Constitutions and penal codes in several countries differ regarding the possibility of accepting hate speech and the apology of Nazism in the name of freedom of expression.
In most of Europe, defending or denying the existence of crimes against humanity — such as the Holocaust — is a violation of the law and can lead to imprisonment. In the United States, the right to free speech is considered universal, no matter how offensive.
The case of youtuber Bruno Aiub, known as Monark, presenter of the Flow podcast, cost him at first the loss of sponsors, the shutdown of the company – which he owned 50% of – and a wave of rejection by the Jewish community, of politicians, lawyers and personalities.
Monark defended the creation of a Nazi party in Brazil saying: “If the guy wants to be an anti-Jew, he should have the right to be”.
If they were in the US, the podcaster could appeal to the First Amendment to the Constitution. The country’s legislation prohibits people from being prosecuted for their beliefs, which in effect allows extremist groups with violent speeches to go unhindered by law. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2020 there were at least 26 neo-Nazi organizations operating in the US.
One of the best known is the National Alliance, founded in the 1970s and led by physicist William Pierce until 2002, the year of his death. The organization advocates, among other things, “the supremacy of the Aryan race” and the accountability of the Jewish community for keeping Americans “hypnotized”.
In several cases, however, people linked to the group went beyond the broad limits of American freedom of expression and committed violent crimes under the neo-Nazi justification. In 2011, a former member of the organization was arrested in Spokane on charges of placing a bomb through a parade honoring Martin Luther King, the historic leader of the civil rights movement. The man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
Four years earlier, the American justice had already convicted three members of the National Alliance for beating a bartender of Latin origin in a bar in Salt Lake City.
Neo-Nazi organizations still infiltrate the American political system. On the list of groups are the American Nazi Party and the National Socialist Movement, also associated with violent crime and newly registered with the Federal Election Commission. “What the US does not tolerate are groups that start to practice violence. The State monitors violent groups and has already banned organizations with ties to white supremacist terrorism”, says David Magalhães, professor of international relations at PUC-SP and coordinator of the Observatory of Far Right.
In Australia there is no specific legislation dealing with the prohibition of the use of Nazi symbols. The Jewish community, on the other hand, is pressuring parliamentarians to pass laws that veto such demonstrations across the country, while the number of swastikas and symbols associated with the Adolf Hitler regime grows in protests against measures imposed to contain the advance of the pandemic – a phenomenon, by the way. , also seen in protest by truck drivers in Canada.
In the state of New South Wales alone, in 2020, 31 cases of flag display with references to Nazism were reported to the police. At the regional level, however, regulations in this regard are already beginning to emerge. Last year the state of Victoria became the first to announce that it will ban Nazi symbols, with reservations for educational occasions.
In Europe, on the other hand, most countries tend to ban the use of Nazi allegories and criminalize denial of the Holocaust and other historically substantiated crimes against humanity.
When Prince Harry, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, went to a costume party dressed in a Nazi uniform in 2005, members of the European Commission even defended that banning symbols referring to the Hitler regime was a priority for the bloc, he recalls. Magalhães, from PUC.
In 2008, the EU recommended that member countries include in their legislation criminal types related to the denial of crimes committed by Nazism. At least 17 of the 27 states followed the guideline.
In France, contesting the existence of crimes against humanity has been a crime since 1990, and can lead to imprisonment of up to one year and a fine of 45,000 euros (R$ 271,600). The legislation also cites as a crime the act of minimizing or trivializing genocides.
In 2016, far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was fined €30,000 for referring to the gas chambers used by the Nazis in concentration camps as a “detail” in the history of Second World War. Four years earlier, he had already been convicted under the same law for saying that the Nazi occupation of France had not been “particularly inhumane”. The politician is the father of the presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, also accused of prejudiced speeches, now placed second in the polls.
There are cases in Eastern European countries where there have been convictions of people who denied, or tried to justify in some way, crimes committed by both Nazis and communist regimes. In Hungary, in the five years that followed the passage of a law to that effect in 2013, more than 50 people were prosecuted. The same happened in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and Slovakia.
The UK, on the other hand, follows a similar line to the US, without specifically criminalizing Holocaust denial – although the legislation frames demonstrations against individuals from ethnic, racial and sexual minorities as a hate crime. The country has also banned at least five neo-Nazi groups based on anti-terrorism laws.
In Germany, neo-Nazis are treated more severely by the courts and face up to five years in prison. According to Magalhães, the Germans have clear in their memory historical moments in which the rise of Nazism was tolerated by society. “That’s why the German state that emerged after World War II created a series of legal and political obstacles to prevent the extreme right from coming to power again,” he says.
Still, German legislation failed to prevent the far-right AfD party from entering parliament. Openly anti-immigration and with a history of xenophobic stances, the party is the first party with representation in the Bundestag to be placed under investigation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), on suspicion of extremism and, as a last resort, risk to democracy.
“In Germany you can’t declare yourself a Nazi, but obviously you can’t control everyone. But if you, for example, carry a Nazi flag, you’ll be the target of a police investigation”, explains René Gertz, retired professor of history at PUC. -RS and UFRGS.
The concern in Europe is also reflected in the rise of nationalist far-right politicians. In October 2020, in Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party was declared a criminal organization, in a historic decision, and its leaders sentenced to prison. Days later, a deputy from Slovakia was sentenced to prison for using Nazi symbols.
