GREAT NEWS! MY FORMER COMRADES ARE NO LONGER IGNORING ME!

My investigation into the new COINTELPRO is going better than expected!

Hey Gang,

Well, it turns out that it’s true that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

As regular readers of this blog will be aware, I have lately been on somewhat of a crusade against someone named Shane Burley, who I believe is an intelligence agent.

I’ll fully admit that this is personal - I believed that he was likely one of the authors of a hit piece published by Montreal Counter-Info back in the Spring.

That piece, which was entitled On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades, crossed some pretty major red lines. It accused me of being a Holocaust revisionist because I believe the Rothschilds sponsored the Bolshevik coup which ended the Russian Revolution.

It also accused me of transphobia, anti-semitism, and a laundry list of other unspeakably dastardly thoughtcrimes.

Most importantly to me, it engaged in genocide denialism. My ancestors were Russian Mennonites, and after the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, the Mennonites were exterminated. Not a single historic Mennonite community exists in Russia today.

This is key to understanding the direction that my writing has gone in over the past six months or ago.

The person who was accusing me of Holocaust revisionism also denied that the extermination of my kinfolk in Russia counts as a genocide, despite the fact that Mennonites were in every way a distinct ethnic group in Russian society.

So basically, in order to make me look bad, they had to pretend that I was denying a historic genocide (which I wasn’t), then they go right ahead and commit the same crime they’re accusing me of, apparently without even noticing the irony.

So I decided to give these folks a taste of their own medicine. Don’t get mad, get even. That’s how I roll.

I won’t bore with all the details, but I basically decided to do my very best to do all the very things that these people didn’t want me to do as a way of getting back at them.

This eventually culminated in me publishing The Secret History of Antifa, in which I write about Alexander Reid Ross and his colleagues.

In that piece, I wrote:

I personally suspect that the ARR/Burley/Sunshine goof troop was responsible for an anonymous hit piece on me called On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades, which was published by It’s Going Down, Montreal Counter-Info, North Shore Counter-Info, and Anarchist News, all of which are websites I have contributed to over the years.

Because the piece was submitted anonymously, however, I have thus far been unable to confirm these suspicions.

Anyway, after publishing this, I realized that I hadn’t actually tried writing my former publishers and nicely asking them if they knew who wrote it.

Mustering up all the friendliness I could in addressing former comrades who have turned against me, I wrote Montreal Counter-Info, North Shore Counter-Info, and Anarchist News.

Hey folks,

I wanted to thank you for publishing that hit piece about me back in the
Spring - Nevermore's view counts increased significantly after your
publication of that piece.

Anyway, I know you folks don't have any love for me, but I know you
don't have any love for cops or spooks either. I have a simple request
for you - could you please tell me if you know who wrote the hit piece
"On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades".

Recently, I presented the theory that the hit piece might have been
authored by Shane Burley, Alexander Reid Ross, Spencer Sunshine or other
intelligence agent.

You can check out that piece here:
https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/the-secret-history-of-antifa-the

I was wondering if you could please let me know whether you know the
identities of the anonymous authors of that piece. Nothing in that piece
gives me any reason to believe that the authors know me personally or
are from Montreal, but of course that could be possible.

If you do know who wrote that article, I don't expect you to give me
their names or anything, but if you are able to let me know if I'm
definitely mistaken in my hypothesis that this smear campaign

Presumably, if MTL Counter-Info hasn't been taken over by spooks, you
share my concern for the ever-present threat of infiltration.

I am prone to paranoia and it is entirely possible that I am mistaken.

I'd also like to say that I'd moved past my agitational tactics of using
deliberately offensive rage bait to elicit reactions from the types of
people who were determined to ignore me.

As Nevermore has moved to a more mature phase of our existence, it now
seems that such tactics would be counter-productive. If you check out
our recent content, you will see that our recent material has been much
more in line with traditional anarchist discourse than that which we
were publishing during my angry, drunk and drug-addled phase.

