Hill Times Letter: Canada caught in colonial Anglosphere mythology

Letter to the Hill Times Editor published October 11, 2023

Re: “Legacy media is failing Canadians for the sake of war absolutism,” (The Hill Times, Oct. 4, p. 9).

I don’t see this as about the media, but about the colonial Anglosphere: Britain, the CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States) colonies, and other loyalists to the legacies of the British Empire and its worldviews.

My in-laws are Bengalis who were alive during the Second World War and 1947 Partition induced by Britain—the one in British-occupied India, but we must remember the one in British-occupied Palestine.

I learned about Subhas Chandra Bose, a freedom fighter against the British occupation. While Anglosphere loyalists like to claim that was about “imperial Japan” and “Nazi Germany,” it was about imperial Britain, which created the largest empire humanity has ever endured. Whitewashing atrocities of the British Empire has meant manufacturing a “good versus evil” narrative about anyone who has supported or opposed the political aspirations of that empire.

There have been Ukrainians loyal to the Russian Empire, both past and present. Whether in the First World War, the Second World War, or today, there have also been Ukrainians fighting against Russia—on the same side of the conflict as Germany.

What has changed isn’t the diversity of Ukrainians, but which side of the conflict Britain and the ongoing results of its colonialism are on. A Parliament that swore allegiance to the Canadian Crown (British Crown) was celebrating two Ukrainians who fought against Russia, and yet one is simplistically claimed to be a “hero” and the other a “villain.”

Canada got caught in its own mythology, and yet again individuals are expected to fall on their sword rather than anyone looking at the simplistic propaganda being used to promote wars against anyone who hasn’t yet bowed to Anglosphere worldviews.

Russell McOrmond

Ottawa, Ont.