RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Santa Catarina is the state in Brazil with the second-most neo-Nazi groups active on the Internet. The confirmation is evidenced in the numbers from a new Brazilian research study that points to the growth of Nazi-inspired movements in Brazil.
According to the survey, Santa Catarina has 69 cells (groups of three to 40 people with common ideals and activities) in operation, behind only São Paulo, where 99 groups were identified.
The research was carried out by Adriana Dias, PhD in Social Anthropology at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), who has been researching the white neo-Nazi and supremacist discourse in networks for 16 years.
The survey was carried out using programming techniques to identify people who download large amounts of Nazi material from the Internet, who take part in forums and social media focused on the topic, or who are leaders of blogs promoting the content.
“There are several types of databases that analyze various issues. The main thing is the amount of material that someone is reading about the topic. They must have read at least the equivalent of 100mb of neo-Nazi files. So we have a calculation on the margin of error, and also a calculation on how many IPs a person can use, at home, at work, in their parents’ home, etc. From then on we will be seeing demonstrations of these groups publicly or in forums,” explained the researcher in an interview with NSC Total.
Despite some differences, in general, these groups promote intolerance based on some ideals linked to Nazism of racial supremacy and purity. These actions involve violence, humiliation, and discrimination through the production, marketing, and distribution of thought defense advertisements, such as the posters that have already initiated a criminal case in Santa Catarina in recent years.
Among the 69 groups identified in Santa Catarina, the researcher draws attention to the existence of local sections of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) – an organization born in the United States with white supremacist and nationalist ideals. Throughout Brazil, three groups have been identified as KKK sections: one in Niterói (RJ) and two in Blumenau, in the Itajaí Valley of Santa Catarina.
“There are two KKK materials in circulation with reference to Blumenau. One was even placed on the streets, the other was only distributed on the Internet. They are two very different materials. The KKK has dozens of divisions and lineages, with different languages and symbols.”
“The symbol that surfaced on the streets in Blumenau is the American KKK, a younger group, which emerged after the 1980s. The other group in circulation on the Internet is a more closely connected group to the KKK of the Knights of the White Camellia order, which has a completely different language and is more connected to Lutheranism.”
The researcher points out that, in general, groups in Brazil do not have much relationship or contact with each other. The same goes for the two sections in Blumenau. In Adriana’s opinion, they are different groups that may not know each other, or have been divided by some internal conflict – something that she says is common in the development of cells throughout the country. One of the organizations singled out in Blumenau even describes itself as “the first KKK group in Brazil”.
“The KKK has a very strong religious base, a very strong hatred for the black man, the Jew, very deep hatred and very violent practices. So I hope these two groups are small, from what I understand they are small cells, they shouldn’t have more than 10 or 12 members each. I hope they don’t have growth potential. If they do, they tend to be quite violent, because the KKK is violent,” cautions the anthropologist.
Adriana explains that each group works in a particular way, with major differences between a Ku Klux Klan cell – with religious ideals – and a white nationalist supremacist group, for instance. What unites all is their presence on the Internet. All the groups mapped by the researcher engage in the so-called cyberactivism; other cells that have no online presence were not analyzed by the anthropologist.
“I believe the number is even higher than what I found. These groups include younger people, older people, women who perform different roles. And they engage in cyberactivism, meetings, magazines, mentoring of young whites, activities such as rituals and services, and even meetings to beat someone up,” she explains.
Nazism in Santa Catarina
The history of Santa Catarina’s relations with the Nazi movement is not new. A previous study by researcher Adriana Dias in 2009 pointed out that 45,000 Nazi sympathizers lived in SC. Going back in time, in 1928, five years before Hitler took power in Germany, the first cell of the Nazi party in Brazil was founded in Timbó, in the Itajaí Valley.
It would be the first outside Germany and, according to historical records, had 528 members.
Returning to this century, in 2017, “Operation Hateless” of the Blumenau Civil Police identified five people who were allegedly linked to the emergence of various posters with Nazi propaganda in the city. Two of them were linked to another case in the region from 2014 in the city of Itajaí, when posters celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Recently, however, the two men were cleared by the courts.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Adriana says, there was a great exposure of Nazi ideals in Santa Catarina, something that was later forbidden but was kept alive in documents and in the memory of some residents.
“This population nurtured this belief for many years, and then heard that none of it was true. A part of this population certainly retained their frustration and hoped that this was true. It may be an insignificant portion, but in relative numbers, it is considerable, because if all these people unite, the damage is great.”
“It is a segment that has read and reread these documents of the time. People are reading absurd things, the story of the earth being flat, that Nazism is left-wing, readings that are superimposing themselves on reality and can make this small portion gain momentum,” evaluates the researcher.
Source: NSC Total