There was no change in the level of antisemitism in Chile in 2000. Several threatening phone calls were reported after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September. Due to strong public protests and eventual government measures, the international congress planned by the Patria Nueva Sociedad for April did not take place. The number of Chilean neo-Nazi websites increased considerably in 2000.

The Jewish community of Chile, numbering approximately 21,000 out of a total population of 14.5 million, is mostly concentrated in the city of Santiago de Chile, with a scattering in the provinces of Valparaíso, Viña del Rancagua, Concepción, Temuco and Valdivia. Most of the Jews are descendants of refugees from Germany and are religiously unaffiliated. The Representative Committee of Jewish Organizations in Chile (CREJ) encompasses all the Jewish communities and organizations in the country. There is a large Jewish school and several publications cater to the needs of the community.

The Patria Nueva Sociedad (PNS) focused its activity in the first part of 2000 on preparing for the First International National Socialist Ideological Encounter (Primer Encuentro Ideológico Internacional Nacional-Socialista) that was scheduled for 17 to 22 April (see also ASW 1999/2000). Led by Alexis López Tapia, the organizing committee (including Ignacio Arce, José Olivares, Felipe Moraga, Catherina Pinoleo and Jorge Gracía), advertised the congress in the media and at meetings on university campuses. On 11 April the government issued a list of 100 possible participants in the congress whose entry into the country would be prohibited (for a detailed account of the efforts to prevent the congress from taking place in Chile, see ASW 1999/2000). One day before the congress was due to open, López Tapia was detained on charges of irregular economic dealings and a bank debt dating from 1998. Police then entered the congress venue where fewer than ten people were gathered. They arrested and deported a Bolivian and a Peruvian. Two days later, López was released from custody and a new attempt was made to hold the congress in Santiago de Chile. According to López, participants came from Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. The resolutions were published on the Internet. These included setting up a pan-Latin American communication network for coordination and cooperation; reaffirming their intention to use the legal system in gain political power and consolidate the party, and to begin collecting signatures for this purpose; calling for a second meeting to be held in Bolivia in 2001. Participant groups would be Patria Nueva Sociedad (Chile), Partido Nuevo Triunfo (Argentina) and Partido Nueva Sociedad Venezolana (Venezuela). The coordinator is a 20-year-old Bolivian student from La Paz, Gerardo Veale. An Internet page has been created to propagandize the meeting.

Despite the failure to hold the congress as planned, López Tapia and his movement were active throughout the year. They radicalized their ideology and augmented their links with other neo-Nazi groups, especially in Argentina.

In August a new PNS web page, Chilean Action (Accion Chilena), appeared on the Internet server Libre Opinión of the Argentinean neo-Nazi Alejandro Biondini. The PNS played an active part in promoting Bionidi’s presidential candidacy (see Argentina). At the launching of a journal by the same name in Sepember, López Tapia said that it would replace the publication Pendragón, which he had edited, because the latter’s ideology no longer represented his movement. The group behind the new page is extremely pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel and in October called for a mass protest outside the Israeli embassy.

It should be noted that there was a considerable growth in the number of Chilean neo-Nazi web pages in 2000, which now number 17. They include sites such as Era Hitleriana, AberraZion, SOSPatagonia, and Mito Antártico. This list represents a variety of groups disseminating antisemitic and neo-Nazi ideology, some focusing on the alleged Jewish-Zionist conspiracy to conquer areas of South America. Many use the server of Argentinean neo-Nazi leader Alejandro Biondini, who was undoubtedly instrumental in helping them set up their pages.

In December López Tapia appeared on the national television program “El Termómetro” (The Thermometer). The subject was “Are we, the Chilean people, racist?” López Tapis denied his ideology was neo-Nazi and labeled Zionism an extremely xenophobic and racist movement.

The content of the cultural and political quarterly Revista Ciudad de los Césares is nationalist and ultra-right-wing, without being openly Nazi. Its founder is the publisher Erwin Robertson, a professor of history with revisionist tendencies. In August the journal published an article supporting the convening of the neo-Nazi congress.

The contributors to the journal organized a conference, which took place on 8–10 September 2000 in Santiago de Chile. This event is a traditional meeting of Chilean neo-Nazis. The propaganda for the event was published in the journal and on the Internet, especially in Biondini’s Libre Opinión. More than 50 persons attended this event, most of them prosperous elderly people.

The antisemitic and Holocaust denying group Acción NS Individual is known principally through the messages of its leader, 24-year-old “Wotan Goebbels,” honoring Rudolf Hess on various neo-Nazi pages of the Internet. “Goebbels” allegedly had contacts with the antisemitic Movimiento Nacional Sindicalista (MNS; see ASW 1998/9) and the defunct Vanguardia Nacionalista. This Internet group is composed mainly of university student friends of the leader.

Neo-Nazi skinheads, concentrated in the cities of Santiago, Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, among others, are especially numerous in Chile The Valparaíso group reportedly met on 5 September, the date Chilean neo-Nazis traditionally commemorate the killing of a group of National Socialists by government forces in 1938. According to the largest daily in the country El Mercurio, a group of 50 youngsters, wearing black clothes with Nazi symbols, met on the Las Torpederas beach. When the press tried to talk to them, they dispersed. This meeting was much smaller than in previous years.

The skinheads, who are extremely antisemitic and xenophobic, were relatively inactive in 2000. There have been no known violent attacks by skinheads in Chile. Relations with the PNS are unfriendly. Some skinheads, such as the Maipú and the Al Sur del Mundo, have begun using the Internet to communicate with each other and spread their ideology.

The Palestinian community in Chile, numbering 300,000, is one of the largest in the world. Several Palestinian organizations, such as the Associación de Jóvenes por Palestina (Pro-Palestinine Youth Association – AJP), the Frente para la Liberación de Palestina (Front for the Liberation of Palestine – FPLP) and the Palestinian embassy in Chile, have been active since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September, pressing leading Chilean figures to condemn Israel and encouraging neo-Nazi groups to join their activities. Notable among these groups is Patria Nueva Sociedad, whose antisemitism serves as a commdenwith some of the Palestinian organizations.

The publication Diario Estado Palestino, edited by Club Palestino, which began appearing in October, uses extremely inflammatory language against Israelis and Jews. Eugenio Chachuán, who runs a research center, Centro de Estudios Arabes, within the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Chile, has declared himself anti-Jewish, as well as anti-Israel. He claims that the Israeli embassy’s warnings about a possible bomb attack in Chile against a Jewish target mean that Israel itself is preparing to carry out such an attack. According to Argentinean intelligence, Chile is one of the Latin American countries most vulnerable to an Islamist terrorist attack, possibly because it is a democratic country with no anti-discrimination laws to curb extremist activity.