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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”)

Issue #70, Press for Conversion! (Spring 2021)
Publication
of the
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)
Read a summary of this issue            See articles on the state funding of fascist-linked groups

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Defunding Cold War Canada

Table of Contents

Canada’s anti-Red, Cold War propaganda in context
L.B.Pearson: Godfather of Cda’s Cold War on the new "Red" enemy
Pearson College and NATO’s United World Colleges
The CBC’s “Voice of Canada” --  Weapon of Cold War propaganda
‘Voice of America’ & the CIA’s ‘Radio Free Europe’ & “Radio Liberty’
L.B.Pearson: Groomed by King, St. Laurent & the ‘Big antiRed Machine'
Mackenzie King gave shocking praise for Hitler until the eve of war in 1939
Liberal immigration: "None is too many" and Too many is not enough
Why did King have such adoring admiration for Nazi Germany's dictator?
King loved Hitler’s hate speech against “Jewish international Bolshevism”

“Captive Nations” and their "Black-Ribbon-Day" crusade
The ignored historical context of “Black Ribbon Day” (Aug. 23, 1939)
“Captive Nations”: Nazi trope to CIA meme to Cold-War trump card
The “Captive Nations” conceit in Nazi propaganda
John Diefenbaker: Strong voice at the UN for “Captive Nations” bloc
The BRD campaign: Canada’s top Cold War propaganda export
The late Cold War context of the BRD crusade
Ongoing propaganda of the former "Captive Nations":
    (1) Canada’s anti-communism monument and (2) the Magnitsky laws

Far-right roots:
East European émigré groups in Canada & abroad

Estonian Central Council in Canada
   Estonia glorifies Nazi veterans as ‘freedom fighters’
Estonian World Council
Lithuanian Canadian Community and the Lithuanian World Community
   Lithuanian nationalists now have 'freedom' to glorify Nazi heritage
Latvian National Federation in Canada
World Federation of Free Latvians
Slovak World Congress and the Canadian Slovak League
Council of Free Czechoslovakia & Czechoslovak Nat'l Assoc. of Cda.

Ukrainian linchpin of Cda’s postwar, far-right diaspora
Krakow and Ottawa, 1940: "A Tale of Two Cities," and two UCCs:
(1) Germany’s Ukrainian Central Cttee. and (2) Canada's Ukrainian Canadian Cttee.

The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations & World AntiCommunist League
Yaroslav Stetsko: Leader of proNazi Ukraine, 1941

State-funded centres of Canada’s Bandera cult and its Bandera youth
Roman Shukhevych: Assassin, terrorist, war criminal and cult hero

Getting them young: Instilling Ukrainian patriotism in children and youth
Plast recruited for Nazi’s Waffen SS Galicia; now recruits for Ukraine
From Chomiak to Freeland: “keep that flame alive”
Chrystia Freeland: “Accidental journalist” or groomed for the job?
Myron Kuropas: Downplaying Holocaust; Exaggerating Holodomor
Turning from same page: Freeland wrote for pro-fascist publications
Yuri Shymko: From Bandera youth leader, MPP & MP, to elder statesman
Lisa Shymko: In the footsteps of family, community & far-right, war heroes
Rubbing political shoulders with the ABN in Toronto

The struggle continues...                                            Abridged Index

US Big Brother to Canada’s Cold War propagandists:
‘Voice of America’ and the
CIA’s ‘Radio Free Europe’ and
‘Radio Liberation from Bolshevism’
(aka
Radio Liberty’)

By Richard Sanders

(Click here for a PDF to see this sidebar as it appears in print)


During the Cold War, America’s three largest overseas propaganda venues were Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL). These mass media outlets are still active today, avidly pushing US geopolitical and corporate interests, including wars, invasions and regime change operations.

