Comedian Jon Stewart is coming under fire on social media after appearing at the US Department of Defense’ annual “Warrior Games” in Disney World to bestow an award on a member of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, who received the prize while wearing an arm sleeve which kept his Nazi “black sun” tattoo hidden from viewers.
Photos from an August 19 ceremony showing Stewart cheerfully gladhand Azov militant Ihor Halushka after awarding him a “Heart of the Team” trophy were first brought to light by journalist Alex Rubinstein for the independent investigative news outlet The Grayzone. The explosive report reveals extensive links between the US government, the NATO cutout “Stratcom Centre,” and some of the most hardcore Nazi elements of the Ukrainian military.
A since-deleted photo from the official “Warrior Games: Team Ukraine” Facebook page shows a number of ex-militants from Ukraine proudly posing behind the banner of the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, a notorious WWII-era Nazi grouping comprised of Ukrainian nationalists, many of whom had eagerly participated in the murder of thousands of Jews in pogroms after Soviet forces were pushed back from the area in 1941.
Now it seems there’s reason to believe their ideological heirs may have gotten an all-expense trip to the ‘most magical place on Earth’ courtesy of American taxpayers.
Did the Department of Defense pay for Team Ukraine’s travel expenses? “Did they even pass through Customs?” Per Rubinstein, the Pentagon “refused to answer these questions and stonewalled The Grayzone ever since.”
Photos of Halushka indicate that when the Nazi militant isn’t being honored by foreign celebrities, he has little interest in hiding his Nazi beliefs.
So far, the comedian at the center of it all has yet to comment. But if outrage continues to spread over the Jewish comedian’s public embrace of a Nazi, he may have to soon.
Sputnik News reached out to Alex Rubinstein, the report’s author, for comment. He described Stewart’s descent from fierce critic of US interventionism to establishment cheerleader as a symbol of the pro-war liberal hypnosis that took hold under President Obama.
“For a decade and a half, Jon Stewart was the voice of liberalism in the United States. In the Bush years, he was the go-to critic of America's imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But something changed when Obama came into office, and it became obvious that he wasn't a man of principle. Rather than continue as a bullhorn of the anti-war left, Stewart opted to spend the Obama years hyperfocusing on the wackiest elements of the Republican party while turning a blind eye to the illegal wars of the administration at the time. As a liberal without any kind of convictions, it is hardly surprising to see him now giving awards to Nazis.”
The fact that the once-popular comedian has been recruited by the Pentagon to publicly honor an open admirer of the third reich in Disney World arguably reveals the extent of the complicity between the military industrial complex and the institutions of so-called American soft power – whose movies, music, and characters are blasted into the minds of children across the globe.
It also shows that little has changed in the the 70-year relationship between the US government and the Ukrainian Nazis who have always glorifed infamous Jew-killers like Stepan Bandera, and now seek to manifest Azov founder Andriy Biletsky’s vision of a Ukraine which comes to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races].”