I'm sorry for any offence I might have caused. I genuinely believe in
the right of trans people to be themselves, though I still think that
getting kids hooked on drugs is morally wrong. I'm always willing to
debate such matter if anyone would care to debate me.

As for the anti-feminist stuff... well, I was mad, and it's not like I
didn't have legitimate reason to be. The "Believe Accusers" stuff has
got to go. It's too easy for spooks to exploit. But I said a lot of
things that I'd take back down if I could.

Wishing you a very happy Halloween,

crow

p.s. I'd be willing to talk on the phone if you folks are interested in
participating in an investigation into ideological subversion.

Imagine my surprise when someone from North Shore Counter-Info actually did reach out!

This person, who I had certainly considered a real friend up until the publication of that infamous piece, invited me to call them on the phone, which I did. We had a surprisingly warm conversation, and they made it clear that they don’t see me as an enemy.

This person wanted me to know that they had been able to confirm the identity of the authors of the article in question.

Those people, I am assured, are “from Eastern Canada” which rules out Shane Burley and his colleagues. Furthermore, this person, who I trust, told me that they didn’t think that the authors of that piece were cops. I was also told that these anonymous authors did not know me personally.

My heard then described my speculation about a campaign of an ongoing ideological subversion as “interesting”. They definitely did not defend Shane Burley, and seemed to agree with him that further investigation is called for. Basically, I think my message has been heard.

I have no doubt that my former comrades are now looking into whether my theory about a campaign of ideological subversion led by Alexander Reid Ross and Shane Burley holds water. So basically, my work is done.

On a positive note, my conversation with my former comrade went surprisingly well. I shared with him my feeling that Canada needs its Yellow Vest moment.

My friend was quite sympathetic to my ideas, almost agreeing with me. Anarchists in Canada, who are heavily influenced by French political theory, are very familiar with the story of the Gilets Jaunes.

Basically, what began as a rural, white, right-wing tax revolt grew into a populist movement which transcended the left-right divide of the mainstream political spectrum.

If Canada had something equivalent to the Yellow Vest movement, we could stop the CGL pipeline. Hell, we might even be able to topple the government, or at least force some major concessions.

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was the closest thing to a general strike that Canada has had since 1919. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Left would have joined forces with the truckers?

Honestly, a lot of the opposition to the truckers seemed to do with the fact that most of the protesters were white. It’s clear that many Canadian urbanites hold prejudiced views about rural whites and Christians.

Well, I have news for you, folks: Canada is still a majority white country, and Christians are still an important demographic in large swathes of the country, especially in the Prairies. If you’re going to have a mass movement, which is kind of necessary if you want to have a general strike, then you’ve got to have white people and Christians on board.

Something’s got to give in Canada. People have had it up to here with Trudeau, that’s for damn sure. But does anyone really think the Conservatives would be any better? The only solution is revolution, and even loggers and pipeline workers can see that now. We’re at the moment of the greatest revolutionary potential in the history of Canada, and the only thing standing in the way the fact that the right hates the left and the left hates the right. Personally, I don’t think this is an insurmountable obstacle. If the tactics of the ruling class are all about dividing and conquering us, then the solution is for us unify and come together on the basis of what we have in common.

If that makes me sound like a hippie, so be it. I’m a follower of the teachings of Grandfather William Commanda, which are all about peace, love, unity and respect. I personally feel like the militant posturing promoted by IGD hasn’t really gotten us anywhere, and it’s time to start singing a different tune. For one thing, we’ve got to stop focusing on our differences, and start focusing on our shared desire for a future in which children can grow up happy, healthy, and free. That seems like a good place to start to me. How about you?

The last thing that I’ll say is that this isn’t over. I want a full retraction and an apology from the authors of On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades. I don’t need to know their names, but I do want them to either apologize for their mistakes or to retract their piece.

Specifically, I want them to apologize for denying that the Soviet regime’s extermination of the Mennonites amounted to a genocide, and I want them to provide proof (if any exists) of some of their more extraordinary claims about my ancestors. Alternatively, I would be happy to accept a full retraction, with or without apology.

