Letter I Sent as Email Submitted to the Website of US Senator Bill Nelson, US Senator from the state of Florida where I live, by means of the Senators supplied slot, just a moment ago, August 22, 2014, submitted about 2:46 or 2:47 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, USA East Coast Time Zone, 08-22-2014: 08-22-2014 Dear Sir: I found your recent public comments on U.S., Ukraine, and Russia disgusting, reprehensible, vile, and dangerous, not to mention disinforming, misinforming, and misleading. Unlike many of my baby boomer age, Ive read a lot about the history of the Soviet Union, the history of World War II, the history of Ukraine and Russia, the history of American relations with Russia going back to the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and the history of Nazi Germany. Additionally, unlike many, I pay attention not merely to whats published here in American media, but to foreign media, including NHK World News out of Tokyo, Japan, Deutsche-Welle News out of Berlin, Germany, the European Journal on PBS, Al-Jazeera-America, Russia Times on Rt dot com, and I also pay attention to websites like the European Journal, Reuters, and others. Unlike some, I have read significant historical works on World War II, including eminent long-time and deeply and highly respected eminent American military officers and military historians David M. Glantzs and Jonathan M. Houses authoritative military history of the European Theater of World War II, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, eminent British historian and historical biographer Ian M. Kershaws 2-volume historical biography, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, and Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, for starters. David M. Glantz is currently considered the most authoritative Western military historian on the European theater of World War II and, particularly, on the Soviet-German War. He himself is a veteran of the American side in the Vietnam War. Ian Kershaws biography of Hitler is currently considered the most historically authoritative biography of Hitler. Finally, Ive read a great deal on many different kinds of fascisms and fascist movements, Sir. Ive read not only the Kershaw biography of Hitler, but the earlier important Alan Bullock biography of Hitler. Ive read the late eminent European cultural historian, Professor George Mosses book, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. Ive read Hitlers own ranting Nazi fascist racist screeching screed, Mein Kampf cover to cover. Ive read the writings of the great anti-Stalinist and exiled Russian-Soviet communist revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, on the rise of German Nazi fascism in the years before Hitler got power, published in the U.S. and globally by the socialist publishing company, Pathfinder Press, as The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany: Writings of Leon Trotsky, which proposed for the German left and labor movement at the time Hitler was still out of power the only tactic that had a fighting chance of keeping Hitler and his gang from getting into power. And Ive read a lot about the history of Ukrainian nationalism, Russian nationalism, and, also, Sir, American fascism of the Ku Klux Klan type and its own historical origins in the military defeat of the Confederate States of America in 1865 and the corresponding rise at that time of the Ku Klux Klan, which is when the American fascist movement, the Ku Klux Klan, originated. Additionally, more recently, Ive had occasion to listen numerous times to many interviews of, perhaps, the most currently eminent American scholar and academic on Russia, Ukraine, and connected environs, long, long-time American university professor Stephen M. Cohen, interviewed in numerous different venues on the subject of whats happened to American-Russian relations since October-November 2013. Dr. Cohens authored many books on the history of modern Russia through the Soviet and then Stalinist period up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then since then. Hes been interviewed on Amy Goodmans Democracy Now syndicated radio program, and Ive listened to him there. Hes been interviewed numerous times on the Charlie Rose show on PBS and Ive listened to him there. Hes written for the liberal Nation Magazine on Russia and on American misperceptions and misconceptions about Russia and Ive read some of his writings there. Professor Cohens no right-wing extremist flake. Hes a long-time liberal and married to the editor of The Nation, the liberal editor, Katrina Van Den Heuvel. Both she, and he, are smart people. Theyre not idiots. I therefore have some perspective on the issues you addressed in your remarks, Sir. Your proposing U.S. lethal aid for the Ukraine regime is basically an evil thing for you to propose, Sir. And, yes, I used the word, evil, for that is the only appropriate word that can be used to address your recent public remarks on America, Russia, Ukraine, Sir. I dont know how ignorant the people around you are, Sir, or how ignorant you are, Sir, but, on this issue, you seem to wallow in ignorance, and to be engaged in one of two pursuits: either publicly vomiting out ignorance on this subject or, alternatively, vomiting it out as a cynical and deceptive ploy irrespective of the consequences. I do not, I first state, particularly like the authoritarian and generally conservative nature of Vladimir Putins Russian regime. I do not like the gay-baiting in which his regime apparently engages. I do not like the repression of the Chechens in Chechnya in which his regime engages. I do not like the various manifestations of bigotry of diverse sorts in which his regime engages. But, Sir, compared to the regime that has recently come to power illegally, in an anti-constitutional, anti-legal police statist militarist coup detat of February 22, 2014 in Ukraine, Putins regime is like some kind of liberal democracy by comparison, and your statements aid and abet some of the most vile violent, racist, fascist