Chapter 14: Sleepwalking Into Fascism: Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years
[This is a chapter from my newly released book ‘The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set: the Birth of International Fascism and Anglo-American Foreign Policy.’ For further details on different formats and how to purchase click here.] The audio version of this chapter is available here.
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here”
– William Shakespeare (The Tempest Act 1 Scene 2)
The CIA’s Family Jewels and Operation Mockingbird
Quickly after the Cold War was announced by Churchill, it was necessary to create a fervor of fear and paranoia amongst the American people in order to have them quickly forget the fact that the Russians were their greatest allies during both the First and Second World Wars, and to replace it with the image of a ghoulish race of boogeymen.
If Americans were to remember that the Russians had fought valiantly during the Second World War against fascism and had paid by far the largest sacrifice, then the Cold War division could never have occurred. This was something that could not be tolerated by Churchill and the British Empire. Thus, terror was unleashed on the American people and McCarthyism was given precedence over the people’s right to question and form conclusions for themselves. That sort of thing could not be tolerated when the ‘enemy’ could be anywhere; they could be your neighbour, your child’s teacher, your co-worker…your partner.
In order to combat the ‘threat’ of Soviet ‘propaganda’ entering the U.S. and seducing Americans, Operation Mockingbird was created as a form of control over information dissemination during the period of McCarthyism. Operation Mockingbird was a CIA program that was started in the early 1950s in order to control the narrative of the news. The CIA Family Jewels report compiled in the mid-1970s, confirmed that Project Mockingbird did exist as a CIA operation and that it was guilty of wire-tapping journalists in Washington.
At the helm of this project was none other than CIA Director Allen Dulles, an enemy of JFK, who by the early 1950s oversaw the media network and had major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. Its function was to have the CIA write reports that would be used by a network of cooperating ‘credible’ reporters. By these ‘credible’ reporters spreading the CIA dictated narrative, it would be parroted by unwitting reporters (mockingbirds) and a successful echo chamber would be created across the world.
According to Deborah Davis’ biography of Katherine Graham (the owner of Washington Post), the OPC created Operation Mockingbird in response to addressing Soviet propaganda and included as part of its CIA contingency respected members from Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and others.
The Family Jewels report was an investigation made by the CIA to investigate…the CIA, spurred in response to the Watergate Scandal and the CIA’s unconstitutional role in the whole affair. The investigation of the CIA would include any other actions that were deemed illegal or inappropriate spanning from the 1950s-mid 1970s.
We are told most of the report was declassified on June 25th, 2007 (30 years later) hoping that people would have lost interest in the whole brouhaha. Along with the release of the redacted report was included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation[1] led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.”
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to “reform” its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh[2] exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the “family jewels”. This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of U.S. citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh’s findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27th, 1975. The Church Committee’s final report[3] was published in April 1976, including seven volumes[4] of Church Committee hearings in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim report[5] titled “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders”, which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but failed and reluctantly issued Executive Order 11905[6] after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18th, 1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who issued Executive Order 12333,[7] which extended the powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and directed leaders of the U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations.
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled “Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973“.[8] The rest were kept secret at the CIA’s request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK,[9] in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names[10] under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford’s administration.
The Church Committee’s reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
It is very useful that there exists an official recognition that false news was not only being encouraged by the CIA under the overseeing of the NSC during the Cold War period, but that the CIA was complicit in actually detailing the specific narrative that they wanted disseminated, and often going so far as to write the narrative and have a ‘credible’ reporter’s name stamped on it.
But the question begs, ‘Did the Cold War ever end?’ and if not, why should we believe that the CIA’s involvement in such activities is buried in its past and that it has ‘reformed’ its old ways?
How the CIA Buys News
Before we go through the situation of the Ukraine war today, I wanted to share with you a very relevant story of how the CIA buys News.
Udo Ulfkotte[11] was a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, seventeen of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News, Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-Western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.
In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting 2014 crisis in Ukraine stating:
“I felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of us…I am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sided”.
In another interview Ulfkotte stated:
“It is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I don’t think so.”
Ulfkotte has publicly stated:
“I am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. It’s not just about FAZ, this is the whole system that’s corrupt all the way.”
Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017 at the age of fifty-six, found dead in his home, it is said by a heart attack. His body was quickly after cremated, thus preventing any possibility of an autopsy from occurring. His book is available in English under the title Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA: A Confession from the Profession.
Today’s situation concerning media reporting on Ukraine does not seem to be any different from the manipulative spin controlled by intelligence agencies exposed by Udo. If anything, it is much much worse. To bolster support for the Ukrainian military, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public emotion for political and financial support from Western countries.
Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post,[12] “They [Ukraine] are really excellent in stratcom [strategic communications] — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.” Washington Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”
Dan Cohen for Mint Press News writes:[13]
“Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare. According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm…
According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.
The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.”
Thus, Ingham who has been a member of the UK government and continues to have very high-level connections within the British government, has played a leading role in shaping how the Ukraine war is being represented to the public.
Dan Cohen provides a thorough explanation of how these ‘PR firms’ have been responsible for reporting and spreading fabricated news and that even when such reports are found conclusively to be untrue, they continue to use them nonetheless. These PR tools include propaganda graphics, which are created in order to encourage radicalization and promotion of ultra-nationalist identity; using xenophobic and racist language (not just to Russians), outright praise of Ukrainian neo-Nazis as heroes, the idolization of Nazi affiliated OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera, and the encouragement of violent acts against other individuals.[14]
If you have ever wondered who is behind the omnipotent ‘fact-checkers,’ in the case of StopFake who have self-described themselves as such, they are funded[15] by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - aka the fully-rogue department of the CIA, the Atlantic Council[16], the International Renaissance Foundation (funded by Open Society Foundation’s billionaire George Soros), the British Embassy in Ukraine, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and the German Marshall Fund. StopFake was hired by Facebook[17] in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda” but was found to be employing[18] multiple figures closely tied to violent neo-Nazis. This uncomfortable fact, however, did not deter Facebook from continuing to work with StopFake.
At the end of the day, it does not seem to matter how many times these arbiters of truth are found to be wrong, for U.S. officials have already admitted that they are literally just lying[19] [20] to the public about what is going on in Ukraine.
Fact Checking the ‘Fact-Checkers’ on Ukraine
Interestingly, the Atlantic Council itself acknowledges that the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine is quite serious, in an article published in 2018 titled “Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline)” Josh Cohen writes:[21]
“It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote ‘national patriotic education projects’ in the country…”
Yes, you read right, C14 along with the Azov Battalion have been training children,[22] with encouragement and funding by the Ukrainian government via Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports under the title “national patriotic education projects”, including exercises in terror tactics.[23]
Josh Cohen continues:
“Since the beginning of 2018, C14 and other far-right groups such as the Azov-affiliated National Militia, Right Sector, Karpatska Sich, and others have attacked Roma groups several times, as well as anti-fascist demonstrations, city council meetings, an event hosted by Amnesty International, art exhibitions, LGBT events, and environmental activists. On March 8, violent groups launched attacks against International Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cases did police do anything to prevent the attacks, and in some they even arrested peaceful demonstrators rather than the actual perpetrators.”
After the March 8th, 2018 attacks against International Women’s Day marchers, according to Cohen, Amnesty International wrote “Ukraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.”
Josh Cohen writes:
“To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of ‘red herring.’ It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity.”
However, we heard it straight from Yevhen Karas’s mouth, the leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi group C14, that the true determinants of power politics in Ukraine have never really been about polls and elections.[24]
As the famous 2014 ‘f*ck the EU’ recording between Victoria Nuland and then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt revealed to a dumbfounded world, the Ukrainian people don’t actually have a say in who runs their government. After the so-called ‘Revolution of Dignity’ where Ukrainians literally died for ‘democracy,’ the U.S. went on to ‘influence’ the roster of the newly formed Ukrainian government, specifically around members of neo-Nazi groups Svoboda and Pravyi Sector (Right Sector) who held five senior roles[25] in the new government, including the post of deputy prime minister.
But neo-Nazis have not just been receiving Western support in the political sphere.
In October 2021, as a reaction to her failed diplomatic visit to Russia, Victoria Nuland, according to French journalist Thierry Meyssan,[26] went ahead and ‘imposed’ Dmytro Yarosh onto President Zelensky. On November 2nd, 2021, President Zelensky appointed Dmytro Yarosh (leader of the neo-Nazi affiliated ultra-nationalist paramilitary group Right Sector 2013-2015) as Adviser to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Nuland is of Ukrainian Jewish descent, thus her ongoing support for neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government and military since 2014 is disturbing on multiple levels.
