Victor Farias

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Victor Farías is a Chilean historian who has studied philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the presence of Nazis in Chile, and the Chilean left. He has garnered considerable controversy because of his allegations against Salvador Allende and the Socialist Party of Chile in general.

Farías was born in Santiago in 1940. He graduated from the Catholic University of Chile in 1961 and continued his studies in Freiburg, Germany, where he obtained a doctorate in Philosophy. During his stay in Germany, Farías studied under such German thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Rainer Marten, and Eugen Fink. Farías returned to Chile in 1971 but fled back to Germany after the 1973 coup which deposed President Allende. Farías became an investigator and professor in the Free University of Berlin, where he worked until 2006.

In 1987, Farías published Heidegger and Nazism, which concluded that Heidegger's philosophy is inherently fascist. The book obatined international attention and was published in 14 countries. During this period Farías also published studies on Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Farías created controversity with his publication of Salvador Allende: Antisemitism and Euthanasia (Salvador Allende: Antisemitismo y Eutanasia) which reviewed Allende's graduation thesis and claimed that the former Chilean president expressed anti-Semitic views and supported Nazi Germany's plans of sterilization of the mentally unfit. Farías' book, published in Chile, Spain, France, and Brazil, was heavily criticized by Allende's supporters, who published another book claiming to refute Farías' thesis. In 2006, Farías responded with Salvador Allende: The End of the Myth (Salvador Allende: El fin del mito), which debunked some of his critics and published new documents detailing the Nazi connections of the Chilean Socialist Party in the 1930s and well as the dealings between the Soviet Union and Allende's Chile based on documents from the East German archives.