Historical revisionism is the point of order for a declining Canadian political elite, which views with terror the rise of anti-colonial thinking in the population and the strengthening of a socialist-multipolar oriented state alliance crippling NATO’s colonial capabilities. No comparison is more revealing than the Ontario government’s attitude towards education around Palestine and towards the historical Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine).
The Ontario government openly condemned the inclusion of a Nakba Remembrance Day in the Peel District School Board’s calendar. Ontario’s education minister, Stephen Lecce, demanded that the PDSB remove it, under the guise of wanting no politics in the classroom. But last fall, the same education minister spoke proudly about imposing mandatory ‘Holodomor education’ on Grade 10 students, based on a Nazi myth that baselessly claims that the USSR starved Ukrainians for opposing agricultural collectivization. As part of this ‘education’, the Ontario government gave $400,000 CAD to support the ‘Holodomor’ bus tour, run by an organization which aided a Ukrainian Nazi’s army medical section and whose COO formerly trained a Nazi Ukrainian battalion, the Azov Battalion.
Lecce’s professed attitude towards politics in the classroom, when Palestine is on the menu, is such:
“Over the past months, I made my expectations clear to all school boards that there is no room for politics or the influence of personal opinions in Ontario classrooms. At a time when so many young Canadians are divided, it is critical that schools bring people together.”
But when it comes to imposing Nazi propaganda – ‘Holodomor’ education - on young students, Lecce’s attitude towards politics in the classroom is much different, seeing it as part of:
“Ensuring the next generation embraces democracy & freedom, & never sits on the sidelines in the face of evil.”
The reason for this is clear. Young people grappling with the Western colonialism against Palestine - with Zionists as the colonial enforcers given leeway to set up a colonial outpost in the Middle East amid a wave of anti-colonial national liberation efforts - produces very uncomfortable questions about the nature of Canadian foreign policy in constantly backing Zionism from even before Israel came to exist, Canadian imperialism more broadly, and Canada as a colonial state itself. Meanwhile, the ‘Holodomor’ propaganda serves to demonize a historical socialist anti-colonial nation, the Soviet Union (USSR), which led the way in defeating the fascist Axis powers during WWII. Lecce and Canada’s political elite seeks to ideologically charge young people for capitalism and against socialism.
The concern about politics in the classroom only comes because acknowledging colonialism against Palestine is based in reality and a threat to Canadian imperialism. It is not a genuine concern for Lecce. (more...)
Ontario government says no to anti-Nazi day, yes to Nazi education
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