Right Sector has close connections with Trident (Tryzub) and Patriot of Ukraine. All three groups are ultra right-wing nationalist, neo-Nazi, paramilitary movements as well as political parties. Yarosh was the leader of Tryzub starting in 2005. Tryzub led to the formation of the Right Sector, to which Yarosh was also leader of between 2013-2015 and continues to have a great deal of influence on these groups. Dmytro Yarosh has been on Interpol’s ‘wanted list’ since 2014, though he was inexplicably taken off the international wanted list of Interpol in 2016, he remained on their ‘wanted person’s’ section on Interpol’s website.[27] Interpol refused to comment to Kyiv Post as to the reason why.[28]
Westerners are told that the Right Sector is merely a Ukrainian nationalist party concerned with defending the liberty and freedom of the Ukrainian people. Svoboda is also sold to the West as a romantic movement of benign Ukrainian nationalists, who happen to support Stepan Bandera.
Neo-Nazis have also received ongoing training by the CIA, British SAS (Special Air Service) as well as other NATO countries such as Canada since at least 2014, and has been ongoing up until present day, as confirmed by The Times[29], Ottawa Citizen[30], CTV News[31], and Radio Canada[32]. The Canadian government has attempted to deny any knowledge of training neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and have made the claim that they are not responsible for verifying who they are in fact training, since this is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government. However, such claims of ignorance fell through when the very neo-Nazis they were training went ahead and posted pictures on their social media accounts, showcasing their neo-Nazis badges identifying them as such during these training sessions with Canadian forces, plain for everyone to see.[33]
On the same day as the untoward NATO tweet on International Women’s Day of a Ukrainian soldier with the Nazi Black Sun occult symbol, photographs also appeared on NEXTA’s twitter feed showing the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion receiving training by instructors from “NATO countries” on how to use NLAW grenade launchers.[34]
The ultra-nationalist Right Sector have also appeared in the field with UK-made NLAW launchers.
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told[35] the House of Commons on March 9 that “as of today, we have delivered 3,615 NLAWs [to Ukrainian forces] and continue to deliver more. We will shortly be starting the delivery of a small consignment of anti-tank Javelin missiles as well.” For a full list of all the weapons sent to Ukraine since 2014 by all involved countries, refer here.[36]
For those especially adamant that neo-Nazis are not ‘officially’ part of the Ukrainian army, you should be informed that the Azov Battalion is part of Ukraine’s National Guard,[37] and thus, it is officially part of Ukraine’s military.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Battalion’s first commander and later a National Corps parliamentarian previously led the neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation ‘Patriot of Ukraine,’ and once stated in 2010[38] that it was the Ukrainian nation’s mission to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”
In 2019, the Soufan Center[39], which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, warned:
“The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… [Its] aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.”
The Soufan Center described how the Azov Battalion’s “aggressive networking” reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others.
In 2014, Newsweek published an article titled “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes.”[40] Is this an indication of how both the Azov and ISIS have received their funding and training from the very same sources?[41] One of President Zelensky’s advisors, Oleksiy Arestovych, has stated in numerous interviews[42] his open admiration for ISIS/ISIL tactics and approach to business and governance.
NATO has recently gone so far as to make a short film honoring the Baltic Nazi collaborators[43] the ‘Forest Brothers.’ The NATO film lionizes the ‘Forest Brothers,’ former Waffen SS fighters who voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis, as anti-communist heroes.[44]
Dovid Katz, a leading historian and anti-Nazi investigator condemned[45] the NATO film for rewriting history:
“By going beyond turning a blind eye to the worship of pro-Hitler forces in Eastern Europe…[NATO] is crossing the line right into offering its moral legitimization of Nazi forces such as the Latvian Waffen SS.”
David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist and reliable representative voice of the U.S. intelligence apparatus noted[46] that even prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the United States and NATO allies [were] ready to provide weapons and training for a long battle of resistance.”
In September 1991, Ignatius wrote for the Washington Post:[47]
“The great democratic revolution that has swept the globe over the past few years has been a triumph of overt action. The CIA old boys spent a generation fantasizing about this sort of global anti-communist putsch. But when it finally happened, it was in the open…Working in broad daylight, the United States and its allies were able to do things that would have been unthinkably dangerous had they been done in the shadows…Preparing the ground for last month’s triumph of overt action was a network of overt operatives who during the last 10 years have quietly been changing the rules of international politics. They have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private…The old concept of covert action, which has gotten the agency into such trouble during the past 40 years, may be obsolete. Nowadays, sensible activities to support America’s friends abroad (or undermine its enemies) are probably best done openly. That includes paramilitary operations such as supporting freedom fighters, which can be managed overtly by the Pentagon. And it includes political-support operations for pro-democracy activists, which may be best left to the new network of overt operators.
