FACES AND PLACES: Ethnic massacre of '88 still haunts GOP (03/30/97)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Ethnic massacre of '88 still haunts GOP

Regardless of what one believes about President Bill Clinton, there's no denying he's a superb campaigner. That's why he won the ethnic vote in 1992 and again in 1996. While Bob Dole's people didn't get around to appointing an ethnic campaign chairman until October 1996, President Clinton had his ethnic team in place and rolling by the end of 1995.

What ever happened to the GOP ethnic lock of the 1980s? I believe it started to unravel during the 1988 Bush/Dukakis campaign when eight ethnic activists (including two Ukrainians) were dumped from the Bush election team for what Bush people themselves called "unsubstantiated allegations." In my column of October 16, 1988, I called the development "an abomination."

The debacle began in July 1988, when GOP candidate George Bush attended a dinner sponsored by the Captive Nations Committee of Detroit and the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations at the Ukrainian community center in Warren, Mich. In his introduction of Mr. Bush, Bohdan Fedorak, a Bush campaign activist appointed by Ukrainian campaign chairman Taras Szmagala, stated: "It is important that the United States stand firm and not allow [the Soviet Union] to influence and defame our communities, achievements and the heroic struggle for national independence which many of our people have fought for. Specifically, the Justice Department Office of Special Investigations and their collaboration with the Soviet authorities, and deportation of people to the Soviet Union are two issues which we strongly oppose."

That statement helped convince Bush campaign strategists that Mr. Fedorak should resign from the campaign along with seven others, including then-UCCA President Ignatius Bilinsky. All had been active in the National Republican Heritage Groups Council (NRHGC), for years an effective grassroots arm of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

The GOP response was in part the result of years of defamatory books and articles by such Ukrainophobes as Allan A. Ryan, author of the 1984 book "Quiet Neighbors," Charles Higham, author of "American Swastika," Scott and John Lee Anderson, authors of "Inside the League," and Charles Simpson, author of "Blowback." A series of articles in The Village Voice in 1985-1986 alleging Nazi collaboration by Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leaders Jaroslav Stetsko and Mykola Lebed contributed to the anti-Ukrainian hysteria of the time.

The definitive publication, however, was "Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration" by Russ Bellant. Published by Political Research Associates (self-described as "an independent research institute which collects and disseminates information on right-wing political groups and trends"), it argued that all of the old "Nazis" and "fascists" were still influencing U.S. foreign policy through their activity in the NRHGC and the Bush campaign. It was they, presumably, who were urging Mr. Bush to maintain Ronald Reagan's "roll-back" policy against the evil empire, an approach that "endangered peace."

First to run with the defamatory Bellant "research" report was the Washington Jewish Week, which published a three-page article on September 8, 1988, titled "Bush Campaign Committee Contains Figures Linked to Anti-Semitic and Fascist Backgrounds." According to Jewish Week, Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, called the presence of this minority "a shocking revelation ... I'm sure George Bush is personally unaware of the sordid personal history of these people. But now that he has been made aware of them, we have every right to expect him not only to remove these people but to repudiate what these people stand for.' "

Mr. Bush did exactly what the Jewish leadership demanded, and the ethnic activists resigned "for the good of the party."

The smear campaign continued, however. An editorial titled "The Fascist Connection" in the September 14 issue of the Boston Globe lauded the Bellant report and commented: "The fascists who led the Heritage Groups Council have had constant contact with party leaders for 20 years."

"More Nazi sympathizers and persons with anti-Semitic ties have surfaced in the Bush camp than at any place since the last Curt Jurgens film," wrote Steve Neal of the Chicago Sun-Times, labeling the group the "Bush Bund." For Pete Hammill of the New York Post, it was "George Bush and his Fascist Fan Club."

In the September 27 Boston Herald, columnist Alan Dershowitz praised the Bellant report for its "basic factual points" and denounced President Reagan's meeting with Jaroslav and Slava Stetsko, especially the president's welcoming statement: "Your struggle is our struggle, your dream is our dream." Others who joined the mud-slinging chorus were the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Larry Cohler of the Washington Jewish Week, and the notorious Charles R. Allen, a longtime Soviet apologist whose article in The Village Voice on November 1 argued that it was during Mr. Stetsko's two-year "regime" in Ukraine that "more than 100,000 Jews were exterminated in the Galician capital of Lvov [sic] ..."

The scourging of anti-Communists in the Republican National Committee (RNC) continued after the election. In a New York Times op-ed piece on November 19, 1989, Mr. Bellant demanded that George Bush disband the 20 year-old NRHGC because it "was founded and continues to be led by people and organizations that collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe during the second world war."

As I pointed out in a column on November 26, 1989, the defamation campaign was a smashing success. During an October 19 meeting with NRHGC Chairman Anna Chennault, Benjamin Ginsberg, chief counsel of the RNC, demanded that the "taint" over her organization be addressed immediately. The "burden of proof is on the NRHGC to clear its name," emphasized Mr. Ginsberg. At the time, the NRHGC had no monies to combat Mr. Bellant's well-financed calumny.

Nine years later, the "taint" remains. The NRHGC exists on paper only, while Mr. Ginsberg, I was informed recently, "hasn't been with the RNC for quite some time." Meanwhile, the Captive Nations agenda has been vindicated, John Demjanjuk was found innocent, and the OSI has been exposed as little more than a nest of malevolent scoundrels devoted to the use of illegal tactics against innocent people.

Will the GOP win back the ethnic vote? Not if the tracks Mr. Ginsberg left behind are still visible.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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