As the populist storm descended on the West, Portugal’s continued lethargy offered hope to the political class. If a spectre were indeed haunting Europe, the Portuguese seemed immune to its charms. Even as Britain went the way of Brexit, America chose Trump, the French toyed with the idea of a Présidente Le Pen, and the once imperturbable Germans succumbed to the AfD, the Portuguese remained stoically loyal to the parties of an old, decaying system. This time around, things appear to be different. When, on March 10th, the country chooses a new parliament, its ascending national-conservative party, Chega, is expected to achieve a historic result. Opinion polls place Chega over 15%, with a second-place result no longer seen as impossible—a stunning feat for a party founded only in 2019.
Chega’s meteoric rise was not what the regime was expecting. For the Lisbon establishment, 2024 was to be the year of flowing champagne, merry speeches, and self-congratulation. This coming April will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the current political order. It is now half a century since a coup d’état ended the government of Marcello Caetano, the last leader of the right-wing, authoritarian Estado Novo, by almost surrendering the country to Soviet-style communism.
Although it eventually found its way to liberal democracy, Portugal’s ‘Third Republic’ still owes its origins, references, and discourse to that era’s mishmash of Third-Worldist leftism. From the beginning, the regime’s political culture has orbited the memory of April 1974—rewriting the past and glamourising unremitting Stalinists as ‘democratic heroes,’ while silencing any alternative to the status quo as a reincarnation of ‘fascism.’ To this day, Portugal’s bizarre constitution inveighs against ‘colonialism’ and invokes the construction of a ‘socialist society’ as a state goal. The historic parties of the centre-right, the Social Democrats and the Christian democratic CDS, owe their existence to approval by a communist-controlled ‘Revolutionary Council.’ The Left’s hegemony was political as well as cultural, with conservatives forced into the catacombs of discreet think tanks and debate clubs. Now, however, the wall is cracking.
Hurricane Ventura
If Portugal’s shift to the right has a name, it is André Ventura. By breaking half a century of bipartidism while running on an unapologetic right-wing platform, the leader of Chega has achieved a feat that few thought possible. Formerly a member of the Social Democrats, Ventura first rose to prominence in 2017, while running for mayor in a Lisbon suburb. He gained national attention by assuming an unabashedly ‘politically incorrect’ profile: decrying the perceived abuse of the welfare system by ethnic minorities, venting popular wrath against a corrupt political class, and embodying the public’s fear of a woke agenda often embraced by the systemic Right. His provocative style seemed inspired more by Trump or former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro than by anything previously attempted in Western Europe, and it has worked.
Unlike so many would-be leaders of the post-1974 Portuguese Right, Ventura made no attempt to repeat the formula of an arcane, abstruse sect prophet. He refused the role of an ideologist that few would have been able to understand, just as he had no interest in conforming to the falsely genteel choreography of power treasured by the establishment and disdained by the people. Chega’s strategy has been to facilitate, to the greatest possible degree, mutual communication between itself and the ordinary Portuguese. It has done so while ignoring all those who, for ideological purism or out of social arrogance, would stop that flow of information, concerns, and priorities. Though an impressive and charismatic speaker, that is where Ventura’s political strength truly lies: in a matchless instinct for capturing the public mood.
A maturing wine
Chega’s rise has been a tale of careful pragmatism: the steadfast prioritisation of electoral growth by avoiding the traps of ideology. Yet, even if it has preferred to act in purely Rienzian style, with Ventura playing the part of an indignant tribune of the plebs, Chega has been patiently—and, often, discreetly—transforming itself into a more cohesive and programmatically consistent political force. In this, Ventura’s strategic patience appears to have produced the desired fruit: having grown so rapidly in the polls, Chega now has the means, the media access, and the gravitational power to decisively influence the direction of the country. And to influence it not only politically—inasmuch as democratic politics is, by its very nature, fragile and impermanent—but culturally. It is its ability to achieve the latter that will enable Chega to change Portugal in profound, relevant, and long-lasting ways.
Though much remains to be done, success is brewing. Chega has appealed to growing numbers among the country’s conservative intelligentsia, a phenomenon exemplified by figures such as Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, Gabriel Mithá Ribeiro, and Pedro Arroja. Young firebrand parliamentarians, such as Rita Matias, have helped the party reach segments of the electorate previously inclined to vote for the Left, all while espousing a strongly ideological message. A wave of defections from the Social Democrats, and from the Liberal Initiative—a pro-market party seen by many of its adherents as having capitulated entirely to progressivism—has contributed to solidifying Chega’s cadres.
As the party evolves from a protest front (its very name, Chega!, means Enough! in Portuguese) into a genuinely national-conservative platform, it is also undergoing a process of ideological refinement. Chega’s most recent electoral manifesto, while not negating the party’s roots and identity, is already that of a movement with a plan to govern: bold, but technically sound; revolutionary, though responsible. Breaking with the out-of-date, technocratic Thatcherism still popular among the Portuguese Right, Ventura has surprised most observers by adopting a neo-Gaullian, dirigiste approach. Recognising the attachment of most Portuguese to the welfare state, Ventura proposes deepening it by substantially increasing pensions. Understanding the rising importance of economic sovereignty in an age of geopolitical uncertainty, he has defended certain major corporations, such as national airline TAP, as ‘strategic.’ His bet on an agenda that emphasises national independence, traditional values, and economic self-determination by means of an active and powerful state aligns Chega with the current zeitgeist.
A historic election cycle
If Ventura’s polling numbers are confirmed on March 10th, one era will come to a close and another will begin. The cultural, political, and discursive hegemony of the Left, hitherto unchallenged by the regime-approved ‘right-wing’ parties, will be shattered. Conservative thinkers and opinion makers, long silenced by an oppressive media environment, will gain new legitimacy. The foundations of the incumbent regime—a progressive, leftist, and, ultimately, anti-Portuguese doxa—will be damaged beyond repair.
To a significant degree, however, the establishment has already lost. As in much of Western Europe, where the sovereignist Right often earns majority support among the young, Chega’s ambitious promise of a ‘Fourth Republic’—that is, of a complete and structural repudiation of the current political order—has made it the largest party among those voting for the first time. And, further underscoring the shifting political winds, the two traditional bastions of the regime are now faced with what appears to be a process of irreparable decay: polls suggest that the Communist Party may well fail to enter parliament for the first time since 1975, and the Socialists are now the party of the older and least-educated segments of the electorate. Neither group is likely to shape the future.
In Portugal, as across the West, the wheels of history are turning again.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/history-is-coming-to-lisbon/