…The covert-action boys were known back then as the Office of Policy Coordination. It may be time, at last, to bid them adieu. They’re obsolete. They’ve been privatized. That’s especially true in the realm of what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called information. Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations during the mid-1950s, once remarked that he could play the media assets like a ‘mighty Wurlitzer.’ Today the mighty Wurlitzer actually exists. It’s called CNN.
…Allen Weinstein…is probably the dean of the new overt operatives. Like many of the people running the new nations of Eastern Europe, he’s an ex-professor…and even worked for several months writing editorials for The Washington Post…Now, with the KGB in retreat from Prague to Vladivostok [recall the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26th, 1991] Weinstein has scheduled a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria on the topic: ‘The Proper Role of Intelligence Agencies in a Democracy.’ That may be rubbing it in.
…’A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,’ agrees Weinstein. The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection…Allen Weinstein is just one of many overt operatives who helped prepare the way for the political miracles of the past two years…It’s worth naming a few more of them, to show the breadth of this movement for democracy: William Miller of the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations; financier George Soros of the Soros Foundation; John Mroz of the Center for East-West Security Studies; John Baker of the Atlantic Council; and Harriett Crosby of the Institute for Soviet-American Relations. This has truly been a revolution by committee. The AFL-CIO also deserves a healthy pat on the back. Working mostly in the open, it helped keep the Polish trade union Solidarity alive in the dark days of martial law during the early 1980s. As the AFL-CIO’s Adrian Karatnycky wrote in these pages two years ago, American trade unions and the U.S. Congress provided millions of dollars to the Solidarity underground…
The sugar daddy of overt operations has been The National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman [author’s note: and Weinstein] that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert…
The endowment has also been active inside the Soviet Union. It has given money to Soviet trade unions; to the liberal ‘Interregional Group’ in the Congress of Peoples Deputies; to a foundation headed by Russian activist Ilya Zaslavsky; to an Oral History Project headed by Soviet historian Yuri Afanasyev; to the Ukrainian independence movement known as Rukh, and to many other projects.
Covert funding for these groups would have been the kiss of death, if discovered. Overt funding, it would seem, has been a kiss of life.”
This puts a new spin on Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Overt darkness that is.
Allen Weinstein, former Trotskyist,[48] is the founder of the National Endowment for Democracy along with Carl Gershman. Notice how Ignatius mentioned their infiltration into the trade unions (AFL-CIO).[49]
I guess the NED has recently had a change of heart on “openness is its own protection.” Jeremy Kuzmarov for Covert Action Magazine writes in an article titled “National Endowment for Democracy Deletes Records of Funding Projects in Ukraine”:[50]
“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—a CIA offshoot founded in the early 1980s to advance ‘democracy promotion’ initiatives around the world—has deleted all records of funding projects in Ukraine from their searchable ‘Awarded Grants Search’ database.
The archived webpage captured February 25, 2022 from 14:53 shows that NED granted $22,394,281 in the form of 334 awards to Ukraine between 2014 to the present. The capture at 23:10 the same day shows ‘No results found’ for Ukraine. As of right now, there are still ‘No results found’ for Ukraine…
The erasure of the NED’s records is necessary to validate the Biden administration’s big lie—echoed in the media—that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was ‘unprovoked.’”
Who will suffer the most in this plan for a long battle of resistance? The Ukrainian people. As Senator Lindsay Graham recently stated, upon his celebratory role in passing legislation to send billions of dollars of lethal aid to Ukraine, “I like the structural path we are on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons it needs and economic support, they will fight to the last person.”[51] The last Ukrainian person that is.
If Putin’s top reason for going into Ukraine is to ‘denazify’ the country, and the CIA, NATO and company are persistently ‘nazifying’ the political and military components of Ukraine, you can see how any hope for a peaceful outcome in Ukraine becomes impossible.
You can also understand how Ukraine’s entry into NATO was unacceptable for Russia’s leadership merely due to its geographic location (the distance between Ukraine’s border and Moscow is 450 km). However, when one considers that NATO is also involved in the promotion of neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and that now, at the time of writing this, both Sweden and Finland[52] have also expressed a desire to join NATO (with no referendum since democracy is officially dead in Cold War 2.0), we can see a perfect storm about to take shape.
However, this is not just a threat to Russia. The reality of the situation is that Ukraine has been in a civil war these past eight years, though most of the Western media refuses to acknowledge this very important fact.
Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress News:[53]
“People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin… They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians…were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].”