I will go into great detail about this matter in the post script, but I assume that most of my readers are not that interested in Mennonite history, so I’ll move on.

I know that I’m not right about everything, but I am intellectually honest. If I’m wrong about something, I’ll admit it. Believe it or not, I like being proven wrong. If someone can prove me wrong about something, it means that I’ve learned something. And I like learning.

So, to all those who thought that they’d get rid of me forever by trying to associate me with some obscure Italian thinker that no one has actually read, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

The fact of the matter is that I’m not going away. Given how similar your professed ideals are to those I espouse, you soon will have no choice but to engage with my ideas, even if it is only to explain what it is about them that you specifically disagree with. And such a process will likely lead you to realize that you’re not actually against what I’m for - you’re against me because you think I’m an asshole. But if we’re talking about ideas, it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m an asshole. My ideas either have value or they do not. And once you engage with my ideas, it is very likely that you will come to the conclusion that there is some validity to them, even if you don’t accept them wholesale.

I called it ages ago - the Left has lost the Culture War.

I’M JUST A SOUL WHOSE INTENTIONS ARE GOOD

I realized this sooner than most, and began a process of political re-orientation which some of you are just beginning now. I hope that my work and the work of my comrades is helpful to you, even if your intellectual journey leads you to different conclusions than those that we have reached.

At the end of the day, I know that my intentions are good, and I believe that the people who know me know this is true.

As the song goes: I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.

I’m always willing to debate anyone about anything, and I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong.

Anyway, I hope that this marks the beginning of a new phase of Nevermore, in which we are able to engage with our former comrades in some kind of constructive way.

Please feel free to invite me onto your podcasts, either to debate me, ask me questions, to tell me where you think I’m wrong, or merely to hear my perspective.

I’ve dedicated my life to trying to understand the world over the past three years. If you believe that my intentions are good, and that I’m not deliberately trying to mislead you for some reason, I think it’s reasonable to assume that you could probably learn something interesting if you actually take the time to listen to what I have to say with an open mind.

In any case, you’re not going to be able to keep ignoring me forever. The contributors of Nevermore represent a growing political tendency, and you’re not going to be able to organize in circles that have been unsullied by our ideas for much longer.

The fact is the matter is that we are for freedom, voluntary association, mutual aid, and egalitarianism. If you’re also for these things, it’s inevitable that we’re going to wind up on the same side of the barricades.

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s WWIII. The real fascists aren’t people like me, Sadie, and Exile. The real fascists are in government and big business. In any case, it’s probably not the time to insist on ideological purity. Revolutions are notoriously impure affairs. The important thing is this: If we join forces, we’ll have the power to create a movement capable of putting an end to the Trudeau regime, which is what everyone in Canada is waiting for right right now.

It really is coming down to a “do-or-die” reality.

Let’s remember the old revolutionary adage: We must all hang together, for if we do not, we shall surely all hang separately.

Speaking of which, I have one last request to all of my former comrades out there. I am perfectly aware that I’m unlikely to die of old age. If you haven’t noticed, anarchists have been dropping like flies in recent years, often due to mysterious causes, as in the cases of David Graeber, Aragorn, Uncle Ted, and Matt Cicero. Those of you who still consider me a friend, or at least have a soft spot in your heart for me, please keep that in mind. Every time you speak to me might be the last time you speak to me.

I know that everyone’s going to love me when I’m dead, so why not show me some love while I’m still alive?

-Crow Qu’appelle

POST-SCRIPT:

As previously stated, I want my accusers to apologize to me for their sloppy hack job of a hit piece.

Now that we are in indirect contact, I want to give the authors of On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades a chance to directly respond to me.

I don’t particularly care about you calling me crazy - I’m open about that. I also don’t mind you using my legal name, which is fine by me too. As for the stuff I said, well, I said it. That’s fair game.

What I don’t like is your blatant genocide denialism, and I would like you to apologize for it.

