The Optics of Distortion

"Canada is strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism and all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance. We are deeply concerned by the rise of neo-Nazism in many parts of the world, and are committed to eliminating racism and discrimination, in all their forms."
"However, the resolution put forward at the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee on November 21 on the glorification of Nazism regrettably includes references which are counter-productive to this goal, including by seeking to limit freedom of expression, assembly and opinion."
"Given its narrow focus and these concerns, Canada did not vote in favour of the resolution."
Francois Lasalle, spokesman, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick    Prime Minister Stephen Harper addresses the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 25, 2014.

Very bad optics. It would appear that 55 European states abstained from that vote that Russia brought forward at the United Nations on Friday, and Canada, Ukraine and the United States outright opposed it. While 115 UN member-countries did the expected and dutifully voted for the resolution. What right-minded country interested in human rights and justice would not? Well, Ukraine, Canada and the United States. And east Europe, in fearful trepidation.

And for obvious reasons, those being that in essence the resolution was meant to smear Ukraine with the broad brush of far-right neo-nazism. And, in fact, when Ukraine underwent the initial protests at its Maidan by pro-Western democratic-leaning Ukrainians, several Ukrainian thuggish groups entered the scene; the right-wing radical Svoboda party and the non-parliamentary Right Sector movement both of which are accused of fascist sympathies.

Moscow warned time and again during the initial stages of the protests that saw the unseating of President Viktor Yanukovych, crony creature of Moscow, that fascism was alive and well in Ukraine and it was those elements that were rising to the fore, threatening civil society, and expressing their usual anti-Semitic tropes of division, hatred and threats. And it's hard to disagree to some extent that those elements are present yet unaccounted for.

But Russia's naked aggression and ambition in Ukraine, its outrage over Kyiv's turn toward the West and its incitement to violence, arming and training and covertly fighting alongside the ethic Russians aspiring to gift east Ukraine to greater Russia, renders its purpose indigestible. The resolution, "combating glorification of Nazism, neo-nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" left all three dissenting nations between that proverbial rock and a hard place.

Canada has explained that its objection related to the resolution's genesis, its "narrow focus" drawing on the controversial declarations of the infamously anti-Semitic 2009 World Conference Against Racism that was held in Durban, South Africa which singled out Israel as a human-rights defiler. Leading Canada to regard that declaration as representing a statement fouled by anti-Semitism.

It is a lonely and miserable place to be; to be viewed as a country to be favourable to Nazism and neo-nazism, which hardly reflects Canada's values. A demonstration of just how fraught international relations are in today's world where Russia supports a fascist dictatorship like that of Syria's, aligns itself with a dangerously Islamist nuclear-weapons-seeking Iran, planning to help it build even more nuclear installations, even while ostensibly as a member of the G5+1 negotiating team it has a moral obligation to dissuade the Republic from its nuclear ambitions.

The Russian Federation has opposed Georgian sovereignty to absorb into itself two Georgian provinces, and it succeeded, also without international demur, in capturing the Crimean peninsula, depriving Ukraine of its territory, its city of Sevastopol, its harbour and fleet, its dignity and hope for the future, as it goes on to threaten the security of the Baltic States, poking its fingers in the eyes of the international community by Vladimir Putin's audacious defiance of international norms.

And this is the nation that is teaching values and morality to the world at large. Sanctimony at its most cynical. Repercussions? Scant few.