In Portugal’s election, darkness gathers.
Like the leprous tracks of an unseen plague, fascism reaches out as the legacies of our history, like hungry ghosts who seek to possess us with madness and degradation of our humanity.
Portugal is a shining example of how we can reimagine and transform ourselves and our choices about how to be human together, a global colonial empire which liberated herself and her colonies in the 1974 Carnation Revolution.
A wave of fascist subversions of democracy and electoral captures of power throughout Europe now threatens to falsify, commodify, and dehumanize us and steal our souls, in coordinated actions by a Nazi revivalist Fourth Reich, exactly as we here in America have long endured in Traitor Trump’s Theatre of Cruelty.
Let us give to fascist tyranny the only reply it merits; Never Again!
Yes, but how? Herein I signpost that as we are all being attacked together, we may find greater power in international solidarity and a united front in Resistance.
When they come for us, let those who would enslave us find not a humankind defeated by learned helplessness and division, but a United Humankind in which we are all guarantors of each other’s liberty, equality, and universal human rights.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
As written by Alexander C. Kaufman in Huffpost, in an article entitled Portugal’s Far Right Surges In Biggest Election Since Dictatorship Ended 50 Years Ago; “Portugal’s far right is set to take on its biggest role in governing the country since the fall of the fascist Estado Novo regime 50 years ago after quadrupling its bloc of lawmakers in the national Parliament.
The results of Sunday’s election are not yet final, but by Monday morning showed the hardline party Chega had won at least 48 of the parliament’s 230 seats, up from 12. The center-right Democratic Alliance — led by the Social Democrats with a couple of tiny conservative parties — secured 79 seats. The Socialists claimed 77.
Chega — Portuguese for “enough” — formed just five years ago as a right-wing faction of the traditional center-right Social Democrats split off under the leadership of Andre Ventura, a charismatic former sportscaster who gained notoriety by attacking gay rights and Portugal’s tiny Roma minority.
Its rise to power over the last few elections shocked many in a country that had seemed immune to the strain of bombastic populism animating the political right in France, the Netherlands and Germany, inoculated by such recent memories of authoritarian rule.
But Chega’s anti-establishment rhetoric found new purchase among Portuguese voters after the long-ruling Socialist Party government collapsed in November amid a corruption scandal involving alleged backroom deals for major green infrastructure projects.
Ahead of Sunday’s snap election, Chega papered the country’s traffic circles with billboards pitching Ventura as the man to “cleanse” Portugal’s political class, which the far-right blamed for everything from stagnant wages to high housing costs.
Luis Montenegro, leader of the Social Democratic Party, had previously ruled out a coalition with the far right. Without Chega, however, the Democratic Alliance does not have enough votes to command a parliamentary majority.
While Montenegro’s chief rival, Pedro Nuno Santos, conceded defeat after his center-left Socialist Party’s nine-year run came to an end, he refused to support the center-right coalition’s agenda, including across-the-board tax cuts, according to Reuters.
Ventura told reporters that Sunday’s vote “clearly showed” Portuguese voters wanted a Democratic Alliance that includes Chega. If the center-right refuses to work with Chega and cannot govern, Ventura said the blame will fall on Montenegro.
If Montenegro is unable to form a government, he could end up resigning, clearing the way for a party leader with a different view of Chega.
“The new [Social Democrat] leader may feel differently about the opportunity of governing along with Chega,” said José Santana Pereira, an associate professor of political science at the University Institute of Lisbon.
It’s difficult to tell what Chega’s priorities would be in a government. Unlike its allied far-right movements elsewhere in Europe, the Portuguese hardliners support the European Union and take relatively moderate positions on immigration. While the party’s nostalgia for Portugal’s imperial past has attracted conservative Catholics, Ventura has said Chega would not reopen the debate on the legality of abortion.
“Chega doesn’t present a clear political program, so it’s very difficult to see,” António Costa Pinto, a research professor at the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences, told HuffPost ahead of the election. “Chega is changing its position every day. It’s like Donald Trump.”
The election notches another victory for Europe’s far right.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who grew up as part of a youth group descended from dictator Benito Mussolini’s political machine, took power in late 2022 and just survived a major electoral test in a local vote.
Despite extremist statements vowing to ban Muslim houses of worship, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders won a stunning upset in November’s election just weeks after Portugal’s corruption scandal erupted.
