Ukrainian equivalent to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, according to A. Motyl’s thesis.

According to Motyl, because of the affinity the Ukrainian nationalists have with Washington and Jefferson, raising Bandera to their level as a father of the nation is nothing the West should “freak out over.”

Really?

Motyl’s defense of the nationalist Ukrainian government and “the” Ukrainians love affair with Bandera’s war criminality starts and ends with- If you don’t speak fluent Ukrainian, haven’t read Shevchenko, or seen two Ukrainian plays… YOU are in no position to judge us! You can’t possibly understand us!

Why the West should freak out!

Professor Motyl’s scholarly justification of Bandera ideology is at best delinquent and at worst extremely dangerous. Motyl, a product of “the” Ukrainian culture, describes nationalism as a love story using the themes of two plays. Star-struck lovers that are pulled apart either succumb to their fate or fight at all costs to be together—the consequences be damned!

The moral of the second play according to Professor Motyl is that the author, “Makovii, obviously, is trying to move Ukrainian culture away from its traditional submissiveness to a dreadful fate and, in decidedly modern fashion, suggesting that Ukrainians can be masters—or mistresses—of their own lives. That happened to be the message of the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity”: that a humbled people can assert their humanity by rising up against tyranny.”

Lest we forget, Ukraine and Ukrainians were “free” for twenty years prior to Maidan. The next presidential election cycle was a little over one year away when the Maidan coup happened.

This isn’t about that story. This isn’t about Ukrainians. Motyl’s justification stems from “the Ukrainians” or to keep it simple Ukrainian émigrés. This story is about how they have taken advantage of freedom and the damage they have done since they were taken in by western countries, especially the United States of America and Canada.

Why “the” Ukrainians Lie

• What would Americans say if they knew that at the same time that America was fighting German forces in WWII, Ukrainian émigrés were supporting entire SS battalions, even providing leadership? Would they freak out?
• What would Americans do if they knew that the Ukrainians were behind the Korean and Vietnam wars where we lost over 100,000 people? Should they freak out?
• What would westerners do if they knew the Ukrainian émigrés were behind almost 500,000 executions worldwide from 1950 through the 1980’s in the name of democracy and freedom? Could they freak out?
• Can any group of Americans step on your rights to start a private war with another sovereign country? Did they ask your opinion about it? Would you freak out?

The Oldest Continuing WWII Nazi Governments

The UCCA [Ukrainian Congress Committee of America –ed.] and its umbrella organization, the UWC [Ukrainian World Congress –ed.], represent the interests of the world’s Ukrainian diaspora. Pointedly, both organizations adhere to the same ultra-nationalist politics they did in the 1930s–1940s, in World War 2.

Bandera’s direct relationship with the US was tenuous at best because of Bandera’s attempted assassination of sitting president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the same time frame the assassination of the president was to occur, Bandera and his second-in-command Yaroslav Stetsko were arrested for trying to declare a Ukrainian state in Galitsia.

Who was running the UPA and the OUNb while Bandera was in prison?

According to the Institute of Historical Research of the Lvov Institute, guest professor at the Central European Institute in Budapest, Senator and Chair of History of Ukraine Catholic Institute Jaroslav Gritsak, it was the émigrés in the West. While Ukrainians in America were serving in the US Armed Forces during WWII, the OUN leadership in America was cooperating with Bandera’s SS Battalions. In 1943, after Stalingrad, when it became apparent that Germany would lose the war, they started democratizing the image of Bandera nationalism. This was in order to make Ukrainian nationalism more palatable to western democratic sensibilities in America.

The Bandera started rewriting their history prior to 1943. They became less anti-semitic, more anti-Nazi, leaning toward democracy. This tendency was noted throughout CIA documents that dealt with them and released under the Nazi War Crime Disclosure Act. The CIA saw through the ruse and the common theme—“the Bandera are lying again” goes across almost all documents.

After Bandera’s release in 1944, the émigrés had to get him up to speed on what his organization was doing. Bandera promptly rejected any move toward democracy. By 1946, the CIA took note that the terrorist Stepan Bandera was the undisputed leader of the entire Ukrainian diaspora in America. “BANDERA is still the leader of the secret Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN, which controls UHWR, ABN, and UPA. BANDERA is considered as a successor to KONOVALETS. MELNYK is the head of a small group of dissident OUN elements, mostly formerly pro-German.”

