This article appears in the August 19, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this article]
Responses to Ukraine’s Nazi Hit List from Around the World – Part 2
Aug 13—This is EIR’s second collection of responses to the release of a blacklist on July 14 (mistakenly dated July 25 in Part 1) by the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, which listed prominent individuals from around the world as “Russian propaganda” assets, while the Center’s acting director on the same day declared them to be “information terrorists,” and “war criminals.” The mobilization by EIR and others to denounce this Nazi-like attack by a Ukrainian government institution—which is funded by the U.S. and other NATO countries—has forced the Center to take down the list from its website. Nonetheless, the threat to those targeted is not thereby abated, and the call for investigations of the governments that are financing such threats to their own citizens from a foreign nation is expanding.
Part One of this compilation is in the August 12, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
GREECE
Former Greek Ambassador Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, a member of the Schiller Institute, in an interview on RT television regarding the Amnesty International report on the Ukraine military using civilians as human shields, added that Ukraine had invented a new term, “information terrorists.”
Referring to the CCD hit list, he said that the list targeted “mainly the Schiller Institute as ‘information terrorists’ and [said] that they should be accused as ‘war criminals.’ This is an invention. If it is taken up in the West, anybody having a different opinion about this war could be considered as a terrorist and be punished according to the laws regarding terrorism. This is very dangerous, because it is leading the West and the European Union toward fascism.” (It was actually the director of the CCD who had said that those on the list should be tried as war criminals.)
Amb. Chrysanthopoulos noted that he and two other former Greek ambassadors had issued a call for negotiations to begin between the West and Russia, adding, “Presumably we will also be considered information terrorists—the next generation of information terrorists.”
DENMARK
Jens Jørgen Nielsen, a former Moscow correspondent for the major Danish daily Politiken, and author of several books about Russia and Ukraine, spoke at the Danish-Swedish Schiller Institute Conference on May 25, 2022, and subsequently appeared on the CCD hit list. He was interviewed Aug. 3 on Radio 24/seven, the leading Danish national private radio channel.
Nielsen said that he is not spreading Russian propaganda, but he is critical of sending weapons to Ukraine, and critical of the narrative that Ukraine is a flowering democracy. “That the leader of the disinformation office called the people on the list ‘information terrorists,’ who should be tried before a military court, is absurd. Zelensky has banned 11 parties, and put people under house arrest without a court decision. It is not, as the narrative goes, a battle between democracy and dictatorship.” Nielson asked: “Will agents come to my house to bring me before a war criminal tribunal? The fact that Ukraine is threatening Western citizens with being brought before a war criminal tribunal is crossing all red lines. Putting us in connection with war criminals from Yugoslavia and Rwanda, mass murderers, is absurd…. I was accused of saying that Ukraine had sent 30 times the previous amount of bombs into the Donbass in the week before Feb. 24. But I have this figure from the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe]. Are they saying that the OSCE is on Putin’s disinformation pay list?”
“What are the consequences of being on the list? I want to go to Ukraine at some point. Will they let me in? Will I be arrested? Will I be attacked by Ukrainians who live here [in Denmark]? Sometimes I translate for Ukrainian refugees. I can’t imagine that they will come to my house and attack me.”
Jyllands-Posten, one of Denmark’s three leading national newspapers, posted an editorial on Aug. 11 denouncing the Ukraine hit list. Although the editorial began with full support for arming and funding Ukraine against “Russia’s brutal attack,” it then switched tone, noting that if Ukraine is to become a member of the EU, “there are conditions to be met. Among them is the fundamental acceptance of free speech….
“The Centre for Countering Disinformation sounds like something out of George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ but it is a center under Ukraine’s National Security Council. The center presumably has a central function during the war, but it has also recently been used to blacklist 72 international politicians, thinkers and researchers, including four Danes…. What the four Danes have in common is that they took part in a seminar at the end of May on alternatives to the current security policy structure in the world in order to reduce tensions and the division of countries into, for example, members and non-members of NATO…. [T]he theme of the seminar and the questioning of Western sanctions policy are of course perfectly legitimate in a free and open society.
“It is therefore worrying when Ukraine blacklists researchers and others who have a different view of the conflict. For it can hardly be seen as anything other than an attempt to silence them and label any angle other than the pro-Ukrainian one as pro-Russian, and thus on the wrong side of history…. [I]n rejecting free speech, free research and free debate, it is precisely Ukraine and its President who are in danger of moving to the wrong side, far from the ideals that they will hopefully pursue on the other side of the war, to emphasize that they are part of us, as we now see their struggle as ours.”
GERMANY
On August 2, Andrej Hunko, a German member of the Bundestag in Die Linke Party, posted the text of an official question to the German government concerning the Ukrainian hit list. Hunko is a long-standing federal parliamentarian; a member of PACE (the Permanent Assembly of the Council of Europe), and an election observer for the OSCE.
