HEPBURN: VANDALISM AT MONUMENT SITE TAUNTS CANADIANS WHO WERE VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM
Today, no one is safe against Vladimir Putin’s propaganda and mind warfare.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn
In July, the construction site of the Tribute to Liberty monument, standing in the Park of the Provinces, kitty-corner to the Canadian War Museum and the National Holocaust Monument, was spray-painted with hammers-and-sickles and the words: “Communism will win.”
Many Canadians know that communism has been the political ideology of some of the bloodiest and most heinous regimes. In the last 100 years and more of its Russia-led Communist existence, it has killed more than 120 million in Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Korea, East and Central Europe, the Caribbean and more while the death toll mounts in the war in Ukraine, carnage in Syria and chaos in Venezuela.
Some eight million Canadians, or their forbears, were the victims of this inhumane ideology. The Communist Party is a minor player here, so why would anyone in Canada want it to “win”?
It’s Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who matters. He has been rolling out his ambition of making Russia “great” based on the Soviet Union Communist model ruled by a Stalin-like figure enforcing law and order with an iron fist. The president has proclaimed that liberalism is dead and democratic institutions, such as elections, are a “trick.” His recent autocratic move — a sham vote that allows him to retain the presidency until 2036, meaning he may become president for life – underscores that he means business.
This outdated but aggressive l’état c’est moi worldview and a return to the primitive might-is-right ideology moves him to break international law, wage illegal wars, employ destructive cyber warfare and – gravely dangerous – spread lies and hate against critics and opponents.
The defacement of the Tribute to Liberty is a case in point. It smacks of the Putin view that communism – read Russia – will triumph. The message challenges Canadian values of peace and respect for the law, all rights set out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights that Russia tramples. The spray-painted slogan represents war, concentration camps, arrests of “enemies of the people,” and dictatorship in which one man rules and elections are a “trick.” It’s indoctrination on a global scale, including through social media, where countless Sputnik-like troll factories infest hearts and minds.
The smear at Tribute to Liberty means to taunt Canadians who were victims of communism and who think that they are safe in Canada. In reality, no one is safe against Putin’s mind warfare.
One prominent instrument of his plan is Russia Today, the main voice of the Kremlin’s international propaganda, broadcast in Canada since 2009 despite evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections and Brexit. Often, it spins Putin’s perspectives through western personalities such as Britain’s Nigel Farage or America’s Larry King to reach, it says, some 700 million viewers. However, other westerners, such as journalist Sarah Firth,quit after tweeting: “We do work for Putin. We are asked on a daily basis, if not to totally ignore, then to obscure the truth.”
Misha Glenny, the author of McMafiawrites: “The Russians have moved on since the days of Pravda, the Soviet Communist party newspaper, or Radio Moscow International during the cold war – at least then you knew it was all guff, coming out of the Ideological Secretariat. RT is designed to confuse and muddy the waters. That mixture of genuine and guff leaves you baffled and disoriented, which… is the point.”
Propaganda works. The point of smearing a victory slogan for communism on a tribute to millions of its victims is meant to remind us that Putin means to win the global ideological war.
It is important to recognize the threat when it happens in our own country, and counter it.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn is a former federal government executive and president of U*Can Ukraine Canada Relations Inc., a consulting firm brokering interests between the two countries.