The late Robert Parry for Consortium News wrote:[54]
“On Sunday, a Times article by Andrew E. Kramer mentioned the emerging neo-Nazi paramilitary role in the final three paragraphs… In other words, the neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of anti-Yanukovych protests…have now been organized as shock troops dispatched to kill ethnic Russians in the east [of Ukraine] – and they are operating so openly that they hoist a Swastika-like neo-Nazi flag over one conquered village with a population of about 10,000.
Burying this information at the end of a long article is also typical of how the Times and other U.S. mainstream news outlets have dealt with the neo-Nazi problem in the past. When the reality gets mentioned, it usually requires a reader knowing much about Ukraine’s history and reading between the lines of a U.S. news account.”
In the above image which outlines the population distribution of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians within Ukraine, you can understand how an ultra-nationalist view that identifies as solely ethnic Ukrainian would be a catalyst for a civil war.
The people of Donbass have understandably asked for independence from Ukraine with 2014 election results in Donetsk and Lugansk resulting in overwhelming support for separation. Yet the Ukrainian government has refused to allow this nor intervene for a peaceful resolution. What does this mean? The war can only end when one side is fully dead. Thus, it should be no mystery why the predominantly ethnic Russian Eastern regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye voted in tandem to rejoin Russia in September 2022 and it should be no mystery why neither Kiev, NATO, and the U.S. refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of this referendum.[55]
The U.S.-NATO support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine got so bad that in 2018, Congress had to ban the United States from sending further arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis,[56] specifically mentioning the Azov Battalion. For some reason this ban was to only last for three years.
But you may say, what about Russia’s crimes against the Ukrainian people. Aren’t they far worse than even vicious neo-Nazis? Namely the bombing of the Mariupol theater (March 16, 2022) and the Bucha massacre (March 31, 2022). Thorough journalistic investigations have already been done on the former case[57] which conclusively demonstrated that the bombing of the Mariupol theater was a false-flag.
As for the Bucha massacre, there has been no evidence presented that conclusively proves who committed this atrocity. There have only been assertions repeated and recycled which fall far short of anything one could consider evidence. Recall that the chemical attacks in Syria were also supported by repeated assertions that the Assad government was to blame. In 2013, investigative journalist Seymour Hersch wrote a report titled “Whose Sarin,”[58] which conclusively proved that the popular assertions being pushed by the Obama government in their attempt to incriminate the Syrian government, were in fact false. Rather, Hersch’s investigation pointed to the fact that the actual terrorists who used sarin on the Syrian civilians, were those same rebels receiving Anglo-American funding and arms.
Unfortunately, time is of the essence in investigating crimes such as these, and despite the outcries of the inhumanity of such events, there is always heavy foot-dragging if not outright dismissal over any attempt to establish official and neutral investigations of such crime scenes. Why is this?
Russia had asked the UN Security Council for an investigation into the Bucha massacre.[59] China had also called for an official investigation[60] into this and had received backlash for withholding blame until all facts were known. Why has an official investigation been repeatedly refused? This should be the official protocol for such matters. Instead, the response to this was for the United Nations to suspend Russia from its human rights body.[61] Doing this not only rejected an official investigation into the Bucha massacre but denied Russia a voice in responding to the matter.
The disturbing elephant in the room in all of this, is that the Azov Battalion has already been found guilty of similar atrocities against its own Ukrainian people, which has been thoroughly investigated by Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy in their paper “‘One less traitor’: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition”.[62]
The Azov Battalion has also been found guilty of purposefully putting Ukrainian citizens in jeopardy by positioning their artillery and military in residential areas and buildings, including daycares and hospitals, to which even The Washington Post had to acknowledge in their misleadingly titled article “Russia has killed civilians in Ukraine. Kyiv’s defense tactics add to the danger.”[63] However, these are not simply “defense tactics,” they are blatant war crimes that are recognized as such by international law. These war crimes are publicly acknowledged to be going on, causing the deaths of a significant number of Ukrainians. Just to be clear here, during times of war, to which The Washington Post also acknowledges, Ukrainian soldiers and weaponry are legitimate targets for the Russian military. It is not Russia that is committing the war crime here, it is the Ukrainian government. They have literally been caught using their own people as human shields. Does this still sound like a patriotic nationalist movement for the welfare and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people?
