Calling to create Nazi party, Brazil podcast star sparks outrage, may face charges

SAO PAULO — A Brazilian podcaster who said on air that the South American country should have its own Nazi party triggered outrage Tuesday, with prosecutors saying he could face charges.

“I think there should be a Nazi party recognized by law,” said Bruno Aiub in an interview with lawmakers for his Flow Podcast show, one of the most listened to in Brazil, with 3.6 million subscribers on YouTube and one million on Twitch.

He said during the program that “the radical left has much more space than the radical right, both should have space,” and called for the creation of a Nazi party.

“If someone wants to be anti-Jewish, I think they have the right to be,” added the presenter, who later apologized and claimed he was “totally drunk” when he made the comments.

The video of the show was taken down from social media and the production house, Estudio Flow, said in a statement on Tuesday it had fired the host.

Many Jewish associations, institutions and political figures condemned the statements.

“Hate speech and the defense of hate speech have terrible consequences for humanity, and Nazism is the greatest historical proof of this,” said the Brazil Israelite Confederation.

“No, defending Nazism is not freedom of expression,” the German Embassy in Brazil said on Twitter. To defend Nazism “is to disrespect the memory of the victims and survivors of this regime and to ignore the horrors it caused,” it added.

The public prosecutor’s office announced in a press release that it was going to analyze “the content of the statements” as part of an investigation for “the alleged offense of apologizing for Nazism.”

A centrist lawmaker, Kim Kataguiri of the Podemos party, who was taking part in the broadcast, was also a target of the prosecution’s investigation for having “claimed that Germany had made a mistake by criminalizing the Nazi party,” according to the press release.