The radical Alternative for Germany party made major gains in last year’s election, and polls show the far-right movement in second place ahead of next year’s vote.”
As written by Sam Jones and Lili Bayer in The Guardian, in an article entitled Portugal election: centre-right alliance claims victory, rejects role for far right; “The leader of Portugal’s centre-right Democratic Alliance, Luis Montenegro, has claimed victory after a closely contested parliamentary election that saw the far-right surge.
With almost 99% of Sunday’s votes counted, the Democratic Alliance – an electoral platform made up of the large Social Democratic party (PSD) and two smaller conservative parties – and the Socialist party (PS) were each on 28.67%.
The far-right Chega party was in third place with 18%.
In the early hours of Monday, Montenegro reiterated his election promise not to rely on Chega to govern or to strike any deals with the populists, although it was unclear if he could govern without their support.
Montenegro told a crowd of cheering supporters it was crucial for political parties in the new parliament to act responsibly and “comply with the wish of the Portuguese people”.
“I always said that winning the elections would mean having one vote more than any other candidacy, and only in those circumstances would I accept to be prime minister,” he said in an address to party supporters shortly after midnight.
“It seems inescapable that the AD won the elections and that the Socialists lost,” he added after partial official results showed his side secured a slim lead over the Socialists, in power since 2015, in Sunday’s polls.
The leader of the Socialist party, Pedro Nuno Santos, conceded defeat and congratulated the Democratic Alliance on its victory.
“Everything indicates that the result won’t enable the Socialist Party to be the most voted party,” Nuno Santos said, according to Bloomberg.
The result marked a huge surge for Chega, which was founded five years ago by André Ventura, a former TV football pundit who was once a rising star in the PSD. The party broke through in the 2019 election, attracting 1.3% of the vote and gaining its first MP in Portugal’s 230-seat assembly. Three years later, it took 7.2% of the vote and won 12 seats.
The vote was triggered by the socialist prime minister, António Costa, resigning in November after an investigation was launched into alleged illegalities in his administration’s handling of large green investment projects.
Costa – who had been in office since 2015 and who won a surprise absolute majority in the 2022 general election – has not been accused of any crime. He said that while his conscience was clear, he felt he had no choice but to step down because the “duties of prime minister are not compatible with any suspicion of my integrity”.
He also announced that he would not be running for prime minister in the election, leaving the Socialist party in the hands of Nuno Santos, a former infrastructure minister from the leftwing of the party.
Speaking as the results came in, Costa acknowledged his party’s performance was “far from the one we had two years ago and far from the one we had wanted”.
Although Montenegro, has explicitly ruled out any deals with Chega because of what he calls Ventura’s “often xenophobic, racist, populist and excessively demagogic” views, he is now likely to come under considerable pressure from his own party to reach an agreement with the far-right party to help the PSD into government.
Even with the backing of the smaller centre-right Liberal Initiative – which is on course to finish fourth on around 4.9% – any potential minority government led by the Democratic Alliance would probably still have to rely on Chega’s support to pass legislation, leaving its stability in the hands of the far right.
According to the Expresso newspaper, Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has broken with the convention of presidential neutrality by saying he will do everything possible to prevent Chega from reaching office. He said he would reject any moves to replace Montenegro as prime minister should the right win a majority.
Ventura has hit back at the president’s comments, saying: “In Portugal, it’s not the president of the republic who chooses the government – it’s the voters.”
As the night wore on, other European far-right leaders were quick to toast Chega’s success and offer their support and solidarity.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s Vox party, congratulated Ventura and “our Portuguese friends and neighbours” on “this great result”, while Maximilian Krah, Alternative for Germany’s leader in the European parliament, said Chega was on the way to a “fantastic success”.
Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s National Rally, hailed a “great breakthrough”, saying the Portuguese people were “defending their identity and their prosperity, and sweeping away the corrupt socialists!”.
In Hungary, Ádám Samu Balázs, the head of the international secretariat for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, called the results a “great breakthrough”. He added: “The fight of our friend and ally André Ventura against the globalist left and for the protection of national sovereignty and the defence of Europe is exemplary.”
