Brazil Cracks Down on Surprising New Threat: Neo-Nazis
The Brazilian government has raided neo-Nazi groups across 10 states this year, part of a push by the new Lula administration to prosecute far-right extremists.
In southern Brazil in July, Laureano Toscani and João Guilherme Correa were smoking cigarettes along a busy road in their prison-issued garb, shorts and sandals, waiting for a ride after seven months in jail.
Mr. Toscani was once convicted of stabbing a group of Jewish men, and Mr. Correa has been accused of murdering a couple leaving a party. But this time, they were behind bars for attending what they said was a harmless barbecue.
The Brazilian authorities, however, say it was something far more sinister: a meeting of the Hammerskins, a neo-Nazi group
founded in Dallas in 1988 that they say has recently found its way thousands of miles south, to Brazil’s most starkly conservative region, reflecting a surge in far-right extremists in Latin America’s largest nation.
In September 2022, the state police in Santa Catarina began trailing the Hammerskins as members strategized on how to attract new recruits.
Two months later, as eight men met at a farmhouse outside the coastal city of Florianópolis, a police hate-crimes unit burst in, arresting everyone under anti-discrimination laws and accusing them of being members of the Hammerskins. Two other accused members were arrested weeks later.
On the members’ phones, the police said, they found antisemitic and racist content, including a message that one had sent in a group chat saying that “Black people need to die every day.” The police said they believed the group was aided by at least two American Hammerskin members who had traveled to Brazil several times.
The raid was part of a larger crackdown on neo-Nazi groups amid a rise in extremist movements and sentiments in Brazil that has spurred a greater number of school shootings and stabbing attacks, including at least 11 this year.
The Brazilian government has raided neo-Nazi groups across 10 states this year, part of a push by the new Lula administration to prosecute far-right extremists.
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