One of his demands that the US State Department acquiesced to was inculcating nationalism in the entire diaspora. In 1953, Bandera was formally elected leader of the worldwide Diaspora. He was the leader until his death. By 1980, the US émigré population became recognized as solely represented by Bandera’s OUNb in their politics. They never were Democrats or Republicans. Ukrainian emigre children in America are still brought up to be Bandera ultra-nationalists.

By the 1950s America’s executive branch regretted dealing with them at all. From 1946–1957 over 200,000 Ukrainian emigres flocked to American shores. Almost to a man they comprised the core of Bandera’s Nazi SS Battalions. The internal conversation for émigrés in America shifted from whether a communist, monarchist, or nationalist made a better Ukrainian to who is a better, more committed Ukrainian nationalist/ultra-nationalist/nazi.

The Real Reason for the Korean and Vietnam Wars

“The Bandera by this time included many national émigré groups under the ABN [Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations –ed.] auspices. The Polish-American Congress, Baltic émigrés, and Eastern European émigré nations in exile were under Bandera’s leadership. The fledgling CIA underestimated the nationalist émigré population thinking it was only 500,000 people. This made the OUN’s first intervention in American politics easy.

One of the founders of the China Lobby and chief strategist Yaroslav Stetsko (Bandera’s second in command) brought the first million man march to Washington DC during the Eisenhower years. In one day the OUNb changed the course of American policy from recognizing China, to a policy which plunged the United States into the Korean war in which 50,000 American lives were lost. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea and Chiang Kai-shek, President of Taiwan were both ultra-nationalist leaders and close partners of ABN leader Yaroslav Stetsko. Leading the way was Stetsko’s friend and co-nationalist, Senator Joe McCarthy.

The Luce-Hearst-Liebman-Stetsko China Lobby wasted no time ratcheting up the propaganda and political pressure in Congress and on the President to act. America could not let “democratic” South Korea fall to communism as it had done to Chiang’s China. Christian America went to war against the satanic Godless communists, or at least that was how it was sold. 

The Real Reason for the Viet Nam War

It is unquestionable that the men and women that served in these wars were heroes. President Johnson, who made the decision to go into the Viet Nam war did so to protect democracy. He just never said which democracy he was protecting. South Vietnam was an ultra-nationalist nation like Third Reich Germany or the Ukrainian Bandera envisioned. He sent our troops to put the question of a nationalist America off until a quieter time. Our soldiers protected American democracy at home.

[President Lyndon Johnson] later recalled: “I knew Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness from the day the Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China had played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that all these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Viet Nam.” VanDeMark, Brian (1995). Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Oxford University Press . p. 25

In May 1964 the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League (APACL), created and steered by Yaroslav Stetsko and Marvin Liebman, asked for US help to bring the war to the communists and stated: “Every free nation should support the Republic of Viet Nam, which is waging a war for the “freedom of the whole free world.” It’s not surprising Ukraine is echoing these same words today.

Stetsko’s purpose was to surround the Soviet Union with nationalist countries that would work actively to destroy both it and Russia by creating ultra-national revolutions within the Soviet Union.

On August 2, 1964 the United States was at war in Viet Nam.”

Bandera’s List of Accomplishments

This small list provides highlights of some of the pro-democracy work of the Bandera during the last fifty years. In all that time, the nationalist’s methods have never changed. Every leader other than Petliura and Bandera were under Yaroslav Stetsko’s leadership. Stetsko had become Congress’ leading anti-Communist expert.

• Ukraine/Galitsia: Simon Petliura—50,000 civilians murdered in one year of power. Stepan Bandera—500,000 civilians murdered including 200,000 Jews; 3,000,000 prisoners of war starved to death in concentration camps.
• South Korea: Syngman Rhee—in 1949 between 10-20,000 murders at Jeju Island. 1950, ordered 200,000 executions at Bodo Island. 1951, Geochang, 719 executions including over 300 children
• South Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem-12,000 executions 1955–57, 40,000 jailed
• Guatamala Death Squads: Fernando Romeo Lucas García, 1980s—200,000 executed
• The Bosnian War: Over 100,000 killed.

Each of these projects were to set up Bandera’s friends as ultra-nationalist leaders in their respective countries.

Who are the Bandera?