I’ll quote directly from the article:

Crow dedicates at least one whole post on his blog to promoting the conspiracy of Judeo-Bolshevism, the antisemitic theory that The Jews were behind the Russian Revolution and that communism is a Jewish conspiracy. In Crow’s words: “Marxism was a Rothschild-sponsored plot.”¹² This roundly disproven theory was not only central to Nazi propaganda in the lead-up to and during the Holocaust, but also spread throughout many parts of the West, both before and after WWII.

Crow’s antisemitic conspiracist thinking is not limited to buying into the theory of Judeo-Bolshevism. Unsurprisingly, he also thinks that woke ideology is silencing the “truth” that Jews control the economy. He writes: “Now, let me ask you this: If it could be proven beyond all reasonable doubt that some of the most powerful people in the world are Jewish bankers, would you really be that surprised? Or would it merely confirm something you’ve long suspected?”

He also compares Jewish religious beliefs with Nazi ideology: “Nazism was wholly incompatible with the original spirit of the Volkisch movement, because Nazism denies that Jews are part of the manifestation of the universal life force that the original Volkisch movement revered. But is not the Jewish belief that the Jews are God’s chosen people equally misguided?”¹³

Finally, given that Nevermore has already been engaging in some implicit Holocaust revisionism by suggesting that mRNA vaccines are essentially equivalent to the Holocaust, it probably shouldn’t surprise us that Crow himself seems to hold some questionable ideas about Jews and genocide.

In his words:“given the fact that communists keep betraying and murdering us, why are [we] hiding the fact that Marx was, in all likelihood, an agent of the Rothschilds? This is a pretty big fucking deal, isnt it? Keep in mind that Im [sic] Mennonite. My ancestors fled Russia after the Bolshevik coup, and my [sic]. I am a survivor of genocide, and the people responsible for that genocide were Jewish bankers. And their descendents rule the world today, and were [sic] not supposed to talk about them because their co-religionists were also the victims of genocide.¹⁴

To summarize, Crow seems to think that: 1. Jewish bankers tried to exterminate his Mennonite ancestors. 2. These same Jewish bankers are still in power today. 3. The (supposedly Rothschild-funded) Soviets carried out a genocide equivalent to (if not greater than) the deliberate Nazi extermination of six million European Jews.¹⁵ 4. Because of the Holocaust, people like Crow are silenced from talking about the power of the Jewish bankers who ostensibly rule the world.

In our opinion, this sounds an awful lot like the theory of “double genocide,” an idea that gained popularity in certain post-soviet European states (e.g. Lithuania) where there is often a vested interest in ignoring or obfuscating local collaboration in the extermination of Jews.¹⁶

The article then goes on to deny that the extermination of Mennonites in Russia following the Bolshevik coup counts as a genocide.

The Mennonites certainly suffered from religious persecution in the USSR. However, unlike in the case of the Holodomor, or the deportations of the Chechens and Ingush, we are unaware of any scholarly literature that discusses this persecution as a genocide, least of all as one carried out by “Jewish bankers.”

So, in the same article in which my thoughtcrime of Holocaust revisionism is being singled out, this Pharisee has the nerve to deny that the extermination of Russian Mennonites counts as a genocide.

First off, how dare you lecture me on minimizing a historical atrocity whilst doing the exact thing that you are accusing me of?

Second off, let me ask you this:

1. How many Jews are there in Germany in 2023?

2. How many Mennonites are there in Russia in 2023?

So which one was the genocide, then?