His official question reads: “Has the federal government so far reacted to the listing of German citizens, including public figures such as Alice Schwarzer [a journalist] or Dr. Rolf Mützenich [chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag], as disseminators of Russian propaganda… (if yes, how?), and was this listing put on the agenda for the Ukrainian government by Federal Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) as well as the Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) during their Ukraine visit? (if yes, please specify the circumstances such as date and level of contact).”
In another post, Hunko points to the fact that he had been placed on the “infamous Myrotvorets List,” a list issued two years ago by the Ukraine government of “enemies of the State.” Hunko says that “at least two of those on the list were murdered in the meantime. The [German] federal government condemned the list, but never became seriously active to eliminate the list.”
Following the article in the widely read German newspaper NachDenkSeiten by esteemed jurist and author Dr. Wolfgang Bittner (see the first compilation of responses in the Aug. 12 issue of EIR), who spoke at a Schiller Institute conference and was placed on the Ukrainian hit list, the newspaper received many letters of support for Dr. Bittner, mostly from members of the SPD, the government party. The editor, Albrecht Müller, posted this note and several of the letters on Aug. 12:
Wolfgang Bittner refers in this post to a process in which, “if the Foreign Minister is unlikely to be relied on, the Chancellor” should intervene and stop the “discrimination against German nationals” by the Ukrainian government. “The Ukrainian Center for Combatting Disinformation (CCD) has published a blacklist containing 72 ‘public figures’ who take a critical position on the Ukraine conflict. These would be persecuted, ‘threatened with violence’ and would have to fear for their lives. “The persecution of critics and members of the opposition by Ukrainian government organizations” assumes “forms of unbridled fascism,” which one must assume is taking place “with the support of U.S. authorities.” This “state terrorism” and support for the Ukrainian government must be stopped immediately. Thank you for the interesting letters to the editor, which also contain new, enlightening information.
A selection from the letters:
Letter to the editor
Dear Mr. Müller, With the publication of the blacklist of the Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation, you and Wolfgang Büttner [sic] have succeeded in stabbing another hornet’s nest. One only wonders what actually still has to happen for the public to finally open their eyes and recognize the kind of fuse that was laid in Ukraine. There wafts an explosive mixture of understandable fears, wounded pride, helplessness and arrogance, driven by political interest. The pressure has to go! This applies to all sides, including the Russian one. De-escalation and negotiations are the order of the day. It is frightening when, of all people, the advocates of such a path of understanding find themselves on blacklists along with their likenesses….
With solidarity greetings from Thuringia, Bernd A. Thomas
Letter to the editor
Dear Mr. Bittner, In case the Chancellor does nothing: I offer you shelter at any time and give NachDenkSeiten permission to give you my contact details. Thank you very much for your effort!
LM
Answer by Wolfgang Bittner: Dear Ms. Mund, Thank you for your generous offer. I hope I don’t have to take advantage of it, and I’m glad that there are still good people like you with perspective. Cordially, Wolfgang Bittner
Letter to the editor
Dear Albrecht, dear enlighteners,
I sent this email to the SPD leadership:
Dear party leadership,
I have learned that in Ukraine there is a “black list” of enemies of Ukraine, including the leader of the ruling SPD party in the German Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, a party that you lead…. I haven’t heard a word from you about this monstrosity. Are these the Western values that Ukraine is so valiantly defending against the “onrushing subhumans”? I haven’t heard from you yet that Zelensky has banned all opposition parties in Ukraine and that some of their leaders are imprisoned. Which sister party in Ukraine, in the sense of a socialist international, do you feel connected to?... [W]hom do you support when you deliver heavy weapons? I firmly believe that you will support our opponents, even if they act like Banderites [the current followers of Stepan Bandera, Hitler’s Nazi ally in Ukraine] and keep our sworn enemies in power.”
Solidarity, Herbert Krueger, OVV Winkelhaid
Letter to the editor
Dear NachDenkSeiten team, Dear Mr. Bittner,
Thanks for discussing this topic (finally!). The “black lists” do not even seem to be the climax, but perhaps only the beginning of systematic fascist state terror. As can be read today in Die Junge Welt, the public threats continue to escalate, apparently in particular against those people who are in favor of armistice negotiations instead of brutal war…. In a supposedly democratic republic, shouldn’t it be publicly stated that, as a citizen and as a human being, we wish and demand that at least our government seriously advocates peace, instead of constantly pouring fuel on the fire with arms deliveries, etc.—without being personally seriously threatened? Where is the state, where is the care for its citizens? Beautiful democracy ... it’s all just unbelievable, we run into all catastrophes faster and faster with our eyes wide open.
Kind regards, Peter Langhammer
Letter to the editor
Dear Nachdenkseiten team, dear Wolfgang Bittner,
That I have to witness state black lists with the names of international, also German, critical intellectuals shamelessly published on government websites, this time from Ukraine, without an immediate sharp reaction from German politicians and/or journalists (there are few exceptions) is a slap in the face to all peaceful and democratically committed people. I see this as nothing less than an invitation to manhunt. I understand it all the less, since as a child I had to experience the horrors of World War II up close. I have therefore written a letter to some public institutions and persons [the letter and the names of officials addressed followed].