scum of the earth in Ukraine who can be aided and abetted, Sir. I watch on public television from time to time European Journal. Several months ago, they broadcast an interesting piece on right-wing extremism and its influence in Ukraine, including in the new Ukrainian government that emerged in the aftermath of the February 22, 2014 coup. The 2 main violent right-wing parties are frankly fascist and Nazi parties. One is called Svoboda. The other, even more extreme, is called, Right Sector. Svoboda used to call itself the Social National Party, and its flag when it called itself that was a flag that had a yellow background with a black Nazi-type swastika on it. It called itself originally the Social National Party in a deliberate aim to copy the name of Hitlers party, National Socialist German Workers Party. It changed its name to Svoboda basically for the same reasons that the American long-time Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi fascist, David Duke, tried maybe 30 or so years ago to begin to reform his public image and present himself as a former Klansman or former fascist. Duke, however, is no former Klansman or former fascist, and everything he does and says enables that to get out of the bag. And in the same way, Svoboda are not former fascists or former Nazi lovers, and everything they do insures that that comes out of the bag. Right Sector is a violent pro-Nazi organization who really spearheaded the October-November 2013 Kiev, Ukraine violent street protests in Kiev from then through to the February 22, 2014 coup in Kiev, and they have absolutely no hesitation about marching around with yellow backgrounded flags with black Nazi-type swastika insignias on them, Sir. Their critique of Svoboda is that Svoboda are, in the words of Right Sectors own fascist leader, Yarosh, too liberal and conformist. The European Journal report on the events from October/November 2013 up through the February 22, 2014 anti-constitutional and anti-legal coup detat co-sponsored by the United States bipartisan government against the formally legally and constitutionally 2010 elected Ukraine president spoke in its broadcast of a series of mass January 2014 memorial demonstrations memorializing the historical memory of Stepan Bandera. These mass memorial protest demonstrations in January 2014 were held in Kiev, Ukraine. They showed television photographic moving picture footage of some of these January 2014 memorial demonstrations, Sir. In one of their pieces of footage, they showed some of the gigantic flags draped over different public buildings and public monuments side by side with gigantic photos of Stepan Bandera. Some of the flags shown were giant yellow flags with black Nazi type swastikas on them. And, in one case, one of the flags was a flag of the Confederate States of America - the same flag favored here in the United States of America by the Ku Klux Klan! I did some reading on Stepan Bandera. Some of my reading included a very detailed and meticulous and careful reading of the important book, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, by eminent military historians David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House. First, it should here be stated that David Glantzs view on World War II and the European theater of war is supported by the enormously detailed and well-compiled military statistics in his and Houses book, When Titans Clashed, i.e., by the irreconcilably hard factual data. It is not second-hand opinion. It is not hearsay. It is hard data. Americans are brainwashed on the subject of the European theater of war into thinking the American and British effort in that war was the primary or at least a central aspect of what destroyed Hitlers regime. But that is hogwash. And officers and historians Glantz and House make that so unalterably clear in their book that there simply is no room for arguing with them. Their factual basis for their assessment that the armed forces that smashed Hitlers regime were the armed forces of the Soviet Red Army is so irreconcilably and uncompromisingly hard that it compares with, for instance, the science behind global warming, or the science behind evolution, Sir. That is how hard and factually based and data-based their conclusion is. By comparison with the Soviet Red Army effort, D-Day was a sideshow, frankly. But the Glantz/House conclusions are never alluded to inside America in public media, never, or so close to never as to be virtually never. And that is despite their meticulously detailed and hard work of assessing and appraising the Soviet war effort against Hitler. Now, then: during some of the most significant Soviet military campaigns against Hitler in World War II, some of the key Soviet military commanders encountered pro-Nazi armed resistance to Soviet efforts in Ukraine. And in one series of encounters, in fact, one of the most talented, gifted, and promising younger Soviet military commanders in that enormous military effort to drive the Nazis out of the former Soviet Union was murdered - not by Nazis, but by their supporters in Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalist violent anti-Russian extremists. And these were people who were very much informed in their attitudes by Bandera. Bandera was apparently active in armed anti-Russian and anti-Soviet activities both during World War II and afterward. During the War, he was responsible for mass murders of Jews, of Poles, of Communists, and of former Soviet Red Army prisoners of war, as well as Soviet Red Army soldiers active in the effort against Hitler, Sir. Post-World War II, he remained active in armed efforts to undermine the former Soviet Union up to 1959, when the Soviet KGB caught up with him and killed him. And, frankly, Sir, in my view, he deserved it. But this is the guy whom the two contemporary Ukraine fascist nationalist movements in Northwest Ukraine celebrate. Ian Kershaw is British. Since he is British, he is informed to some degree, unfortunately, by a certain amount of British national chauvinism, which, in my