Portuguese elections (I): Myth of Sebastianism, from AD and IL to Chega
Donatela Di Cesare (2020) reflects on the debate of fear and the influence of this feeling on "modern time". The twentieth century is conceived as an era of total terror in which tyrannies distinguished friends and enemies. This totalitarian exercise turned power into iron and gave it the ability to melt everyone into one body. Today, panic is an atmosphere and does not need direct instructions to warn that the risks will come from outside. In post-otalitarian democracies, power continues to demand fear, because it simultaneously uses threat and tranquility, highlighting the promise to protect itself against external risk.
Javier Milei, newly elected Argentine president, conducted an electoral campaign amid a deep economic crisis, opening an unfavorable and contrary discourse to what he called caste or traditional political class in the media and in social networks.
In Portugal, three new political parties were not incorporated into parliament until 2019: Livre, Liberal Initiative and Chega. The latter symbolized the return of extreme right-wing ideas to the Portuguese political scene. Despite its low entry and exit, Chega achieved great spectacularity both inside and outside the country.
Ventura Chega’s leader has promoted anti-immigration ideas and a ferocious attitude against Islam, rejecting recognition of minority rights and LGTBIQ+ Roma communities
The strategy designed by Chega leader André Ventura has several points of encounter with other radical and contemporary populists such as Javier Milei, Viktor Orban, Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. Ventura has promoted ideas against immigration and a ferocious attitude against Islam, rejecting recognition and respect for the rights of LGTBIQ+ Roma minorities and communities. Chega has established a strong social polarization in the Portuguese political agenda and has shaped the sense of an indigenous community that opposes and fears a supposed external enemy. With regard to its relationship with Europe, Chega does not accept the euroscepticism of other regimes on the right, but is in favour of continuing to belong to the bloc. On the economic front, the party has a liberal trend, sponsored by Hayek and the Austrian von Mises school.
The populist discursive style established in Portugal, as in other countries of Europe and Latin America, can be analyzed as a transformation of the political contract in which manipulation rules discursive categories. Populists tend to put reason first by falsifying emotion, arguments and circumstances, pointing out that elites are corrupt classes that must be isolated from the people and attributing to bureaucracy the existence of all socioeconomic ills.
Populism reserves the capacity to break with the past and return to the nation its future for the appearance of the charismatic leader. We do not want that. We heard the last conference of Pedro Passos Coello in Faro, at the opening of the campaign of the Democratic Alliance, and we do not want to give a voice to his "charms" and insane, because it was not just any skateboard. (In) Talk about security? Questioning the security of a country using manoeuvres of nationalism and xenophobia is like saying that Portugal is an unsafe country because of poor foreigners. Copying tone to Melon? Portugal is not dangerous for immigrants and refugees. If Portugal is not a safe country, it will be because of the evidence of an increasingly radicalised authoritarian right, which listens to and shares that speech, echoing the eternal fears that it makes nervous and imposes on the Portuguese. Here we were listening to Ventura. And no. We do not want that.
Carvalho Cardoso
Student of the Faculty of Law of the UPV/EHU, Bachelor of Political Science, PhD in Philosophy (University of Porto)
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