The chief of police in Rio Negro province has resigned after appending a venomous attack on Jews to an “order of the day” he recently issued to his subordinates. Commandant Benigno Mario Ardanas said he was ordered to resign by the Minister of Interior who, he alleged was “pressured by the DAIA,” the representative body of the Argentine Jewish community.
The Rio Negro faction of the Union Civica Radical Party termed Ardanas’ statement a “delirious mixture of Nazism and McCarthyism.” The offensive supplement, which the police chief attached to “order of the day No. 5134” was titled “Young Argentine Thoughts On The Times Our Country Is Living Through.”
It stated among other things: “We must fight against Freemasons, Communists and Jews….Freemasonry, Communism and Zionism, or Judaism, are subordinated to the ‘Israelite Command’ called the Great Sanhedrin which seeks world domination….They try to promote the use of drugs and eroticism to weaken the people….Jews or Zionists send immense sums of money to Israel… perturb workers and employers, organize frequent strikes in industry and transport…try to discredit the church and the armed forces. We shall pus all the needed obstacles to Jews, Communists and Freemasons so that they do not progress with their plans.”
The diatribe brought a strongly worded telegram of protest from the DAIA to the police chief who readily admitted that he had signed the supplement.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