Uwe Strohmeyer
UNITED STATES
Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist and lawyer, issued a statement in late July in response to his inclusion on the Ukraine hit list:
“Before Russia’s invasion and since, Zelensky has abolished basic liberties: shuttered opposition media, outlawed parties, imprisoned dissidents. As Ukraine demands money and arms from the West, they now want to export this repression to our countries with McCarthyite blacklists.
“War proponents in the West and other functionaries of Western security state agencies have used the same tactics for decades to demonise anyone questioning the foreign policy of the U.S. and NATO. Chief among them, going back to the start of the Cold War, is accusing every dissident of spreading ‘Russian propaganda’ or otherwise serving the Kremlin. That’s all this is from the Ukrainians: just standard McCarthyite idiocy.
“The Ukrainians have the absolute right to pursue whatever war policies they want. But when they start demanding that my country and my government use its resources to fuel their war effort, then I, along with all other Americans, have the absolute right to question that policy or to point out its dangers and risks….
“Observing the grave danger of a proxy war involving the two nations with the largest nuclear stockpiles, ones with a history of coming very close to annihilating the planet, does not require Kremlin messaging; it only requires the most basic common sense and moral compass.”
Tulsi Gabbard, a former four-term Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and an Army Reserve officer, responded to her appearance on the list on July 26 on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox TV:
“It is the peak of hypocrisy. The Biden-Harris Administration and the Washington elite, both parties, are impoverishing the American people and people around the world, while pushing us closer and closer to nuclear war and holocaust, all to ‘protect democracy and defeat autocracy’ in Ukraine. All this is happening as the Ukraine President is exposing that there is no democracy in Ukraine. He is silencing all dissenting voices, imprisoning political opponents, banning all political activity from the opposition parties, taking control of all national media under his ‘unified information’ policy, and now he is turning his sights on Americans. Not only myself, but a sitting U.S. Senator. The danger of this goes to the cost that our leaders are willing to exact as they continue this façade of a push for so-called democracy and defeat[ing] autocracy. The whole thing is so hypocritical, and we need to hold our leaders to account for it.”
Tony Magliano, an internationally syndicated Catholic columnist who spoke at a conference of the Schiller Institute and was included on the Ukrainian hit list, posted an article on The Southern Cross, The Catholic Magazine for Southern Africa on Aug. 12, asking: “Why is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist on such a list?” Since he was among thirty people at the top of the list who had spoken at a Schiller Institute conference, the answer was unavoidable: “Just a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I participated in an international Zoom conference hosted by the Schiller Institute—which sought to warn against possible imminent nuclear war, and to inspire a fresh non-violent, just, egalitarian approach to the never-ending wars and economic injustices experienced by the world’s poor and disenfranchised.
“My small contribution was a concise presentation entitled, ‘War is not inevitable! We have a moral obligation to save Afghans from starving! The need to create a new, human-centred paradigm.’
“In my presentation, I highlighted the moral necessity of the U.S.—considering its 20-year history of waging war in Afghanistan—to significantly increase emergency and ongoing developmental aid to Afghanistan ensuring that all Afghans, especially the children, do not starve to death—a tragedy still unfolding. Additionally, I attempted to highlight the obvious catastrophe of the imminent war between Russia and Ukraine, hoping to help avoid that preventable armed conflict.”
This, he concludes, was enough for Ukraine to decide that “I am a promoter of Russian propaganda. But truth be told, I am a promoter of the nonviolent Gospel of Jesus Christ!”
POLAND
Łukasz Marcin Jastrzębski, editor of Mysl Polska (Polish Fatherland) in Poland, published an article in their Aug. 14-21 edition titled “Schiller on the Ukrainian List,” with a picture of Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Jastrzębski reports that a Pole who writes for his journal, Tomasz Jankowski, also appears on the Ukraine hit list, adding: “A significant number of those mentioned on the aforementioned list are associates of the Schiller Institute, headed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche (pictured).” He notes that Lyndon LaRouche, the deceased leader of the movement, had been subjected to similar attacks “by supporters of global liberalism… when he strengthened his actions both in the USA and Europe for peace in Ukraine. The allegations against the Schiller Institute come back like a boomerang every now and then. It doesn’t really matter that there is no logic in them. For many years I have been reading materials published by the Schiller Institute…. We also published interviews with… Lyndon H. LaRouche (1922-2019) and the legendary warrior for Negro rights in the USA, the collaborator of Martin Luther King, Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911-2015), in the Mysl Polska.”
Jastrzębski describes at length the impact of the LaRouches’ meetings with himself and several hundred other Poles in the 1990s, and concludes: “There are no great secrets, huge amounts of money, training centers, conspiracies or other products of Styrofoam minds associated with the Schiller Institute. I recommend everyone to visit the Schiller Institute’s Facebook pages. Today we respect the calls of the Schiller Institute for a peaceful solution to the Russian-Ukrainian issues.”