In November 2015, a UN resolution was brought forward by Russia condemning the glorification of Nazism. Of the total 126 member states, 53 countries including member nations of the European Union abstained from voting, four countries voted against the resolution: Canada, Palau, the United States, and Ukraine.[64]
In fact, since 2014 up to the current year, the US and Ukraine have voted with a resounding “No” to the UN resolution which is brought up every year.[65]
On January 1st, 2022, hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists held a torchlight march in the capital of Kyiv, to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera one of the leaders of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its paramilitary unit the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who fought alongside the Nazis during WWII and massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.[66] The Ukrainian nationalists were observed holding the Svoboda and UPA ‘Blood and Soil’ flag at the torchlight march.[67]
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.
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[1] MK ULTRA is clearly linked to this. For more on MK ULTRA refer to my paper Huxley’s Ultimate Revolution: The Battle for Your Mind and the Relativity of Madness. Through A Glass Darkly Substack.
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[2] Hersch, Seymour M. (December 22, 1974) HUGE C.I.A. OPERATION REPORTED IN U.S. AGAINST ANTIWAR FORCES, OTHER DISSIDENTS IN NIXON YEARS. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/22/archives/huge-cia-operation-reported-in-u-s-against-antiwar-forces-other.html. Retrieved October 2022.
[3] Senate Select Committee. (April 29, 1976) Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. United States Senate. https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm. Retrieved October 2022.
[4] Church Committee Hearings on FBI Intelligence Activities. C-SPAN. https://www.c-span.org/video/?409117-1/church-committee-hearings-fbi-intelligence-activities. Retrieved October 2022.
[5] Senate Select Committee. (November 20, 1975) Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. U.S. Senate. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94465.pdf. Retrieved October 2022.
[6] President Gerald Ford’s Executive Order 11905. (February 18, 1976) United States Foreign Intelligence Activities. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/eo11905.htm. Retrieved October 2022.
[7] President Ronald Regan’s Executive Order 12333. (December 4, 1981) United States Intelligence Activities. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html. Retrieved October 2022.
[8] Senate Select Committee. Covert Action in Chile (1963-1973) U.S. Senate. Declassified in 2010. https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2010-009-doc17.pdf. Retrieved October 2022.
[9] Video: Domestic Surveillance 101 Operation SHAMROCK. Universal. https://archive.org/details/DomesticSurveillence101OperationSHAMROCK. Retrieved October 2022.
[10] Ibid.
[11] For a video interview of Udo Ulfkotte go to
. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
[12] Ryan, Missy; Nakashima, Ellen; Birnbaum, Michael; Stern, David. (March 16, 2022) Outmatched in military might, Ukraine has excelled in the information war. The Washington Post. https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/16/ukraine-zelensky-information-war/.
[13] Cohen, Dan. (March 22, 2022) UKRAINE’S PROPAGANDA WAR: INTERNATIONAL PR FIRMS, DC LOBBYISTS AND CIA CUTOUTS. Mint Press News. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910023834/https://www.mintpressnews.com/ukraine-propaganda-war-international-pr-firms-dc-lobbyists-cia-cutouts/280012/.
[14] See Cohen’s article for examples. UKRAINE’S PROPAGANDA WAR: INTERNATIONAL PR FIRMS, DC LOBBYISTS AND CIA CUTOUTS. Mint Press News. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910023834/https://www.mintpressnews.com/ukraine-propaganda-war-international-pr-firms-dc-lobbyists-cia-cutouts/280012/.
[15] Stop Fake.org. About Us section. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910024244/https://www.stopfake.org/ru/o-nas/.
[16] Stop Fake Budget Income. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzsZWyFFqCLp5LK8Sm5eJu_8yHnWmqJf/view.
[17] Cohen, Dan. (March 22, 2022) UKRAINE’S PROPAGANDA WAR: INTERNATIONAL PR FIRMS, DC LOBBYISTS AND CIA CUTOUTS. Mint Press News. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910023834/https://www.mintpressnews.com/ukraine-propaganda-war-international-pr-firms-dc-lobbyists-cia-cutouts/280012/.
[18] Proskuryakov, Samuil; Sergatskova, Ekaterina. (July 3, 2020) Facebook blocked Zaborona for criticizing neo-Nazis. It turned out that the Ukrainian fact-checkers of the social network are closely friends with them. Zaborona. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910024855/https://zaborona.com/ru/stopfake-i-faktcheking-v-facebook/.
[19] Chung, Cynthia. (April 8, 2022) Caitlin Johnstone: US Officials Admit They’re Literally Just Lying To The Public About Russia. Through A Glass Darkly Substack.
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[20] See NBC News “The New Strategy The U.S. Is Using in the Info War Against Russia”
. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
[21] Cohen, Josh. (June 20, 2018) Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline). Atlantic Council. https://web.archive.org/web/20221019200142/https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/.
