If you have never heard of James Bezan (lucky you!), let me fill you in. Mr. Bezan is the far-right Conservative Member of Parliament for Selkirk-Interlake, in Manitoba. He is a Ukrainian nationalist, Russophobe and Sinophobe extraordinaire, and like the prehistoric dinosaur that he is, he is opposed to LGBTQ rights and women’s reproductive rights.
Basically, Bezan is a typical Tory, a wealthy white man who wins each election by outspending all his opponents and who uses his experience as the CEO of the Manitoba Cattle Producer’s Association to exploit the working-class like cattle.
Rarely do I write about or critique current events and politicians, except something happened this week that I found both shocking and revealing.
On Twitter I criticized Bezan for his support for neo-Nazis in the Ukraine and the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC). On the LUC’s website there is a portrait of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Nazi whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaborated with the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in carrying out pogroms against Jews and was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of as many as 100,000 Poles in 1943.
Besides the obvious anti-communism and Russophobia, I have often wondered how it is that someone like Bezan never ‘remembers’ the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Jews, Russians, etc., exterminated by Stepan Bandera’s organization, but obsesses over the alleged crimes committed by the USSR. In Bezan’s defense, this selective remembering of crimes is quite common in Canada and other Western countries. Just look at Chrystia Freeland!
A Twitter user came to James Bezan’s defense. According to this user, Jews, Poles, Russians, etc., had to be exterminated to “cement a Ukrainian identity”.
Are these the kind of people that support Bezan? As a person with Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish ancestry, I find this reprehensible.
If Bezan does not refute this Tweet, I will assume it means he endorses it, since it perfectly aligns with his Russophobia and the policies of the LUC.
T. J. Petrowski 