To make matters still worse, my anonymous critic goes on to say:

In trying to inform ourselves about this topic, what we found instead was a far messier history of Mennonite participation in the Holocaust. As historian Ben Goossen puts it:

“Mennonite experiences of and involvement in the Holocaust differed widely. We know that a handful of individuals actively participated as executioners and concentration camp guards. We also know that a substantial percentage of Europe’s Mennonites benefited from and often sympathized with aspects of Nazism. Around 120,000 people, or about one-fourth of the denomination worldwide, lived under Nazi rule at the height of Hitler’s expansionism. Generally categorized as members of the Aryan racial elite, Mennonites sometimes received goods taken from murdered Jews or moved into their vacant homes. Others leased slave labor for their farms and factories, or otherwise profited from genocide. […]

Arguably more impactful than Mennonites’ own actions, however, was the denomination’s enrollment in Nazi propaganda. In 1929, popular opinion had pressured German politicians to help approximately 4,000 of the Mennonite refugees in Moscow relocate to Germany. The event became a founding myth of the Third Reich.”

Wow! Did this person, whilst denying that my ancestors were the victims of a genocide, simultaneously accuse them of participating in one? Since when do Mennonites lease slave labour? Why would they move into the homes of murdered Jews? Didn’t they have homes of their own? What factories are we talking about here?

And what’s this about Germans helping Mennonite refugees resettle in 1929? What does that have to do with the Nazis? Oh, it was “a founding myth of the Third Reich”, was it? Then why has no one ever heard of it?

Clearly, the authors are conflating Germans and Nazis in ways that lead me to believe they have no interest in the truth. They have simply trying to turn Mennonites into Nazis based on nothing more than their shared German ethnicity. I go to great lengths to make it clear that I don’t see all Jews as Zionists, and it irks me that this author is attempting to portray all Germans as Nazis.

And this has got to take the cake. Did my anonymous critics just accuse Mennonites of being executioners and concentration camp guards?

If anyone fails to see how ridiculous this one is, I’ll remind them that Mennonites are pacifists. I challenge any historian in the world to find me a single case of a single Mennonite executioner in history.

The article doesn’t cite any sources, by the way. The anonymous author, who clearly decided to Google Mennonite history in order to discredit me, offers only the opinion of “historian Ben Goossen”. And which paper is this accusation of Mennonites being concentration guards later from? What sources is it based on?

Clearly, my anonymous critic does not feel obliged to name names of these supposed Mennonite executioners and concentration camp guards. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that that’s because they don’t have a single name to use as Exhibit A. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Give me a name. Give me a name, Ben Goossen. If you’re accusing Mennonites of participating in the Holocaust, I want you to name names. I think you’re lying, but I’m not a historian. I stand to be corrected. Give me one single name of any Mennonite who was either an executioner or a concentration camp guard.

Who is this Ben Goossens guy anyway? Well, first of all, here’s a picture of him.

It terms out this guy is a specialist in trying to dig up dirt on Mennonites. I shit you not.

Check out the “Publications” page of his website.

German Studies Review

“Terms of Racial Endearment: Nazi Categorization of Mennonites in Ideology and Practice, 1929-1945,” German Studies Review 44, no. 1 (2021): 27-46.

The Christian Mennonite denomination maintained a privileged position within National Socialist thought and policy through its conceptual and legal association with an evolving series of racial categories. Nearly all the world’s half-million Mennonites lived outside German borders between the World Wars. This allowed a small number of church leaders and sympathetic scholars to shape their image within Germany, especially as Hitler’s wartime expansionism brought a fourth of the denomination’s members under Nazi rule. Casting Mennonitism as part of one or more subgroups within a larger Germanic whole benefitted most adherents in regions administered by the Third Reich while simultaneously enabling their enrollment in propaganda and empire building.

Antisemitism Studies

“The Making of a Holocaust Denier: Ingrid Rimland, Mennonites, and Gender in White Supremacy, 1945-2000,” Antisemitism Studies 5, no. 2 (2021): 233-265.

The novelist Ingrid Rimland became a prominent Holocaust denier in North America during the 1990s. Before embracing neo-Nazism, Rimland won acclaim within the Mennonite church—the Christian denomination in which she was raised—for her writings about women’s hardships in the Soviet Union. Her debut novel, The Wanderers: The Saga of Three Women Who Survived (1977), reflected widespread efforts to position feminized Mennonite suffering as comparable to Jewish persecution under Nazism, coupled with silence about the role individual Mennonites played in the Holocaust. The church’s male-dominated elite offered Rimland limited structural support as a female writer, however, and she struggled to sustain her literary career while raising a son with disabilities. Patriarchal constraints alongside Mennonite leaders’ failure to address historic antisemitism helped allow her drift into white supremacy.

