In March 2018, University of Montreal history professor Michael J. Carley explained “why Canada is defending Ukrainian fascism” in The Strategic Culture Foundation, an online journal described by the as one of the “pillars of the Russian disinformation and propaganda ecosystem” is considered by the United States Department of State.
Posted at 6:47 p.m
This would be the fruit of a long Canadian tradition of supporting fascism. As early as the 1930s in Québec, “under the influence of the Catholic Church, French-speaking public opinion hoped for the victory of the fascists and the eradication of communism,” the historian emphasized in his text (1).
After 1945, Canada would have opened its doors to thousands of “Ukrainian fascists and Nazi collaborators.” Her descendants are said to have lobbied for Ottawa to support the 2014 coup in Kiev, sponsored by the United States and the European Union.
And that’s how Ottawa would have come to defend the neo-Nazi putschists in power in Ukraine.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL J. CARLEY’S FACEBOOK PAGE
Michael J. Carley, Professor of History at the University of Montreal
“We are now at the point where our government supports a violent and racist regime in Kiev, a direct descendant of the enemy Canada and its allies fought in World War II,” Mr. Carley lamented in his article.
Finally, this observation: “Really, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned upside down. Fascism is democracy; Resistance to fascism is terrorism. »
Needless to say, the world is upside down. At least in the mind of this teacher.
A specialist in Russia and a former director of the history department, Mr. Carley is teaching two courses at the Université de Montréal this winter. One of them is entitled: The Foreign Policy of the USSR and Russia (1917 to the Present).
If you ask me, it might as well have been Revisionism 101.
On February 2, Canada imposed sanctions on 16 entities “complicating the peddling of Russian disinformation and propaganda.” Among these institutions is the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF).
This online journal is “operated by the Russian foreign intelligence agency and is closely affiliated with the Russian State Department,” according to a U.S. State Department report in August 2020 (2).
Quoting from the report: The SCF “is a prime example of the tactics the Russians have long used to hide direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda media and to cultivate local voices that serve as message carriers. The SCF identifies obscure Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists and provides a broad international forum for their normally vocal anti-Western and anti-American perspectives to speak out.”
Michael J. Carley has published 59 articles in this online journal. In his timetable, he suggests five that he should read to his students.
As the war in Ukraine began, Michael J. Carley made a name for himself with inflammatory comments on Twitter. “Donbass and Mariupol are being purged of Ukrainian Nazis,” he said. “Russia is winning the war against the fascists in Ukraine. »
Colleagues had expressed their unease to Radio-Canada (3). Students had signed a petition for the University of Montreal to take action against the professor.
The university then recalled that “Mr. Carley, like any other citizen, enjoys freedom of expression” and that the professor, then on sabbatical, “can express his opinion on social networks, although it conflicts with that of other experts on the subject”. .
In fact, if we had to punish all the teachers who wrote bullshit on Twitter, we wouldn’t have left the hostel…
But that is taught in class. This is the propaganda this professor feeds his students, directing them to obscure clandestine or Kremlin-run sites.
Here we touch the heart of freedom of education.
Michael J. Carley responded to Radio-Canada’s report by invoking that freedom, saying he hopes his “institution can avoid the pitfalls that led to the fiasco that took place at the University of Ottawa in 2020.” .
Then Mr. Carley has nothing to fear. “Academic freedom is not geometrically variable, depending on whether or not we like the content of the utterances of a person teaching one of our courses,” says Université de Montréal rector Daniel Jutras, who has no intention of committing to this sanction professor.
“Academic freedom, he says, must ensure that management or anyone else cannot intervene to try to silence a teacher who puts forward questionable or controversial ideas, readings or sources. »
Speaking of questionable sources… Here are “useful sites” suggested in Professor Carley’s lesson plan: Sputnik, Voltaire Network, Jacques Sapir’s Blog, and Moon of Alabama.
Sputnik: a Russian state channel promoting disinformation, banned in Canada and the European Union since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The Voltaire Network: a site that has been spreading conspiracy theories of all kinds since the attacks of September 11, 2001 – fueled, as is well known, by the American military-industrial complex.
Jacques Sapir’s blog: the notebook of an economist moving in the French poutinosphere, suspended from the platform on which it was hosted for texts “disconnected from the academic and scientific context”.
Moon of Alabama: An obscure website accusing mainstream media of propaganda.
I would have liked to ask Mr. Carley how all these pages might encourage his students to think, but he declined my request for an interview.
“There is no scientific rigor” in her approach, says Katia Sviderskaya, a student of Ukrainian descent who signed up for one of her courses in 2020. She says that a classmate completely changed his perception of Ukraine after the course. “He started calling me a Nazi…”
Michael J. Carley enjoys freedom of speech and freedom of education. He is fortunate to live in a country that defends those freedoms, unlike Russia, for which he is an enthusiastic spokesman.
There, it should be remembered, teachers and journalists are arrested at the first sign of dissent…
This chronicle is not a call for sanctions. I don’t believe in censorship. I am only invoking my own freedom of speech to confirm this: what this teacher is preaching is shameful. That too needs to be said.