[22] Cockroft, Stephen. (Aug. 12, 2015) Shocking pictures from inside neo-Nazi military camp reveal recruits as young as SIX are being taught how to fire weapons (even though there's a ceasefire). Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3195711/Now-CHILDREN-taking-arms-Shocking-pictures-inside-Ukraine-s-neo-Nazi-military-camp-recruits-young-six-learn-fire-weapons-s-ceasefire.html.
[23] https://nitter.net/i/status/1501269848462082051.
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[25] Zawadzki, Sabina; Hosenball, Mark; Grey, Stephen. (March 18, 2014) In Ukraine, nationalists gain influence - and scrutiny. Reuters. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910034054/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-farright-insight-idUSBREA2H0K620140318.
[26] Meyssan, Thierry. (Mar. 5, 2022) Russia declares war on the Straussians. Voltairenet.org. https://www.voltairenet.org/article215855.html. Retrieved Sept. 9, 2022.
[27] Melkozerova, Veronika. (Jan. 2, 1016) Right Sector’s Yarosh gone from the Interpol wanted list. Kyiv Post. https://web.archive.org/web/20220911004518/https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/war-against-ukraine/right-sectors-yarosh-gone-from-the-interpol-wanted-list-405361.html.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Philp, Catherine. (April 15, 2022) British special forces ‘are training local troops in Ukraine’. The Times. https://archive.ph/U4qUP#selection-835.0-835.61.
[30] Pugliese, David. (April 13, 2022) Canada failed when it trained Ukrainian troops linked to the far right, says Nazi hunter. Ottawa Citizen. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canada-failed-when-it-trained-ukrainian-troops-linked-to-the-far-right-says-nazi-hunter.
[31] Somos, Christy. (April 28, 2022) Mounting evidence Canada trained Ukrainian extremists, gov't needs to be held to account: experts. CTV News. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910034808/https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/mounting-evidence-canada-trained-ukrainian-extremists-gov-t-needs-to-be-held-to-account-experts-1.5879303.
[32] Coutu, Simon. (April 11, 2022) Le Canada a formé des éléments d’un régiment ukrainien lié à l’extrême droite. Radio Canada. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1873461/canada-regiment-ukrainien-lie-extreme-droite-azov?fromApp=appInfoIos&partageApp=appInfoiOS&accesVia=partage.
. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
[35] Alison, George. (March 9, 2022) Britain sending anti-aircraft and Javelin missiles to Ukraine. Ukdj. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-sending-anti-aircraft-and-javelin-missiles-to-ukraine/. Retrieved September 2022.
[36] Rubinstein, Alexander. (March 20, 2022) US and NATO allies arm neo-Nazi units in Ukraine as foreign policy elites yearn for Afghan-style insurgency. The Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/20/us-neo-nazi-ukraine-afghan-insurgency/. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
[37] Hume, Tim. (Jan. 16, 2022) How a Far-Right Battalion Became a Part of Ukraine’s National Guard. VICE News. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910040426/https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab7dw/azov-battalion-ukraine-far-right.
[38] Bennetts, Marc. (March 13, 2018) Ukraine's National Militia: 'We're not neo-Nazis, we just want to make our country better'. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links. Retrieved September 12, 2022.
[39] The Soufan Center. (March 22, 2019) IntelBrief: The Transnational Network That Nobody is Talking About. https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-the-transnational-network-that-nobody-is-talking-about/.
[40] Sharkov, Damien. (Sept. 10, 2014) Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing 'ISIS-Style' War Crimes. Newsweek. https://web.archive.org/web/20220910041915/https://www.newsweek.com/evidence-war-crimes-committed-ukrainian-nationalist-volunteers-grows-269604.
[41] Beeley, Vanessa. (May 10, 2022) NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and Nazi-linked White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley Substack.
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[42] For a short video clip of Oleksiy Arestovych praising ISIS refer here https://www.bitchute.com/video/Kvh7TyK04FJp/. Retrieved September 12, 2022.
[43] Norton, Ben. (July 20, 2017) Flashy NATO film honors Baltic Nazi collaborators who murdered Jews in Holocaust. The Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2017/07/20/nato-film-baltic-nazi-collaborators-forest-brothers/.
. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
[45] Ibid
[46] Ignatius, David. (Jan. 6, 2022) Opinion: Biden wants to turn Ukraine into a porcupine. The Washington Post. https://web.archive.org/web/20220106231502/https:/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/06/if-putin-invades-west-wants-it-hurt/.
