Argentine President Carlos Menem, supported by his entire Cabinet, has forbade an assemblage of neo-Nazi called to take place Friday in front of the National Congress, according to several sources.
But the group, the Nationalist Workers’ Party, is set on going ahead with its plans.
The neo-Nazi group’s leader, Alejandro Biondini, announced his intention to hold the rally even if his appeal of the government’s ban is denied. The defiant move sets the stage for a confrontation between the group and the government, said the Anti-Defamation League’s department of Latin American affairs.
Biondini has said the gathering will include a pledge of allegiance to an Argentine flag with a swastika in its center.
He also said his group intends to win the next presidential election, at which time “our first act of government would be to break relations with Israel and recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.” ADL reported.
Biondini also said that “enormous falsehoods have been told about the Second World War. Various historians have stated that the Holocaust and the gas chambers are a big lie.”
Menem, after meeting with his cabinet, instructed the Argentine interior minister, Julio Mera Figueroa, to prohibit the march.
In calling for the prohibition, Menem said the group “repudiates the democratic spirit and fraternal coexistence of the Argentinians,” the Latin American Jewish Congress reported.
An Argentine government spokesman said such a march would “violate the law in defense of democracy and the anti-discrimination law” and would be a “provocation to all Argentines and the laws of the nation,” ADL reported.
Three members of the National Congress have asked the federal court to determine whether Biondini should be prosecuted for disseminating “ideas identified with death, racism and organized intolerance,” according to the ADL.
The request was presented to Judge Maria Servini de Cubria, who on June 5 declined a request by the neo-Nazi group to officially register as the Workers’ Nationalist Socialist Party use a swastika as its symbol.
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.
