On December 16, 2020, the United Nations General Assembly held a vote on adopting a policy which states that they, that is the member states, agree on ‘Combating glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance’. This is something I think the majority of the world, barring Nazi sympathisers, agree with.
The policy was adopted, overwhelmingly so, and as I say, it is not news that countries agree Nazism is bad. But what is news, shocking, revealing, exposing what has long been suspected and spoken about but never really taken seriously, is that out of 186 nations, 130 voted yes, 50 abstained and two voted against.
What kind of monster votes against condemning Nazism and its iterations? What kind of coward or crypto-Nazi decides to sit on the fence and abstain in a vote which is condemning the evil ideology which necessitated the creation of the UN? What justification can be given for supping with evil, for stating that gas chambers for the Untermensch is good? What justification can be given for abstaining in such a vote which, at the end of the day, simply seeks to reaffirm our oneness as a people, even if it is only being on watch against fascism and its outcomes?
The monsters who voted against this policy are the US and Ukraine and, as stated earlier, it merely confirms what has long been suspected. No one who does even recreational research into WW II and fascism can escape the fact the Ukraine and the US pop up continually and consistently as bastions of support for Nazism (in the case of the US) or Banderaism (its Ukrainian form in that nation). Post-WW II the again condemned and disbelieved USSR told the Western powers that these Ukrainians were fascists and fought them up until 1950 in the west Ukrainian forests as they were being funded by the US.
That the US financed Nazi industry, furnished them with technology during the inter-war years, hid and downplayed news of their atrocities against minorities is common knowledge, as is Operation Paperclip. Less known is that entire companies of captured Afrika Corps troops — some of the most fanatical soldiers imbibed in Nazism — were ‘imprisoned’ in the US south, able to eat freely at restaurants in their Nazi caps while Afro-American troops going to the front could not even enter.
Those who abstained, the cowards or crypto-Nazis, are the Western alliance, that is the entire EU bloc (the UK as well), Australia, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Japan, Liberia, Palau, Canada, Samoa, Turkey, and Tonga. These countries don’t even have the excuse of being American satrapies or military outposts. Colombia, Brazil, Rwanda and many more of the Yes nations are in that position.
Apart from the very small pacific island nations which are put in a life-or-death situation with this vote (they rely heavily on external aid), the only other explanation for countries like Germany, Croatia and Canada abstaining is that they have never truly dealt with their Nazi past. That these nations post-WW II had their entire police and civil service re-staffed with former Nazis and their sympathisers while others from the east were spirited away to places like Canada and the US (many prominent ex-SS officials who became politicians and national leaders in the FYSR had been living in the US providing information to intelligence agencies and awaiting the chance for return).
That, though, is not the justification given. No, the justification is two-fold; one, it is not anti-communist (they wish to equate those who defeated Nazism, the Communists with Nazism) and secondly, they wish to ‘stick it’ to Russia and China who unsurprisingly take these things a touch seriously (what with them having experienced the worst loss of life at the hands of both Nazism and Japanese fascism).
This is a disgusting and shameful act. The day must be marked as a mourning day and the people who voted for abstention or no should be marked in the history books as those who essentially said we don’t care about the UN, the reason for its existence, or even the innate humanity we all have. That nations feel it more important to get one over another nation than condemn an evil which killed over six million Jews, Romani, Slavs, homosexuals, disabled, Blacks, etc because they found them inferior, and started a war which ended with over 50 million dead from their hands alone, should make us pause and take note. As fascism raises its head again from a slumber, sustained by the abstainers and no voters who for years told us anti-fascist groups were lying when they said these governments funded leaders in their countries and sustained fascist groups, the global south must take a stand.
It must not be lost on us that the majority of the yes votes came from these nations, honourable exceptions being Russia and Serbia (two European nations which suffered some of the worst traumas at the hands of fascism and the only ones to liberate themselves from that yoke). Even nations with leaders who come from fascist roots (Modi in India and his RSS) or flirt with neo-fascist leaders (Netanyahu with his interactions with Hungarian and Polish far-right and vocally anti-Semitic leaders) voted for this policy. Their voting in favour show that no matter what they may feel, they know that the people who they represent would riot if anything other than a yes vote was cast and that should give us hope.
The lines are drawn. They always were but this vote must make it obvious to all now. On one side you have the appeasers and apologisers for Nazism and on the other you have the majority of the world’s peoples firmly against it. One side is okay with extermination, the other is not. We must use this and apply it to other areas of life and news consumption. With this piece of knowledge, do you really believe that China has one (or is it two, the number keeps changing) million Uyghurs in concentration camps or is this a western deflection as they operate their own concentration camps? Do we really believe that Russia wishes to take over Europe or that Iran wishes to occupy the Middle East, or is this simply projection for their ideology which, in the end, is eerily similar to Nazism.
As the global far-right continues its resurgence and as the world braces for a continued fallout, both economic and social, from COVID-19 we must be on the lookout. Those in power will empower the fascists to keep the masses at bay or to deal with a perceived grudge. We the people are expendable as they will look the other way while we staff their factories as slave labour and are carted off to extermination camps. We must use this vote for what it was, a declaration that those countries who voted no, want nothing to do with us and instead seek to build stronger ties with like-minded nations. We cannot afford, either economically, socially and clearly politically/ideologically to maintain ties with nations who seek to, for whatever reason, not speak out against what was the ultimate evil of the past century.
All our needs can be met with greater trade within the global south and in the end it would mean economic growth and security. Just as the Nazis and other fascists were never shy about vocalising their ideology and goals, we see where these nations who abstained or voted no are not ashamed to side with such people and parties. We must either take the hint so strongly sent our way or end up in a situation where we are forced to accept the Nazi ideology, its normalisation and the dark effects which follow it.
