EDMONTON — Students are calling on the University of Alberta to fire an assistant lecturer for denying the Holodomor, a mass genocide against Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
The 1932-33 Ukranian famine was recognized in 2008 by Canada and nine other countries as an act of genocide perpetuated by the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin. It is estimated up to 10 million people died.
But Dougal MacDonald, listed as a sessional instructor in the U of A’s Department of Elementary Education, denies that the famine was an act of genocide, and he’s coming under fire for his controversial views.
In a Nov. 19 Facebook post, MacDonald called the Holodomor a “myth.”
He said the genocide was a lie perpetuated with fake photographs and news stories and spread by former Nazi collaborators.
“Trudeau’s support for the anti-communist, pro-Nazi Holodomor myth is no accident,” he wrote. “The Trudeau government’s promotion of the Holdomor myth is more of its self-serving agenda to attempt to rewrite history, while falsely claiming to support freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”