THE conflict in Ukraine is in microcosm a continuation of World War II, in that it has exposed the extent to which Western ideologues are willing to collude with open Nazis and fascists in service to the rabid Russophobia that has over generations developed deep cultural roots in the corridors of power west of the Vistula.

It should not be forgotten that right up until Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia, Hitler and Mussolini were viewed by a section of the ruling classes in France, Britain and the United States not as adversaries but as allies in the “noble struggle” being waged by big business and their political bag carriers against the rising tide of communism and its growing traction among their own workers.

In Britain sympathy with the Nazis and their barbarous ideology extended all the way into Buckingham Palace, where Hitler enjoyed the support of King Edward VIII and his US wife, Wallis Simpson, prior to and after the former was forced to abdicate the throne over the fact that Simpson was a divorcee and thereby, following the tradition of the day, deemed unsuitable as a king’s consort.

Said support for Hitler extended to Edward and his wife paying a visit to him and other high-ranking Nazis during a tour of Germany in 1937, the year after his abdication.

Yet despite this damning period in the annals of modern history, today’s Western ruling elites and their minions have likewise plumbed the depths of indecency with their full-throated support for a regime in Kiev that is drowning in Nazi ideology, symbolism and iconography.

It is simply the case that no other state in Europe has armed and uniformed Nazi battalions assimilated into its armed forces.

Indeed the recrudescence of Nazism in Ukraine — from the use of the fascist Banderite acclamation “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine), to the renaming of streets after Stepan Bandera and statues erected in his honour, to the attempt to rewrite the history of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and the extent to which Ukrainians flocked to serve under the swastika — merely confirms the wisdom enshrined in the truth, per the late, great Tony Benn, that every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

This now brings us to the monumentally shameful moment that took place in the parliament of Canada in Ottawa, one that no right thinking Canadian citizen could ever possibly forgive, and one that encapsulates the utterly regressive extent to which history has been rewritten to suit the warped rendering of the conflict in Ukraine as that between an innocent Western-leaning democracy and an evil Russian horde.

President Volodymr Zelensky, on yet another of his by now tiresome khaki tours of Western capitals with his hand out, demanding more cash be sent into the coffers of one of the most corrupt nation states in the world, took himself from Washington up to Canada, where he was welcomed with open arms by Justin Trudeau. As part of his visit, Zelensky addressed the country’s parliament.

During Zelensky’s visit to the Canadian parliament, the Speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, drew the attention of the attendees to the public gallery and the presence of 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka.

Hunka was introduced as a hero who fought against the Russians in WWII for Ukraine’s freedom. In response the country’s parliamentarians stood and gave him a prolonged and enthusiastic standing ovation.

Yaroslav Hunka, it turns out, served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as 1st Galicia.

This was a voluntary unit made up of mostly ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command and was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, Slavs, Poles and other minorities during the Nazi occupation.

The 1st Galicia was formed in 1943 and at full strength comprised 53,000 volunteers. Its first significant deployment was as part of the German attempt to halt the Soviet advance in western Ukraine as part of the Red Army’s Operation Bagration.

The division suffered huge losses during the battle of Brody as part of German Army Group Centre.

The surviving remnants of the division were thereafter bolstered by new recruits in the form of conscripts and were reorganised and re-equipped prior to being deployed to Slovakia in September 1944, to help quash the uprising that had erupted against the Nazi occupation there.

At the end of the war, the reconstituted 1st Galicia saw action in Austria and finally surrendered to British-US forces in 1945. Thereafter, due to the division’s Catholic character, the Vatican intervened to save the surviving volunteers from deportation to the Soviet Union. Instead they were protected and allowed to emigrate to Britain and Canada.

In his landmark book, Poland’s Holocaust, author Tadeusz Piotrowski reveals that in an address to the Ukrainian soldiers of the 1st Galicia, Heinrich Himmler declared the following: “Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost — on our initiative, I must say — those residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name, namely the Jews … I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles … I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”

One of the main drivers of the Maidan coup of 2014, and all that has grimly unfolded thereafter, can be understood as the continuation of Himmler’s project to “cleanse Ukraine” of all but its mythologised pure Ukrainian stock.

The Speaker of the Canadian Parliament — the aforementioned Anthony Rota — apologised in the teeth of the almighty backlash that ensued as a result of the standing ovation. Unfortunately, the dead are not in any position to forgive.