FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR MARINES

Scott Ritter’s essay “The Holodomor Myth” makes an impression that nowadays, one can exercise one’s freedom of speech only if one is a marine. 

Genocide

In addition to knowledge of history, Scott Ritter uses an exact definition of genocide. It turns out that what is called “Holodomor” has not been proven to be genocide of the Ukrainian nation committed by Stalin or the Soviet Union or Russians. 

First, not only the Ukrainians but also the Russians were among the victims. 

Second, it has not been proven Stalin’s intention to target specifically the Ukrainians. 

Therefore, instead of genocide, we should rather talk about populicide, targeted not against some specific nations but against some social classes. 

Thus, Scott Ritter successfully debunks the myth of genocide used in the propaganda of Ukrainian nationalists. 

Nationalism

However, Scott Ritter complains that he has been accused of being a Russian propagandist. However, the truth is that his present essay on Holodomor is biased in favour of Russia concerning the Russia/Ukraine war — but not because of those reasons quoted in Ukrainian propaganda. 

Scott Ritter is an excellent critic of Ukrainian demagoguery, but he seems to ignore flaws in Russian propaganda. 

Scott Ritter uses both the term Nazi and nationalist. However, the difference, if any, has not been explained in the essay. 

I suggest that the correct use of the terms would discern between nationalism and extreme nationalism, while Nazism would be regarded as an extreme form of nationalism. 

After all, Russians are too the nationalists, and Russia is defending its national interests. 

Concerning Bandera, we should say that he was an extreme nationalist. He considered it morally acceptable to use whatever means to achieve Ukrainian nationalist aims, and whatever allies were fine.

But it would be wrong to infer, as Russian propaganda does, that the mere fact that some nationalists were Nazis somehow undermines the ideal of national independence. 

Note also that in the current propaganda of Russian military channels, all Ukrainian soldiers are called Nazis. But the mobilized soldiers may not be Nazis — they may not even be nationalists. 

Totalitarianism

There is a more significant problem with Russian ideology. According to official Russian propaganda, in WW2, the Soviet Union liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazi regime. Russia speaks a lot about the atrocities of the Hitlerian regime. However, Russian propagandists completely ignore that the Soviet Union occupied many countries and that the Stalinist regime too committed massive repressions. 

Hitlerian and Stalinist regimes were both totalitarian regimes. Hannah Arendt has explained the similarities between these regimes in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. 

Conclusion

If Scott Ritter would equally well criticize the Ukrainian and the Russian propaganda, the Ukrainians would label him as a “Russian propagandist”, and the Russians would label him as a “Nazi propagandist”. While giving public lectures, he should defend himself as a marine against the agents of the secret services of several countries. 

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