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At the end of the Day Against Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, a group of hooded individuals attacked a flag of sexual diversity raised at the Obelisk in the City of Buenos Aires.

Early Tuesday morning, the "Jóvenes NOS" group, the youth wing of the party led by former presidential candidate José Gómez Centurión, posted a video on their Twitter account showing two unidentified people cutting down the LGBTQ+ Pride flag that was flying from the "BA" structure at the Obelisk. "Let's cut the lobbies, let's cut the taxes. Give back the homeland!" read the caption of the video, which was posted at 1:14 a.m.

"What's striking is that it's young people doing it. But I think that also has to do with a certain spectacularity they have to give to the events in this persistent appearance with an expression of the far right, inspired by Bolsonaro and the experience of Brazil and somewhat borrowed from the right wing in the United States, with the particularities of our own history," said Ricardo Vallarino, a member of 100% Diversity and Rights.

"This shows that we need to keep working."

On Monday morning, May 17, as part of the commemoration of the fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Undersecretariat of Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism of the City of Buenos Aires had raised the flag on the flagpole next to the Obelisk.

Pamela Malewicz, Undersecretary of Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism, told Presentes: "With these actions, we try to highlight what this day means internationally, and we find in the early hours of the morning an act of such violence, of such hatred. It puts us in a very shocking situation."

Furthermore, "this situation shows that we still need to work even harder because some groups or some extreme expressions generate these absolutely violent reactions," he continued.

In a statement released on official social media, the Buenos Aires City Government reported that "the 20th Prosecutor's Office has intervened to investigate the incident." Regarding this, Malewicz added that the Government is "available to provide any available material, including security camera footage, should the prosecutor's office request it."

Based on information from its website, the NOS party "proclaims, among other principles, a transcendent vision of life," and its members add: "which we defend from conception to natural death. In this sense, we recognize the family as the basic unit of society." Furthermore, they promote "values-based education and the family as the primary educator." And they conclude: "That is why we say 'No to gender ideology.'"

"A repeated attack on our symbols"

Upon learning of the attack, the FALGBT organization Zona FALGBT expressed the following on their social media: “It saddens us that for some people, being a soldier is synonymous with hating. It infuriates us to think that this wave of fascism disguises itself as anti-establishment and has the audacity to run in elections. We want to make it clear that they are neither the first nor the last to seek to erase our existence, and yet we remain here, with our flag held high, our pride in the wind, and our desire still beating.”

"What we're seeing here is a repeated attack on our symbols. It seems like these far-right groups are on the defensive and somehow repudiating the great strides made in LGBT rights and feminism in our country," Vallarino added.

This Tuesday, on the Day of the Cockade, Gómez Centurión took advantage of the occasion to continue highlighting the violation of the rights of the LGBT+ population. On his Twitter account, he posted an image with the news of the defacement of the flag along with the comment: “On the Day of the Cockade, the media chooses to talk about a flag that represents a lobby of bureaucrats lining their pockets with people's taxes. How many cockades did the Larreta government put up around Buenos Aires? Give back the country!”

“We know that the right wing always uses national symbols as a way to create a monolithic image and oppose supposed particularities that claim rights. They position themselves as representatives of the whole, of the entire nation, as if they were the only representatives. They oppose the national flag to the rainbow flag as if LGBTQ+ identity were somehow undermining or incompatible with national identity,” Vallarino explained.

"In that sense," he continued, "there is an inability or a resistance to conceiving of national identity as a dynamic identity. We are considered a kind of internal enemy who, at the same time, since we are an international movement, is also considered an external enemy, someone who is infiltrating the nation. It is a clearly reactive phenomenon and a form of resistance against a movement that has been recognized by the State."