San Diego GOP chairman defends himself after old Nazi video surfaces

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party, is attacking a television station for reporting about a video from the early 1990s that features him with an image of Adolf Hitler by calling the report a "smear.''

The KPBS report on Friday, Aug. 21 said the video shows an image of Hitler floating between photos of three young men, among them an image of a young Krvaric wearing dark shades.

The video was produced by a group called Fairlight that was founded during the late 1980s in Sweden, according to KPBS. The 49-year-old Krvaric has previously acknowledged he was at one point a leader of the group.

"To go back 30 years to when I was a teenage computer nerd to smear me is low, running a shopped around story, rejected by more reputable outlets, about a computer animation programmed by someone else on a computer that's been defunct for three decades. KPBS ought to be ashamed,'' Krvaric tweeted Friday.

Krvaric elaborated on Saturday, tweeting: "For the record, any Nazi imagery is disgusting. I didn't create the computer animation, didn't choose the graphics, and I obviously don't support anything like that. Which would be obvious had KPBS bothered to talk to ANYONE that knows me or looked up my statements over the years.''

Kravaric recently announced plans to step down from the chairmanship of the County GOP in January. He was born in Sweden and immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. He became a U.S. citizen in 2003 and was elected to his first two-year term as local GOP chairman in 2007.

County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, a Republican, expressed concerns about the video, telling the station, "I've certainly had several concerns with Mr. Krvaric's leadership of the local Republican party and his troubling background has been highlighted in the past, but I wasn't aware of this disturbing video.''

Efforts to obtain a response from other local GOP leaders were not immediately successful.