view, negatively and adversely impacts on some of his judgments, appraisals and assessments at the conclusion of his otherwise amazing and remarkably very good 2-volume authoritative biography of Hitler, the total 2 volumes of which I completed reading a couple of years ago, very meticulously, I might add. But in spite of some of my own disagreements with some of Professor Kershaws conclusions, one conclusion of his I find myself agreeing with - particularly in light of my more recent completion of reading David M. Glantzs and Jonathan M. Houses When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler - is his conclusion that the most fatal decision for the continuation or ending of the Nazi regime Hitler made was his decision to invade the Soviet Union. Kershaw there, with David Glantz, agree on that. And since both Kershaw, and Glantz, amassed such an impressive amount of irreconcilable factual data in support of their monumentally important scholarly efforts, I think this particular agreement on this particular conclusion of both of these scholars is worth paying attention to. David M. Glantz and his fellow military historian, Jonathan M. House, in fact, in a significant conclusion of their When Titans Clashed work counterpose reality to myth when, in commenting on an American news article calling Dwight Eisenhower the man who defeated Hitler, said, no, if someone wants to know who defeated Hitler, it would be accurate, instead, to point to Marshal Zhukov, the main Red Army commander in World War II, to commander Vasilevsky, another leading Soviet Red Army commander, or even to Stalin himself. I have read the late New York Times Moscow correspondent, Harrison Salzburys fine work, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. I have also had the opportunity to read some of the writings of the great exiled anti-Stalinist Russian communist revolutionary, and himself former forger and maker of the Soviet Red Army at the birth of the Soviet Republic, Leon Trotsky, including some of Trotskys writings from the 1930s. Reading the Salzbury work, and reading, particularly, some of Trotskys own comments in 1939 after the conclusion of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, which Trotsky devastatingly publicly demolished in his statements and comments, I concluded some years ago that Trotskys assessment in 1939, The central nest of anti-Soviet defeatism is in the Kremlin, was basically right. I dont think Stalin can be the person to whom Soviet Red Army success in World War II can be attributed. But I do think David Glantzs assessment that, if the destruction of Hitlers regime can be reduced to the efforts of one man, Marshal Zhukov is probably that man, is factually quite accurate and correct and deserving of being considered so. However, Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian pro-Nazi pro-fascist right-wing nationalist extremist, was on the other side in World War II. He was on the side of Nazi fascism. He was on the side of mass murder of Jews. He was on the side of mass murder of Poles. He was on the side of mass murder of Soviet Red Army soldiers, both armed and disarmed. And he was on the side of mass murder of Communists. I realize that in this America of long-time Red-hating and Red-baiting and Communist-hating and Communist-baiting, its par for the course to dismiss killing of Communists as not at all a bad thing. But the Soviet Unions Red Army de facto pulled the chestnuts of both America and England out of the cauldron of fires of the European theater of World War II. Not only that, but David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House make clear from irreconcilable hard data that Stalin not once, but numerous times, adjusted and adapted later in the War the military conduct of Soviet Red Army forces to adjust to and adapt to what the Americans and British wanted in that period. Glantz and House make that clear in their work. But Bandera of Ukraine was on the wrong side in that War. Professor Stephen M. Cohen, interviewed multiple times on Amy Goodmans liberal-minded but globally highly respected investigative journalistic syndicated program Democracy Now!, made it clear that irrespective of whether the Washington-D.C. Democratic and Republican bipartisan gang liked it or not, the former Ukraine president, Yanukovich, was legally elected and constitutionally elected in 2010. Professor Cohen made clear the times he was interviewed by Goodman, as well as by Charlie Rose, that Ukraine was never one country, but is really several countries inside the boundaries of one country, with millions of people of a pretty wide variety of national and ethnic groups. Professor Stephen Cohen made clear that there are literally millions of Ukrainians of Russian ethnic and national heritage living inside Ukraine, especially in East and Southeast Ukraine. Professor Cohen made clear that these people were not separatists originally, but with the growing violent extremism against them fomented and incited from Northwest Ukraine, from particularly the post-February 22, 2014 Kiev government, lots of them could or would be driven to separatism, possibly. Professor Cohen made clear that they were essentially in favor of a measure of legal autonomy originally within, however, the Ukrainian borders. But Professor Cohen made clear also that the October-November 2013 Kiev protests were usurped early by violent, nationalist, right-wing extremists. Now, as I earlier said, Professor Cohen is no flake. Hes been researching Russia and environs going on since at least the 1960s, for upwards of 50 years, now. He was a professor of history and Russia studies at Princeton, then at New York University. Hes authored many multiple books on the region. Early in his scholarly and academic career, he authored a book on the Bolshevik leader, Bukharin. He later authored a significant book on Stalinism and the Stalinist terror and its impact on Soviet people, Russian people. He was interviewed on Charlie Rose after authoring that book. Hes been called upon by many different