By Leandro Ocón
There is a widely publicized prejudice in the world of Argentina as a country with nazi roots. This idea of “nazi” is loaded with ambiguities that constantly serve as a mechanism for a variety of accusations and criticisms of Argentina’s past and present. This discourse has been so deeply impregnated that local referents reproduce it and keep alive the myth of nazi Argentina, which is nothing more than a political invention promoted by the United States in the middle of the 20th century and which is still in force in many ways.
Argentina is a complex, diverse and peripheral country. As in other countries in the world, there are and have been discriminatory social manifestations or difficulties in the inclusion of minorities. However, Argentine society in general is considered, broadly speaking, inclusive and tolerant; there are laws that protect the rights of all people regardless of their race or ethnicity. It is a truism. A melting pot, a land of open doors and a neutral country in the face of global wars are some of the descriptions we can use for this country.
Nevertheless, during the World Cup in Qatar, intellectuals such as Erika Denise Edwards fell into the trap of analyzing Argentina from the U.S. point of view. In a viralized article in The Washington Post, Edwards overlooked Argentina’s “dark past” to explain the absence of black players in the Argentine national team. As a member of a society that is a counterexample of the fight against racism, many American intellectuals bite their tails for the shameful attitudes of their own society. Lacking both timing and social sensitivity, the appearance of this text can be explained by at least two reasons: the editorial decision to join the World Cup debates on social networks, on the back of a powerful national team like Argentina; and the intention to reinforce the always attractive theme of discrimination before a “woke” audience. With a slightly more cynical perspective, it could also be thought that The Washington Post took advantage of the opportunity to reinforce the already installed idea of “nazi Argentina”, widely disseminated on the Internet in the form of memes, videos and decontextualized photos.
In a new format, included in the world of political correctness, the construction of the idea of a racist or discriminatory Argentina predates even former president Juan Domingo Perón. The new format of accusations seeks continuous atonement for Argentine faults rooted in European migration. This discourse took definite shape from 1942 onwards when, reluctant to the request by the United States to block trade relations with the Axis, Ramón Castillo’s Argentina began to receive targeted blows to damage its reputation by linking it to fascism -as opposed to the values of freedom, democracy and the republic-.
Construction of falsehood
In August 1942, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the renowned Admiral Storni, had a suggestive epistolary exchange with the Secretary of State of the United States, Cordell Hull, who insisted that Argentina should explicitly declare itself in favor of the Allies. Storni was a recognized Allyophile, in an Argentine political context where an anti-American seed was germinating. When the 1943 coup occurred, any possibility of improving ties with the United States broke down and Storni decided to resign.
Argentina had pragmatic reasons for not giving up neutralism, a position that even the United Kingdom favored. Raanan Rein notes that the British explained several times to the Americans that characterizing Argentina as Axis-friendly was inaccurate to say the least, not least because “the flow of products needed for the Allied war effort never stopped,” and he stressed Argentine neutrality because it “ensured that no acts of sabotage would occur against Argentine meatpacking plants, grain elevators or port facilities serving the Allied cause.”
Around 1946, a severe clash of wills took place during the electoral campaign of that year. The rise of Perón, who was considered a great referent of the nationalist political trend -critical of U.S. hegemony- was seen as a danger to U.S. pretensions in the country. At that time, the US State Department published the Blue Book, a report of undisguised propagandistic tone. In the recent translation produced by Más y Prestía (2021), with the aesthetics of a pamphlet, the cover of the report vocifies, “Argentina exposed!” This is an official U.S. government indictment of the fascist regime in Argentina, entitled “Sensational case history of the Nazi-Argentine plot against the freedom and peace of the world”.
The document did not accuse Perón exclusively, but a whole socio-political-historical cleavage in Argentina.
This text was promoted by Spruille Braden, the US ambassador in Argentina at that time. Perón’s advisor, John William Cooke, had the witty idea of generating the slogan “Braden or Perón”, in view of the presidential elections. With that slogan as a standard, Peronism appropriated the stigma and contributed to encapsulate the myth in a local logic that positioned Peronism against the United States. It was an electoral victory at the time, but the myth endured.
Eventually, it was fed by the policy of attracting German scientists, something that many countries of the time also did. A question that has been attributed to the historian Jorge Abelardo Ramos sheds light on the particularities of the Argentine case. “How can it be explained that all the nazis who went to Moscow were socialists; those who traveled to the United States or London were liberals; and the only nazis who were nazis came to Argentina?”
Continuity of stigma
Through different operations throughout history, the United States (motivated by specific political interests) has managed to impose the idea that Argentina is a nazi country. This ultimately translates into an anti-Argentina campaign. The revival of the racist Argentina stems from a cultural movement of neo-colonial powers, which even they themselves have not been able to solve.
The bias is evident when many North American intellectuals ask why there are no black players in the Argentine national soccer team. It is true we are the result of European migration, but it is also true we did not build our wealth with the slave migration. On the contrary. Argentina is the result of the struggle for colonial emancipation in South America. Our political economy was not cotton.
Even so, due to ignorance or cultural colonization, this idea has been widely repeated, even by sectors that identify themselves with “national causes”, in the form of memes, videos and decontextualized photos that appear on social networks. In this way, Argentina has revalidated its title of segregationist country, not only in the eyes of the world, but also in their own eyes.
The myth of nazi Argentina transcends the accusations against Perón or the stories about the refuge offered to officers who were linked to the Third Reich. The myth argues for a deeper issue, in our own cultural entrails, something of which we are not aware, but which demands atonement. It is not denying the persistence of certain social challenges that seek to be solved. The main issue lies in the media exacerbation of problems constructed by a political machinery that structures a stigma, myth or black legend about the national identity. In any case, the construction of that identity is a task to be solved without any external interference. It is not necessary to resort to (or mindlessly digest) political discourses that external actors, with certain geopolitical interests, design with ill intentions.
The author is an International Speaker, Book Author and University Professor specialized in International Political Economy and Geopolitics.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.
