Editing Eva Perón (section)

===Allegations of fascism and antisemitism===
{{blockquote|Fewer antisemitic incidences took place in Argentina during Perón's rule than during any other period in the 20th century.&nbsp;... Upon reading the numerous speeches that [Juan] Perón pronounced against antisemitism during his first two presidencies, it immediately becomes clear that no other president before Perón had rejected discrimination against Jews so clearly and unambiguously. The same goes for Eva Duarte de Perón. In many of her speeches, Evita argued that it was the country's oligarchy that upheld antisemitic attitudes, but that Peronism did not.|[[Raanan Rein]]<ref>Rein, Raanan. [https://books.google.com/books/about/Populism_and_Ethnicity.html?id=ZX0OywEACAAJ ''Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina'']. McGill-Queen's University Press. {{ISBN| 0-22-800166-8}} Back cover; page 4.</ref>}}

[[File:Evita y Golda Meir.jpg|thumb|right|On 9 April 1951, [[Golda Meir]], then Labor Minister of [[Israel]], met with Perón to thank her for the aid that the Eva Perón Foundation had given Israel.<ref>Rein, Raanan. [https://books.google.com/books/about/Populism_and_Ethnicity.html?id=ZX0OywEACAAJ ''Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina'']. McGill-Queen's University Press. {{ISBN| 0-22-800166-8}} p. 82.</ref>]]

From the start, Juan Perón's opponents accused him of being a [[fascism|fascist]]. [[Spruille Braden]], a diplomat from the United States who was greatly supported by Juan Perón's opponents, campaigned against Juan Perón's first candidacy on the platform that Juan Perón was a fascist and a Nazi. The perception that the Peróns were fascists may have been enhanced during Evita's 1947 European tour, during which, she was a guest of honor of [[Francisco Franco]]. By 1947, Franco had become politically isolated because he was one of the few remaining right-wing authoritarian leaders who was able to retain his power. Franco, therefore, was in desperate need of a political ally. With nearly a third of Argentina's population of Spanish descent, it seemed natural for Argentina to have diplomatic relations with Spain. Commenting on the international perception of Evita during her 1947 European tour, Fraser and Navarro write, "It was inevitable that Evita be viewed in a fascist context. Therefore, both Evita and Perón were seen to represent an ideology which had run its course in Europe, only to re-emerge in an exotic, theatrical, even farcical form in a faraway country."<ref name="Fraser 100">Fraser & Navarro (1996:100).</ref>

Laurence Levine, the former president of the U.S.-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes that in contrast to [[Nazism|Nazi ideology]], the Peróns were not [[Antisemitism|anti-Semitic]]. In the book ''Inside Argentina from Perón to [[Carlos Menem|Menem]]: 1950–2000 from an American Point of View'', Levine writes:

{{blockquote|The American government demonstrated no knowledge of Perón's deep admiration for Italy (and his distaste for Germany, whose culture he found too rigid). Nor did they appreciate that although anti-Semitism existed in Argentina, Perón's own views and his political associations were not anti-Semitic. They paid no attention to the fact that Perón sought out the Jewish community in Argentina to assist in developing his policies and that one of his most important allies in organizing the industrial sector was José Ber Gelbard, a Jewish immigrant from Poland.<ref>Levine (p. 23).</ref>}}
[[File:Gelbard y peron.jpg|thumb|right|Juan Perón and future Economy Minister [[José Ber Gelbard]]]]

Biographer Robert D. Crassweller writes, "Peronism was not fascism", and "Peronism was not Nazism." Crassweller also refers to the comments of U.S. Ambassador [[George S. Messersmith]]. While visiting Argentina in 1947, Messersmith made the following statement: "There is not as much social discrimination against Jews here as there is right in New York or in most places at home."<ref name="Crassweller">Crassweller (1987).</ref>

''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine published an article by [[Tomás Eloy Martínez]]—Argentine writer, journalist, and former director of the [[Latin American]] program at [[Rutgers University]]—titled "The Woman Behind the Fantasy: Prostitute, Fascist, Profligate—Eva Peron Was Much Maligned, Mostly Unfairly". In this article, Martínez writes that the accusations that Eva Perón was a fascist, a Nazi, and a thief had been made against her for decades. He wrote that the allegations were untrue:

{{blockquote|She was not a fascist—ignorant, perhaps, of what that ideology meant. And she was not greedy. Though she liked jewelry, furs and Dior dresses, she could own as many as she desired without the need to rob others.&nbsp;... In 1964 [[Jorge Luis Borges]] stated that "the mother of that woman [Evita]" was "the madam of a whorehouse in Junín." He repeated the calumny so often that some still believe it or, more commonly, think Evita herself, whose lack of sex appeal is mentioned by all who knew her, apprenticed in that imaginary brothel. Around 1955 the pamphleteer Silvano Santander employed the same strategy to concoct letters in which Evita figures as an accomplice of the Nazis. It is true that (Juan) Perón facilitated the entrance of Nazi criminals to Argentina in 1947 and 1948, thereby hoping to acquire advanced technology developed by the Germans during the war. But Evita played no part.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1997/int/970120/cinema.the_woman.html |title=The Woman Behind the Fantasy: Prostitute, Fascist, Profligate – Eva Perón Was Much Maligned, Mostly Unfairly |last=Martínez |first=Tomás Eloy |date=20 January 1997 |magazine=Time |access-date=28 January 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011221053805/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1997/int/970120/cinema.the_woman.html |archive-date=21 December 2001 }}</ref>}}

The governments that preceded Juan Perón's government were anti-Semitic but his government was not.<ref>[http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1039034580 ''The Jews and Perón: Communal Politics and National Identity in Peronist Argentina, 1946–1955'' by Lawrence D. Bell], PhD dissertation, 2002, Ohio State University, Retrieved 2 May 2008</ref> Juan Perón "eagerly and enthusiastically" attempted to recruit the Jewish community into his government and set up a branch of the Peronist party for Jewish members, known as the Organización Israelita Argentina (OIA). Perón's government was the first to court the Argentine Jewish community and the first to appoint Jewish citizens to public office. The Peronist regime has been accused of being fascist, but it has been argued that what passed for fascism under Perón never took hold in Latin America; additionally, because the Peronist regime allowed rival political parties to exist, it cannot be described as [[totalitarian]].<ref>Passmore, Kevin. [https://books.google.com/books?id=gee7VLcMP8gC&dq=fascism+a+very+short+introduction ''Fascism: A Very Short Introduction'']. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-280155-4}}.</ref>