In 1946, Bandera started the ABN and put his second-in-command Yaroslav Stetsko in charge of it. In 1949, CIA Director, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter in a letter to the Chairman of the Displaced Persons Committee made official a change in policy towards the OUN. He acknowledged that while the organization had collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War, its members were to be considered solely as anti-Soviets able to “find common ground with new partners.” The CIA Director did warn, however, that the Bandera faction was made up of extreme nationalists. This reclassification as anti-Soviet (better known as anti-communist) paved the way for a quiet nationalist invasion of the United States . The ABN dominated US foreign policy for the entire cold war. Complementing this and giving it teeth, Stetsko helped form the China Lobby which became the most powerful lobby in modern US history.

The ABN grouped every ultra-nationalist or Nazi “nation in exile” in the world together under one umbrella. In the USA it meant that Stepan Bandera gained a large, powerful voting bloc directly in the USA from the 1950s until today. If you consider the article linked above, any local, regional, state, or national politician in the US that wants to get elected, needs a swing state, or needs real activist boots on the ground pays homage to the Bandera (formerly) ABN, émigré nationalists.

Bandera’s Political Weight in the US

When the first wave of Ukrainian nationalists arrived in America they set up corporations like credit unions and insurance companies to finance their nationalist agenda for the future. They didn’t need to wait very long.

The Bandera are profoundly more than Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainian émigrés lead them but at its peak the ABN represented over 100 nations including Taiwan, Korea and Viet Nam.

In a letter to CIA Director Allen Dulles in 1958, Stetsko outlined a plan to rebuild the world into nationalist states submissive to US policy. Stetsko made it clear that he alone represented this constituency.

“Now, when I am here it is my hope that you will agree on our coming together with the purpose to deliberate on concepts and strategy leading eventually to a strong and friendly alliance between the American people and the Russian captive nations I have the honor to represent.”

Stetsko closed the letter thus: “I am on and off in Washington, testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC –ed.] and the House Committee for Foreign Affairs, and I feel assured that you, sir, will find the time to give me an audience.”

Only a few years before this the Ukrainian nationalists were the focus of HUAC investigations for Un-American activities. The order to change their status because of the start of the Cold War stopped the investigations dead in their tracks. When the Deputy Director forwarded the letter to Dulles he made a note that it was from Bandera’s chief lieutenant.

Bandera’s Nazis now determined WHO was a GOOD American and would do so in Congress for another twenty years. How many American lives and careers did they ruin? They became the engine behind Joseph McCarthy.

In July 1960, the nationalist emigre groups gained their first major victory in the fight to establish nationalism in America. New York City hosted the Stars and Stripes Gala Affair that punctuated the Captive Nations Week celebration. At the parade on the podium were every prominent Jewish leader, 87+ US Senators and US Congressmen, New York’s mayor, the Governor, and the captive nations leaders which included at least seven former Third Reich SS officers. The nationalist Ukrainians marching in the parade were from Bandera’s army in WW2. (I wonder how many SS units were represented that day…)

How Much Political Impact do the Bandera Have?

After 1960, their impact on American politics grew because they were better organized. The émigré mainstay has always been Congress. The heaviest concentration and headquarters locations are marked by major cities in important political states. The most effective means they employ has been to donate heavily and provide people to political campaigns that promise to vote “for Ukraine/Poland/Latvia/Guatamala, etc.

In the 1970s, the Ukrainian faction bragged about delivering states to presidential candidates. The Polish faction was large enough to swing presidential elections by itself in the 1950s. By the 1980s they delivered their first presidency. Regardless of how you look at the Reagan years, it is now unquestionable how he attained the office in the first place.

How large is this group?

The CEEC which is the new umbrella group boasts over twenty million members across the country. They vote in bloc and for both congressmen and presidential candidates they can harness the funding of countries whose people they represent for your campaign. The caveat is you will vote against Russia at every opportunity and not mind their open Nazi ties.

Motyl’s model

Let’s take Professor Motyl’s Ukrainian nationalist romance and inject it with reality. In the end, the facts bear out not a love story or even an infatuation. It’s a modern tragedy, not a love story. A young drug addicted girl kills her husband and children while stealing money for her next fix would be closer to the truth.

The Ukrainian government today is acting like “the Ukrainians” always have, and always will. In the west, particularly in the US and Canada, it’s time to de-tooth this dragon. The Bandera (Ukrainian émigrés) have broken the Anti-Genocide Law as well as the Neutrality Act by starting the war in Ukraine. If you don’t think they are stepping on your rights to do this, how do you think we got here in the first place?

It’s time for the grown-ups to belly up to the table and demand explanations from both the émigrés and our Congress.