The cartoonist and illustrator Ricardo Siri, known as Liniers, took to his social media to make fun of President Javier Milei's comments regarding the term 'nazi,' which he claims means national socialism and that those who support the left must own it. In a sarcastic tone, Liniers mentioned that Franco was French because his name starts with Franc, John Lennon was a Leninist, and Groucho was a Marxist, among other remarks.
Milei's statements were made in a television interview where he attempted to explain the origins of Nazism, a political movement considered totalitarian, pan-Germanic, and racist by the Royal Spanish Academy and the UN. The latter highlights that Nazism involved the persecution and murder of millions of Jews and Roma, as well as the forced sterilization of Germans of African descent, among other atrocities.
According to the organization, the Nazis also criminalized homosexuals, political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, and opponents of the regime, prioritizing the persecution of Jews as the main threat to their new world order. From 1933 to 1945, the German government enacted an anti-Semitic racist program that culminated in the murder of millions of Jewish people.
Milei's simplistic etymological analysis generated criticism and ridicule on social media, highlighting the importance of understanding the historical and cultural gravity behind terms like 'nazi' and the terrible consequences of the ideology it represents.
