Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has expressed his “permanent and total rejection of Nazism“, after the controversy around a youtubeur favorable to the creation of a Nazi party in the name of freedom of expression.
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“Nazi ideology must be totally and permanently rejected, without any concessions that allow it to flourishtweeted the Head of State on Wednesday February 9. Jair Bolsonaro also expressed his rejection of “ANY OTHER totalitarian ideology that endangers the fundamental rights of peoples and individuals, their right to life and their freedom“. “We are a wonderful and welcoming people. In Brazilian families there is more diversity than in any other nation in the world. Brazil will never be a breeding ground for totalitarianism because the love of freedom runs through our veins“, he assured.
Monark says he was “totally drunk»
President Bolsonaro did not directly mention the youtubeur Bruno Aiub, nicknamed Monark, who hit the headlines on Monday February 7 with his remarks which led to the opening of an investigation for alleged apology for Nazism. “I think there should be a Nazi party recognized by law“, he said during his show Flow Podcast, one of the most listened to in the country with 3.6 million subscribers on YouTube and one million on Twitch. “The radical left has much more space than the radical right, both should have space“, he also said, in his argument for the creation of a Nazi party. “If someone wants to be anti-Jewish, I think they have the right to be.“, he also launched. Many Jewish associations, institutions and political figures have condemned these statements. Monark, who apologized the next day and said he was “totally drunkduring the broadcast, faces a five-year prison sentence, according to the Sao Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office.
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In April 2019, shortly after coming to power, Jair Bolsonaro made controversial remarks about Nazism, saying during an official visit to Israel that it was a movement “from the left“, because of the term “socialistin the name of the German National Socialist Party. In January 2020, the government’s culture secretary, Roberto Alvim, resigned after causing a scandal with a speech paraphrasing remarks by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. The most recent controversy on this subject dates from last July, when Jair Bolsonaro received in Brasilia the German deputy Beatrix von Storch, granddaughter of Johann Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk, Hitler’s former finance minister.