Translation: Mennonites are ethnically German, so basically they’re crypto-Nazis or something. This guy wrote a whole fucking book about Mennonites being romanticized as the idealized Aryan subject, as if that is something that Mennonites today should be ashamed about!

Can you fucking believe these people?

Here’s Goossen’s description of his book:

Euring the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the global Mennonite church developed an uneasy relationship with Germany. Despite the religion’s origins in the Swiss and Dutch Reformation, as well as its longstanding pacifism, tens of thousands of members embraced militarist German nationalism. Chosen Nation is a sweeping history of this encounter and the debates it sparked among parliaments, dictatorships, and congregations across Eurasia and the Americas.

Offering a multifaceted perspective on nationalism’s emergence in Europe and around the world, Benjamin Goossen demonstrates how Mennonites’ nationalization reflected and reshaped their faith convictions. While some church leaders modified German identity along Mennonite lines, others appropriated nationalism wholesale, advocating a specifically Mennonite version of nationhood. Examining sources from Poland to Paraguay, Goossen shows how patriotic loyalties rose and fell with religious affiliation. Individuals might claim to be German at one moment but Mennonite the next. Some external parties encouraged separatism, as when the Weimar Republic helped establish an autonomous “Mennonite State” in Latin America. Still others treated Mennonites as quintessentially German; under Hitler’s Third Reich, entire colonies benefited from racial warfare and genocide in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Whether choosing Germany as a national homeland or identifying as a chosen people, called and elected by God, Mennonites committed to collective action in ways that were intricate, fluid, and always surprising.

The first book to place Christianity and diaspora at the heart of nationality studies, Chosen Nation illuminates the rising religious nationalism of our own age.

So, in other words, this guy did a deep dive on Mennonite history looking for dirt and came up with basically nothing other than that Mennonites are German and a lot of Nazis admired them.

Is that really the worst they could come up with? Does being admired by bad people make you a bad person? If so, how?

Does being German make you a Nazi? Does that make Hermann Hesse a Nazi then? Was Carl Jung a Nazi?

I am sure that if you look hard enough into Mennonite history, you will find some shameful things. That’s because Mennonites are humans. But what really infuriates me is that Jews apparently expect for their own historic misdeeds to be glossed over whilst Jews are judged by an

Case in point: Noel Ignatiev, who spent decades pontificating about how the white race needed to be destroyed. Can you imagine how quickly it would end an academic´s career were they to call for the destruction of the Jewish race?

Yeah, sure, I get that race is a social construct, but what isn´t a social construct? Was Ignatiev suggesting that Jewishness is not also a social construct?

Let´s have a look at two of his statements, which I pulled from his Wikipedia page:

"The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists".

Elsewhere, he says:

"I regard anti-Semitism, like all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry, as a crime against humanity and whoever calls me an anti-Semite will face a libel suit"

I suspect that the reason that so many people these days seem to have such a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance is because this kind of shit has been getting a pass for way too fucking long. Enough already. People need to locate their fucking spines and speak up when people are spouting asinine garbage like this.

Listen, people, the Jews who colonized Palestine are white Europeans. For the past twenty years or so, we’ve had pile-on against white people, yet it somehow seems to have escaped people’s notice that (most) JEWS ARE WHITE.

Do people not think that Jews have skeletons in their skeletons? I’m not blaming all Jews for the crimes of certain ultra-rich Jewish bankers, but Jews seriously need a reality check if they expect to be taken seriously when portraying themselves as the perpetual victims of history who keep getting picked on for no reason. People just ain’t buying it anymore.

Anyway, I realize most readers won’t be interested in such a lengthy foray into Mennonite history, but if anyone wonders why I started talking about the Holocaust so much, this is why.