[47] Ignatius, David. (Sept. 22, 1991) INNOCENCE ABROAD : THE NEW WORLD OF SPYLESS COUPS. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/. Retrieved October 2022.
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[49] Recall Chapter 13, that James Burnham was a Trotskyist who would later work for the CIA and also infiltrated the trade unions in the 1930s.
[50] Kuzmarov, Jeremy. (March 7, 2022) National Endowment for Democracy Delets Records of Funding Projects in Ukraine. Covert Action Magazine. https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/07/national-endowment-for-democracy-deletes-records-of-funding-projects-in-ukraine/.
[51] Video of Lindsay Graham’s “fight to the last person” comment on C-SPAN https://web.archive.org/web/20221019222958/https://www.bitchute.com/video/d1K5Q0PSf2JP/.
[52] For Finland’s history of Nazism refer to Matthew Ehret’s paper Why Is It So Hard to Finnish Nazism? NATO’s Growing Suicide Pact Threatens to Light the World on Fire.
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[53] Macleod, Alan. (Feb. 18, 2022) Documents Reveal US GOV’T Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad. Mint Press News. https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-reveal-us-ned-spent-22m-promoting-anti-russia-narrative-ukraine/279734/. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[54] Parry, Robert. (Aug. 11, 2014) NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War. Consortium News. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/11/nyt-discovers-ukraines-neo-nazis-war. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[55] TASS Staff. (September 28, 2022) How DPR, LPR, Kherson, Zaporozhye voted for joining Russia. TASS Russia News Agency. https://tass.com/politics/1514667. Retrieved October 2022.
[56] Kheel, Rebecca. (March 27, 2018) Congress bans arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis. The Hill. https://web.archive.org/web/20221019222556/https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/.
[57] Blumenthal, Max. (March, 18, 2022) Was bombing of Mariupol theater staged by Ukrainian Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention?. The Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/18/bombing-mariupol-theater-ukrainian-azov-nato-intervention/. Retrieved September 12, 2022.
[58] Hersch, Seymour. (Dec. 19, 2013) Whose sarin? London Review of Books. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n24/seymour-m.-hersh/whose-sarin
[59] Reuters. (April 4, 2022) Russia to ask U.N. Security Council again to discuss Bucha 'provocations'. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ask-un-security-council-again-discuss-bucha-provocations-2022-04-04/. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[60] Times of India. (April 7, 2022) China calls for probe into Bucha killings, but assigns no blame. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/china-calls-for-probe-into-bucha-killings-but-assigns-no-blame/articleshow/90697215.cms. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[61] Nichols, Michelle. (April 7, 2022) U.N. suspends Russia from human rights body, Moscow then quits. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/un-vote-suspending-russia-human-rights-council-over-ukraine-2022-04-07/. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[62] Blumenthal, Max; Krishnaswamy, Esha. (April 17, 2022) “One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition. The Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/traitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition/. Retrieved Sept 12, 2022.
[63] Raghavan, Sudarsan. (March 28, 2022) Russia has killed civilians in Ukraine. Kyiv’s defense tactics add to the danger. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/28/ukraine-kyiv-russia-civilians/. Retrieved Sept. 12, 2022.
[64] https://tass.com/world/837935?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google.com&utm_referrer=google.com.
[65] https://digitallibrary.un.org/search?ln=en&as=1&m1=e&p1=&f1=9911_0&op1=a&m2=a&p2=Combating%20glorification%20of%20Nazism%2C%20neo-Nazism%20and%20other%20practices%20that%20contribute%20to%20fuelling%20contemporary%20forms%20of%20racism&f2=title&op2=a&m3=a&p3=&f3=&dt=&d1d=&d1m=&d1y=&d2d=&d2m=&d2y=&rm=&ln=en&sf=year&so=d&rg=50&c=United%20Nations%20Digital%20Library%20System&of=hb&fti=0&fti=0&fct__1=Voting%20Data.
[66] Recall Chapter 5.
[67] Agencies. (January 1, 2022) Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator. The Times of Israel. https://web.archive.org/web/20220911005637/https://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-of-ukrainian-nationalists-march-in-in-honor-of-nazi-collaborator/.
I worry about you. No one else does this in depth reporting.
Another wonderful article Cynthia, it joined a few more dots. Good to see it all so succinctly described, meticulously put together. However, it's very depressing to realise that we wake up everyday, stuck in an empire of lies. At times, it's not hard to feel like Gulliver, stuck in an absurd Lilliputian world. Udo Ulfkotte was a brave journalist, paid the price for his honestly. Many of us appreciate the excellent and important work you do Cynthia, take care.