Voters in the Peruvian town of Queropalca have chosen their new mayor: Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores.

The unusually named candidate for the center-left Ahora Nación party won 34% of the vote. According to local media, the top three candidates were separated by just 42 votes.

Simeon’s candidate application form gives few details (and none about his name), apart from the fact that he manages the Simeon Sac Investment Group.

There have been other politicians called Hitler. In 2018, also in Peru, Hitler beat Lenin in another mayoral race for the district of Yúngar, when Hitler Guesclin Alba Sánchez defeated Lenin Vladimir Rodríguez Valverde.

“I’m the good Hitler,” Alba told broadcasters on the campaign trail, local media reported.

In Namibia, Adolf Hitler Uunona last year won his fifth local election in a row. “As a child I saw it as a totally normal name,” he told the BBC.

  • darthsundhaft@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    There’s no fucking way he was born with that name. These guys have to be changing it for the sole purpose of marketing.

    I’m aware that German’s sought refuge around the world during WW2 but there’s just no way this was on purpose.

    To be fair, I get the same reaction from people naming their kids after religious prophets. Kind of stupid IMO but whatever floats your boat.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      You’d be surprised. In some countries, especially in Africa and South America, people have a pretty different take on how to choose a name.

      Trevor Noah talks about it in a chapter of his book “Born a Crime”, as a teen he had a good friend named Hitler, had no idea there was anything weird about the name.

      Long story short, that’s probably his given name.

    • Enkrod@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      To be fair, I get the same reaction from people naming their kids after religious prophets.

      Yeah, what kind of people give their kids weird names like Amos, Anna, Hannah, Daniel, Deborah, James, Jesus, John, Muhammad, Nathan or Noah.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Different parts of the world have, you know, different perceptions because of different culture and history. For example, Nazi paraphernalia are popular in Thailand because they just aren’t aware of how bad the Nazis are like Imperial Japan is. Speaking of Imperial Japan, try waving the Imperial Japanese flag anywhere in Asia and you’d be slaughtered immediately. The Imperial Japanese flag doesn’t really elicit the same reaction in the West as the swastika.

      So, I reckon that in South America, since they never directly fought against the Axis, the names of Hitler and Mussolini are trivial to them.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      People around the world have different education, if even any at all.

      All they know it’s a famous historical name. They probably have no idea of the history behind it.

    • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      There are countries where history and WWII in particular is so poorly taught, and instead people are heavily reliant on pop culture, especially how movies (mis)interpret WWII and thus those people think it’s a huge fairy tale. So we have actual people, some places and things (there exist in India an ice cream cone product called Hitler) named after the world’s worst dictators.

      • JayK117@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        Yeah, the USA is pretty bad right now, the entire country forgot who the bad guys in WW2 were while still somehow supporting Israel now.