Cybernetic Neo-Nazis

By Daniel Gatti, IPS, 13 August 1999

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 13 (IPS)—The arrests of several members of a neo-Nazi group in Uruguay demonstrated the existence of extreme right organisations that use the Internet to maintain contact with groups in other Southern Cone countries.

But neo-Nazi groups are not only present in the Southern Cone of South America. Human rights groups in Mexico expressed their indignation Friday over a neo-Nazi congress held early this month in Guadalajara.

Police in Uruguay arrested six members of Orgullo Skinhead (Skinhead Pride) this week, and are investigating the existence of additional neo-Nazi groups.

Three of the detainees were released, while three were charged Thursday with criminal association and inciting hatred, and are facing several years in prison.

Sources with Uruguay's National Intelligence Office told the press that they were monitoring three other small neo-Nazi groups, comprised of 10 to 12 members each, which recruit youngsters in educational institutions in Montevideo and the interior of the country.

The neo-Nazi ideology is made very attractive to the young through the use of music, videos and the Internet, one of the intelligence sources told the Montevideo daily El Observador.

The police arrested the Orgullo Skinhead militants after closely monitoring the group's website, used to set forth a systematically racist harangue and apologia of Nazism and fascism.

The Uruguay-based extreme right organisations Frente Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Front), Resistencia Nacional Socialista (National Socialist Resistance) and Hijos de Europa (Children of Europe) also have web pages.

The groups glorify Germany's national socialism and Italian fascism, vindicate the country's white roots (Spanish and Italian), lash out against drug addicts, homosexuals, Marxists and capitalists, and highlight the brotherly action of the nationalist groups of South America.

They also defend the actions of the Southern Cone militaries during the dictatorships that ruled the region in the 1970s and 1980s, while emphasising the need to guard against complacency in the face of the dangers still posed by recycled leftist guerrillas and their minions—human rights groups.

Another member of an extreme right-wing group, navy seaman Gustavo Vargas, was arrested in Montevideo in February and charged in connection with three 1998 bomb attacks.

The government maintained, however, that Vargas had acted as an isolated individual, and that no such organisations were active in Uruguay.

But local human rights groups, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal International Centre, which specialises in hunting Nazis worldwide, say a network of extreme right Nazi groups has been detected in Argentina and Chile, as well as Uruguay.

At the time of Vargas' arrest, a number of media reports pointed to the existence of extreme right racist groups, small but active, in Uruguay.

The reports refuted Interior Minister Guillermo Stirling's claims that Vargas had acted spontaneously, without the backing of any group.

The Uruguayan publications Brecha, Poder Civil and Posdata, as well as the Argentinian daily Pagina 12 reported at the time that at least three neo-Nazi groups were active in Uruguay.

Pagina 12 added that Orgullo Skinhead had close links to xenophobic and racist organisations in Argentina, Chile and European nations.

Orgullo Skinhead militants participated in a congress of extreme right-wing groups organised in August 1998 in the La Salle high school in Buenos Aires, according to the newspaper.

We have found that since around 18 or 20 months ago, a kind of neo-Nazi network has been taking shape in Latin America through the use of the latest communication technologies, like Internet, the representative of the Simon Wiesenthal International Centre in Latin America, Sergio Widder, said in February.

Argentina's neo-Nazi groups do not deny that they maintain contact, especially via Internet, with their brothers in Uruguay.

We have close ties with the members of the Frente Nacional Revolucionario, who live in a country like Uruguay which should never have ceased to belong to Argentina, said Ivan Franze, leader of the Partido Nuevo Orden Social Patriotico (New Patriotic Social Order Party—PNOSP) in Argentina.

(Uruguay broke away from the territory comprising the Spanish Viceroyalty, which included what later became known as Argentina, in the early 19th century.)

Franze, who instructs his followers to call him chief comrade, claims the PNOSP has some 7,000 militants, including 6,000 in Buenos Aires.

We are a considerable force, the foundation for a future great alliance which will only exclude Marxists and liberals, and which one day will take power, he said.

Also operating in Argentina is the Partido Nacionalista de los Trabajadores (Nationalist Workers Party), whose leader, Alejandro Biondini, told the Uruguayan magazine Poder Civil that when the economic crisis is unleashed, the time for revolutionary nationalism will have arrived.

I have been preparing myself since age 16 for that moment, and to govern Argentina, he declared.

A recent arrival to cybernetic neo-Nazism is True Peace, an Internet site set up by Carlos Torlaschi, president of the Grupo de Almirantes Retirados de Argentina (Group of Retired Admirals of Argentina), Pagina 12 reported last Sunday.

True Peace, created in November 1998, groups around 100 retired Argentinian navy officers implicated in the dirty war waged against suspected or real opponents of the 1976-83 dictatorship, under which as many as 30,000 people were disappeared by the security forces.

True Peace vindicates the methods used by the military during Argentina's de facto regime, presents those involved in the repression as champions of freedom and democracy, ridicules the supposed poor innocent youngsters who died during the war, and describes human rights groups as pro-terrorist.

The website provides links to likeminded Internet sites, such as the neo-Nazi Panzer War and Die Luftwaffe, and Asesino Che Guevara.

And as human rights groups in Mexico pointed out, neo-Nazism has regained a public presence in that country, after several years of low-profile activity since members of neo-Nazi groups venerating Germany's Adolf Hitler made statements to the press on local politics and their ideas back in 1995.

But early this month, dozens of youngsters meeting at an Aug 7 neo-Nazi congress in Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara, discussed their anti-Semitic ideas, the supremacy of the Aryan race, and their support for Roberto Madrazo, a strong contender for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party's presidential candidacy for next year's elections.

Independent studies in Mexico estimate that neo-Nazi groups have a combined total of no more than 25,000 members, in a country of nearly 100 million, with 12 million indigenous and a mestizo or mixed-race majority.

Among the extreme right groups that are known figure Mizion Nazional, Amigos del Ejercito (Friends of the Army), Vanguardia Nacionalista Joven America (Young America Nationalist Vanguard) and the Movimiento Nacionalista Mexicano (Mexican Nationalist Movement).

I believe they remain marginal, like in other countries, said Salvador Tinajero, coordinator of legal matters in the Academica Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos (Mexican Academy for Defence and Promotion of Human Rights).

But that does not mean they are not present, which should be a matter of concern to all of us, he told IPS correspondent Diego Cevallos in Mexico.