It’s personal. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to accuse me of antisemitism by attempting to portray my ancestors, who were victims of the Bolsheviks, as crypto-Nazis because they were German. If you can’t see that there is something insanely wrong with this, I don’t know what to tell you other than that you’re racist. Apparently you think that Germans = Nazis, therefore Germans being victimized is a good thing. The irony is that the word Nazi is now used to dehumanize demonized others, when the whole reason that the Nazis were so bad was because they had a racist ideology that allowed them to dehumanize demonized others.

I’m very tolerant person. But if you expect to lecture me on genocide denialism whilst engaging in it, I draw the line. Clearly, my accusers have no sympathy for my murdered kin, yet they expect to weaponize Holocaust sympathy against dissidents like me, not to mention the Palestinians who are currently getting the worst of it..

I have no hatred in my heart when I say this, but the world’s got to stop putting up with disingenuous arguments in which Holocaust sympathy is used as a lever to obtain power. We’ve had seventy years of this, and take a look at the world. Enough already. Zionists employ these arguments because they work at silencing their critics, and they’ll keep using them as long as they work. It’s time to call them on their bullshit.

Hopefully, my accusers will do the intellectually honest thing and fully retract their claims.

Clearly, they don’t like me, despite the fact that they don’t know me, so I am hoping that people who do know me can help persuade them that my feelings about genocide denialism are just as valid as any Jew’s.

By the way, I’m 1/64th Jewish. If you take a minute to think about that, that means that some percentage of the Mennonites who were murdered by Stalin were part Jewish. That shouldn’t really matter, but apparently it does to some people, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Perhaps it would be helpful if I could share some family history in the hopes that it can humanize the victims of Bolshevism, whose suffering was every bit as real as the suffering of the Jews under the Nazis.

I have written about my family history before, most notably in Meditations on Exile, in which I wrote:

Recently, I asked my mom to send me whatever family history she had, and was delighted to when she gave me the following account by my great-uncle, speaking about my great-grandfather’s decision to move his entire family to the other side of the world.

“Certainly, there was apparent need for him to leave. He had a good farm, complete with orchard and river nearby. He was respected by his own people as a minister, builder and farmer. Even the Russians respected him, for he had gone through the revolution practicing his non-involvement in military affairs with inspired impartiality. Everyone, in other words, wanted us to stay. And yet Dad insisted we had to leave, for he felt certain that any further delay would leave us forever under Communist control, a control which he could see as only becoming worse and worse. With this vision so clear to him, he made sure his entire family would go with him, even his two married daughters and their families. When we finally got to Riga to board the boat to London, there was the worry that I was getting feverish again. He wouldn’t hear of it, hurriedly carrying me on the boat himself, leaving the others to follow on their own. I’ve always marveled at this inspired conviction of my father, for later events proved him right – ours was the last boatload of immigrants to be allowed to leave Russia.”

So, in other words, he saved the lives of his entire family. The Mennonites who remained were basically exterminated. Some were conscripted into military service, others were sent to gulags, and many were simply killed. I’m not exaggerating. The Elder who baptized two of my great-aunts was exiled to Siberia. A member of the church that I grew up actually located a mass grave where some of her relatives were buried, and visited it, where she sung a hymn to honour their spirits.

I have decided to end this piece with an excerpt from a sermon that family friend gave upon returning from her trip to Russia, which I believe will drive my point home.

I hope that she would not object to me using her sermon in such a way, and if she does, I humbly beg her forgiveness.

In 1929, my grandparents had only a desperate hope to cling to.

The 1920s in Russia had been tough – civil war, famine, epidemics – and the 1930s were only going to get worse. Stalin decided to purge the entire country, not only the Party, of his enemies and being paranoid, he believed there were legions of enemies.

Of the 18,000 people who went to Moscow, about 5000 got out. Of that 5000, Canada accepted about 1500. Initially the Soviet government said all 18,000 could go to Canada but Canada said no. 13,000 were then sent to labour camps or back home until Germany pressured the Soviets to release the rest.