These official news networks pushed US-government propaganda under the guise of advocating democracy, human rights and truth. They still do. But only the VOA was truthful enough to admit it was state financed. Beginning in 1942 under the Office of War Information, the VOA now has a US$200-million budget and broadcasts its propaganda in 45 languages to 270 million people per week.1

The RFE and RL began in 1949 as covert creatures of the CIA. Funding was funnelled through one of the CIA’s many front groups, the National Committee for a Free Europe.  This was revealed in the late 1960s but continued until 1972 when Congress began covering its budget. Still proud of its role in the Cold War, the RFE/RL’s website now brags that the "news and information" it aimed at "audiences behind the Iron Curtain," "played a significant role in the collapse of communism...."2


B-movie actor Ronald Reagan was the CIA's frontman
for its "Crusade for Freedom" throughout the 1950s.

While the state-owned VOA has always broadcast globally, the RFE targeted people in communist Eastern Europe, and RL focused it psychological warfare against Soviet citizens. RL’s original name was, quite aptly, "Radio Liberation from Bolshevism." After some controversy this was changed in 1963. Former RFE/RL president Sig Mickelson explained why, saying the network’s organisers "seemed unaware that ‘Bolshevism’ had been Hitler’s favorite term of disparagement for the Soviet Union."3 As US media professor Christopher Simpson pointed out:

The Soviet government lost no time in pointing out the rhetorical similarity between Radio Liberation’s broadcasts and those of the Nazis as well as the fact that a number of easily identified Nazi collaborators were working for the station.4

Using the word "Bolshevism, a term favored by Nazi propagandists in the Ukraine ... turned into an embarrassment." RFE/RL was "eventually forced to ban the use of the term Bolshevism in their news broadcasts because of its unmistakable association with Nazi propaganda in the minds of European[s]."5

This change did not stop the far-right CIA front group running RFE/RL from using other forms of vilification used by the Nazis. Its biggest propaganda campaign in the 1950s, "Crusade for Freedom," employed Ronald Reagan as its spokesman. With slogans like "Help truth fight communism" and "This world under God shall have a new birth of freedom" they used every dirty trick in the CIA toolkit. This global "Crusade" was the brainchild of Frank Gardiner Wisner, the CIA’s Chief of Covert Action. By 1951, Wisner was in charge of all of the Agency’s clandestine operations worldwide.


Frank Wisner
Chief of Covert Action, CIA,
called his global propaganda machine "The Mighty Wurlitzer"


During WWII, Wisner had worked for the CIA’s precursor, the Office of Strategic Services, and headed its secret operations in the Balkans. This led to his Cold War duties for the CIA, which included:

(1) Recruiting Nazis and their fascist East European allies to continue their war against communism through new careers within the CIA,

(2) Creating the CIA’s vast RFE/RL propaganda network, and

(3) Leading "Project Mockingbird," a CIA effort that co-opted reporters and editors to spread right-wing disinformation through many global mass-media outlets.6 Referring to these assets as "The Mighty Wurlitzer,"7 Wisner targeted nonstop CIA propaganda at the Allies’ strongest WWII partner, and biggest Cold War enemy, ie., the USSR.





RFE/RL promotes Ukraine's "Orange-Revolution" coup
as democratic and equates its opponents as
"disenchanted with democracy"

RFE/RL has always aided the careers of select journalists. For example, in 1990, as the USSR’s destruction neared, a young Chrystia Freeland (now deputy PM), and former RFE/RL employee David Marples (now a University of Alberta professor), interviewed a founder of Rukh, Ukraine’s separatist movement. Freeland, then an exchange student meddling in Ukraine’s Soviet elections, had this RFE/RL interview published in Ukrainian Weekly. This US paper has run thousands of RFE/RL stories and promoted UkrainianWaffen SS vets as war heroes. Later, RFE/RL printed the Freeland/Marples piece in one of its journals and one of its books. (See also.)