academic and scholarly institutions and conferences to provide his take on these concerns. He knows people in both Russia and Ukraine and environs. Recently, however, such American violent right-wing sources as Fox News and some of their particularly virulently Russia-hating people have taken to slandering and slurring and libeling Professor Cohen publicly. So have quite a number of Republicans. And, sadly, so have a not inconsiderable number of Democrats. This is too bad. This has all the earmarks of a kind of America-national-chauvinist-Russia-hating hate campaign or crusade against an important academic and scholar whose hard factual data and experience in this field lead him to conclusions that dont jive with those of the American nationalistic chauvinist Russia-hating crew, and so, they jump on him as one concerted bunch. Some months ago watching that European Journal special, one of the things they brought out was this, Sir. Immediately after the February 22, 2014 bipartisanly U.S.-supported anti-legal and anti-constitutional coup in Kiev, Ukraine - which was, as American media never report, a numerically minority coup of a minority of Ukrainian people, not a majority and not a group representing a majority of Ukrainian people, but a group representing a minority of Ukrainian people - the head of the Svoboda party was made the head of the Ukrainian national security police and Ukrainian national security forces. And he immediately appointed as his deputy the head of the Right Sector. In other words, Sir, two historically Ukrainian fascist movements leaders were made, respectively, the head, and deputy head, of Ukrainian national security/police forces. On May 2, 2014, in Odessa, in South Ukraine, a long-time cosmopolitan city of many diverse ethnic and national and religious minority peoples, a group of people who had apparently been nonviolently peaceably protesting the Kiev, Ukraine, post-February 22, 2014 coup, had been set upon violently by Ukrainian national security police, and had, to seek sanctuary, gone into a trade union (labor union) office building in Odessa. The Ukraine national security police forces, from photographs and moving pictures supplied which have repeatedly appeared at various places, were there and then headed up by people wearing on their uniforms insignias with the Nazi swastika-type symbol of the Right Sector flag, and some were even carrying yellow flags with the black Nazi-type swastikas on them. They surrounded the Odessa trade/labor union building in which the nonviolent peaceable protesters had sought sanctuary. They then threw firebombs into the building. The building was burned. People who did not escape from the building were burned to death. Some who tried to escape were bludgeoned to death - by the Right-Sector-headed Ukrainian police. This was all witnessed by European and other people who were correspondents at the time. Additionally, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation police and the American Central Intelligence Agency police were there in a supposedly consultant capacity, consulting with the Ukrainian national security police people at that time. In finding out about this, I was reminded of the Neshoba County, Mississippi, white policeman who arrested in 1964 3 racially integrated civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, held them in jail till midnight while he telephoned his local Ku Klux Klan Mississippi white racist fascist friends that he was holding them and was going to release them at midnight, then released them, and they drove off, only to be disappeared, only to have their remains found later on murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964, Sir. This is the relationship of the Ukrainian national security police with Right Sector and Svoboda fascists in Ukraine, Sir. And this is what your public comments calling for lethally arming the Ukrainians de facto support, Sir. I was a civil rights activist in the 1960s in Baltimore, Maryland, Sir. I supported in 1964 the effort of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be seated in place of the Mississippi regular all white Democratic Party delegation at the Atlantic City, New Jersey, Democratic Party national convention at that time, Sir. I opposed the prevention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation being seated. I watched not too long ago a Public Broadcasting System television program on the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. And it appears to me, Sir, that your recent comments calling for lethally arming the Ukrainian post-February 22, 2014 coup regime place you in the same bed with people of the kind who murdered Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner here in this country in 1964 in Mississippi, Sir. I realize that the Democratic Party in this country and leading Democratic U.S. Senators like yourself seek, apparently, to bend over backwards to, internationally, cultivate favor with the most reprehensible fascist enemies of the human species. But do you possess so little shame, Sir, as to have bent over so far that now you are calling in international American policy for measures which de facto ramp up the international pressures toward a global Third World Nuclear War with Russia? It does appear to me to be so, unfortunately, Sir. I dont really expect my remarks to you to be heeded, because Ive long since come to expect nothing from anybody in the joint, bipartisan, Washington-D.C. gang, Demopublicans or, as the great early American 20th Century Socialist Party spokesman, Eugene V. Debs, used to call them, Republicrats. But I figured on the off-chance that there might be one last jot of or scintilla of a conscience left in you, Sir, and on the off-chance you had not so thoroughly embraced the amount of ethics and conscience of a bug-eating predatory lizard, I would write to you on this matter. And so, I have. Good day. --Allan Greene
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:38:29 +0000
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