I wish I could tell you that Liese and Kornelius had a smooth journey through life after the trauma of leaving Russia. They didn’t even have a smooth journey to Canada. But through all their experiences (and I’ll share just a few), they remained faithful, finding comfort in prayer and singing hymns.

In Moscow, they met up with Liese’s sister and her husband, and Liese’s brother who was married to Kornelius’s sister, and their children. The families rented a small 3-room dacha (pronounced datcha) on the outskirts of Moscow. Every day, the men walked from embassy to embassy, pleading for help. The women gathered branches for fuel, scavenged for food, and cared for the children. One time, the landlady was ready to evict these tenants who were called Enemies of the People. Liese had prepared for such an eventuality – she had her two sons sing a Russian folk song for the woman who was so moved that she let them stay.

Liese and Kornelius left Orenburg with two sons, they left Moscow with one. Heinrich was 4 when he died of meningitis. Permission to leave the country came before his burial; Liese, Kornelius, and Johann had to leave immediately. Any delay meant you didn’t get out (which happened to others). They never knew where Heinrich was buried, it was a lifelong sorrow for Liese and Kornelius.

Leaving Russia didn’t mean they had a place to go. They spent several months in a refugee camp in Prenzlau, Germany, stateless and in limbo. One of the biggest problems the refugees faced was boredom. After months of fear and anxiety, they had nothing to do. They couldn’t leave the refugee camp because some townfolk threw rocks at them. They started holding classes to teach each other new skills.

Liese, Kornelius, and Johann were the first to arrive in Canada with the other two families set to follow a week later. The plan was to move to Coaldale, Alberta, where friends were ready to take them in. Very generous friends to take in 6 adults and 10 children. But Canada announced that they must find relatives, not friends, to sponsor them or they’d be deported. Liese and Kornelius found 4th or 5th cousins in Saskatchewan. I have a feeling that no one told the government how distant the connection was. The other two families were denied entry into Canada. Instead they stayed in the refugee camp for four years before moving to Brazil.

Shortly after their arrival in Saskatchewan, Liese and Kornelius set up a blacksmith shop. Kornelius was a blacksmith, like his father before him. They built a structure that was 10 feet by 24 feet. Half was the shop, half was their house. I have a hard time imagining 3 people, later 4, living in a 10 by 12 foot room, especially in Saskatchewan winters.

[…]

As difficult as the Great Depression was in Canada – and it was tough with falling wages, extremely high unemployment, crop failures, foreclosures, and so on – Liese and Kornelius, like all refugees, also dealt with bad news from home and their sense of guilt that they couldn’t do more to help. Letters from Russia rarely contained good news. Family members, close friends, neighbours were arrested, interrogated, released, re-arrested. We still don’t know what happened to most of them.

Then the news came that Liese's 75 year-old father, my great-grandfather, Johann Fast had been arrested. This was in August 1937, in the middle of Stalin’s Great Purges. About a million people were arrested, with roughly half being executed, the other half going to prison camps. Odds were worse for those in the Orenburg colony: about 95% of those arrested were executed.

After World War 2, Liese’s sister Susanna still living in the Orenburg colony applied for information about Johann’s fate. She was informed that he had frozen to death on his way to prison. This was a lie. In 1989, we found out that he had been shot (executed) two weeks after his arrest in 1937.

In June 2019, Bernie and I visited the mass grave where Johann Fast lies with 8400 others. The mass grave is in a park along the Ural River; it's a lovely, peaceful spot. Being there was painful and healing at the same time. We prayed and we sang Heilig Heilig Heilig. And I told Great-Grandfather that his little namesake (my dad) never forgot him and never stopped loving him.

And perhaps that is what we can learn from our ancestors and others who’ve gone before us: about the power of love and how it can sustain us. We'll have hard times, sometimes seemingly impossible times, and we'll have many joy- filled times. God walks beside us through it all, suffering and rejoicing with us.