By about 1990, Hungarian-born, US billionaire George Soros was funding Ukrainian dissidents. Seeking advice on this operation, Soros consulted Canada's Chrystia Freeland in Kiev, taking advantage of her extensive knowledge of, and involvement in, the Soviet Ukraine’s separatist movement. (Thus began their decades-long collaboration.)

Freeland's transition from far-right, Ukrainian nationalist publications into the Kremlin-bashing mass media, was eased by support for her antiSoviet journalism from RFE/RL. Then, after her meteoric rise through the right-wing corporate press during the 1990s and 2000s, Freeland was recruited into Liberal Party politics by Justin Trudeau.

She was elected in 2013, just in time to support the violent "Euromaidan revolution" which overthrew Ukraine's elected antiNATO/proRussia government. That coup empowered a regime "riddled with explicit anti-semites and self-proclaimed neo-Nazis."8. Ten years earlier, Soros had also helped fund Ukraine’s 2004 "Orange-Revolution" coup that empowered a corrupt, proNATO/antiRussia government.




Now financed by private sources, most notably George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, RFE/RL propaganda continues to champion US government policies and corporate interests. With 600+ employees and an annual budget of US$124 million, the RFE/RL now broadcasts in 26 languages and says it reaches an audience of 34 million/week.9 While the RFE/RL’s Cold War propaganda made frequent reference to the "Free World" and the so-called "Subjugated" or "Captive Nations" of the USSR,  these phrases have been replaced by the Soros Foundations mantras about "Open Societies" and "Unfree Societies." But now that America’s new Cold War with Russia has taken hold, the main target of US/NATO propaganda still remains Moscow’s Kremlin.

Because of their meddling in civil society and elections, the Soros-funded foundations have faced censure in Serbia, Macedonia and Turkey. Soros Foundations have been banned in Hungary and Russia. In 2015, Russia’s Office of the Prosecutor General called these Soros groups "a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state."10
 

References and notes

1. 2019 Congressional Budget Justification, Broadcasting Board of Governors, p.21. http://bit.ly/VOA-2019

2. History, RFE/RL website http://bit.ly/RFE-RLvsReds

3. Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Destructive Impact on our Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1988, p.133. http://bit.ly/RFE-RL

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., pp.8-10.

For more, see also:

Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media," Rolling Stone Magazine, Oct. 20, 1977. http://bit.ly/CIA-media

Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post, 1979.

Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, 2008. http://bit.ly/CIA-Wurl

7. Wurlitzer, a US firm created by a German immigrant in 1856, began by selling wind instruments to US military bands. It later built mechanised music machines like orchestrions, nickelodeons and juke boxes.

8. "George Soros ‘Puppet Master’ behind Ukrainian Regime, Trails of Corruption Revealed," Mint Press, June 15, 2015. http://bit.ly/SorosMint

9. RFE/RL website, "About Us" http://pressroom.rferl.org/about-us

10. Jennifer Ablan, "Russia bans George Soros foundation as state security ‘threat,’" Reuters, Nov. 30, 2015. http://bit.ly/BanSoros

Learn more....  You may also be interested in these resources...


Click to read the contents of this magazine online



Captive Canada
Renditions of the
Peaceable Kingdom at War,
from Narratives of WWI
and the Red Scare to the
Mass Internment of Civilians


(Or, how we learned to stop worrying,
keep calm and carry on loving the
myths that define and confine us.)

 

Read the introductory article:
"The Canada Syndrome,
a Captivating Mass Psychosis
"
 


Click to read the contents of this magazine online



Fictive Canada
Indigenous Slaves
and the Captivating Narratives
of a Mythic Nation
 


Read the i
ntroductory article:
"
True Crime Stories and
the Politics of Literary Escapism:
Canada as a Fiction in the
Imperial Genre
"


 

Watch the COAT website
for news about....


  (1) an upcoming book
by Richard Sanders

with the
  working title...

The Grooming
of a Liberal
War Hawk
:
Chrystia Freeland

(2)  PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION to
Stop Canadian government
funding of groups that
glorify Nazi collaborators

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