The Socialists had been hoping the threat of the far right moving closer to government would rally centrist voters as it did in 2022. The Democratic Alliance, meanwhile, had offered the prospect of change after eight years of socialist rule, promising to promote economic growth by cutting taxes and improve squeezed public services.
Chega had sought to capitalise on widespread dissatisfaction with Portugal’s mainstream left and right parties as the country continues to suffer a housing crisis, stressed health and education systems, and low wages.
“Never in the history of Portugal has there been a greater possibility of overthrowing the bipartisan system that has been killing us for the past 50 years,” Ventura told supporters at a recent Chega rally in northern Portugal. “We have never been this close.”
The party had made political corruption a central theme of its campaign, putting up huge billboards around the country reading: “Portugal needs a clean-up.”
The investigation that caused the collapse of Costa’s government – which examined possible “malfeasance, active and passive corruption of politicians and influence peddling” – led to searches of the environment and infrastructure ministries and of Costa’s official residence, and to the arrest of five people, among them his chief of staff. The five were subsequently released and the investigating magistrate retained only the charge of influence peddling.
It is not the only scandal dogging the Socialists. The former prime minister José Sócrates is due to stand trial over allegations that he pocketed €34m from three companies while he was in power between 2005 and 2011. Sócrates has denied any involvement in fraud or money-laundering and has maintained his innocence.
The PSD is also facing corruption allegations, with two prominent party officials in Madeira resigning recently amid a graft investigation.”
Portugal’s Far Right Surges In Biggest Election Since Dictatorship Ended 50 Years Ago
Portugal election: centre-right alliance claims victory, rejects role for far right
Today, We Celebrate the Carnation Revolution: On April 25, 1974, a mutiny in the Portuguese army put an end to five decades of dictatorship. The revolution that followed showed how working people can take a modern economy into their own hands.
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/portugal-carnation-revolution-national-liberation-april
Portuguese
14 de março de 2024 Nas eleições em Portugal, as trevas se acumulam
Nas eleições de Portugal, a escuridão aumenta.
Tal como os rastos leprosos de uma praga invisível, o fascismo estende-se como legado da nossa história, como fantasmas famintos que procuram possuir-nos com a loucura e a degradação da nossa humanidade.
Portugal é um exemplo brilhante de como podemos reimaginar e transformar a nós mesmos e às nossas escolhas sobre como ser humanos juntos, um império colonial global que se libertou e às suas colónias na Revolução dos Cravos de 1974.
Uma onda de subversões fascistas da democracia e de capturas eleitorais do poder em toda a Europa ameaça agora falsificar-nos, mercantilizar-nos, desumanizar-nos e roubar-nos as almas, em acções coordenadas por um Quarto Reich revivalista nazi, exactamente como nós aqui na América temos sofrido durante muito tempo em Traidor. O Teatro da Crueldade de Trump.
Dêmos à tirania fascista a única resposta que ela merece; Nunca mais!
Sim mas como? Aqui sinalizo que, à medida que estamos todos a ser atacados em conjunto, podemos encontrar maior poder na solidariedade internacional e uma frente unida na Resistência.
Quando vierem atrás de nós, que aqueles que nos querem escravizar encontrem não uma humanidade derrotada pelo desamparo e pela divisão aprendidos, mas uma Humanidade Unida na qual todos somos garantes da liberdade, da igualdade e dos direitos humanos universais uns dos outros.
Pois somos muitos, estamos vigiando e somos o futuro.
Portugal, a reading list
History
Journey to Portugal: history and culture, Jose Saramago
A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution, Raquel Varela
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, Roger Crowley
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25255039-conquerors?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_70
Literature
The Lusiads, Luís de Camões
The Crime of Father Amaro, Eça de Queirós
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1008335.The_Crime_of_Father_Amaro?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_45
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45974.The_Book_of_Disquiet?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_37
The Great Shadow, Mário de Sá-Carneiro
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/922586.The_Great_Shadow?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_38
The Inquisitors’ Manual, The Natural Order of Things, Act of the Damned, An Explanation of the Birds, The Return of the Caravels, Knowledge of Hell, What Can I Do When Everything’s on Fire?, António Lobo Antunes
Baltasar and Blimunda, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, All the Names, Blindness, Death with Interruptions, Seeing, Caim, The Double, The Cave, The Tale of the Unknown Island, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, The Notebook, José Saramago
Torch of Liberty 
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