Uses and abuses of history

There's some superb stuff about the necessity of the proper use of history and how absurd that wretched Liberal Fascism book is over at Peter's blog. You should also read his earlier post about how attempts to create an equivalence between Nazism and Communism are in fact attempts to mitigate the evil of Nazism and, especially in the Baltic states, to "hide some rather awkward evidence of complicity in the Holocaust". It's really insightful and on point--the sort of top notch stuff we get from Peter.

I thought of that post while reading yesterday's Montreal Gazette and coming across the following article about Viktor Yushchenko's exit from the Ukranian presidency and his championing of the WW2-era nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. There's a (sort of) relevance to Canadians here too:

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, meanwhile, has stirred the pot further this week by praising Yushchenko's decision to recognize Bandera and other Ukrainian resistance fighters.

"The UCC calls upon the government of Canada to make changes to Canada's War Veterans Allowance Act by expanding eligibility to include designated resistance groups such as OUN-UPA," said the release, referring to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The UCC's reaction is really a non-story--the likelihood that Veterans Affairs will extend Allied veterans benefits to former combatants who sided with Canada's enemies in World War Two is precisely nil. But at the same time, when the article quotes a historian who wrote that these fighters were "the most impressive example of popular resistance to communist power in wartime and postwar Europe" there is, intentionally or not, an at least partial mitigation and legitimation of Nazi collaboration.