Far-right presidential candidate tells community ‘this is Argentina, not Israel’

An accused neo-Nazi running for president in Argentina said he would expel the Israeli ambassador.

Alejandro Biondini, a veteran far-right ultra nationalist leader, is the presidential candidate for the Patriotic Front party. On Friday, Biondini launched his presidential campaign for the Oct. 27 elections in front of the Italian civil organisation, the Unione e Benevolenza, in the centre of Buenos Aires.

Biondini has said he will expel the Israeli ambassador from the country.

“I define myself as a clear defender of the Palestinian State,” he tweeted in February. “I repudiate the colonialist genocidal Zionism. I reaffirm it: when I am president I will expel the British and the Israeli ambassadors.”

Argentina fought the British over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

In launching his campaign, Biondinie reiterated his promise and warned the country’s Jewish leadership.

“I said to the DAIA [Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organisation] that this is Argentina … this is not Israel,” to applause and shouts from the crowd. There was violence in the street before the event.

Biondini has openly espoused antisemitism and his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

“We vindicate Adolf Hitler,” he said in a TV interview in 1991. Three years earlier he had led chants of “Death to traitors, cowards and Jews” at a gathering of extreme-right demonstrators in Buenos Aires.

His previous party, New Triumph, was banned by Argentina’s electoral court in 2009. In November 2018, a federal judge in Buenos Airs granted approval to Biondini’s new party, Patriotic Front. DAIA condemned the judge’s decision and said in a statement that the party is a “neo-Nazi and ultra nationalist movement, a danger to an egalitarian society.”

The October elections will choose the next president for a four-year term, as well as governors of the 24 provinces, mayors and local and federal legislators.