A series of recent events has unveiled increasingly disturbing signs that far-right internationalism is turning Portugal into a strategic target. Clear illustrations of such signs include the recent attempt, by some intellectuals, to play the card of racial hatred in order to test existing divisions both on the right and the left and thereby influence the political agenda, the international meeting of far-right parties in Lisbon in August, and the strike called by the newly created National Union of Dangerous Goods Drivers, to take place at the same time as the Lisbon meeting. There are several reasons for these developments. Portugal is the only European country with a left-wing government that is about to complete a full parliamentary term and will soon be going through a new election process, as well as the only country where no far-right party has ever won a seat in parliament.
Portugal is the only European country with a left-wing government that is about to complete a full parliamentary term.
Is Portugal so important as to deserve such strategic attention? Yes, Portugal is indeed important because, from the point of view of the international far right, it is the weak link through which it can carry out its attack on the European Union. Thus, the main goal here is to destroy the European Union and send Europe back to being a continent of rival states, where nationalisms will be free to flourish and social and racial exclusion will lend themselves more easily to political manipulation. In the eyes of the international far right, the traditional right plays a very modest role in accomplishing this goal, not least because it has long been the European Union’s driving force. Hence it is being treated with a measure of contempt, at least until its ideological self-depletion brings it closer to the far right, as is currently the case in Spain.
Conversely, the forces on the left need to be neutralized. In the eyes of the far right, the lefts seem to have realized that, for all its limitations – which have long been reason enough for the spread of anti-Europeanism among some of those lefts –, the EU is now a force of resistance against the reactionary wave that is sweeping the world. The EU cannot be expected to offer much more than the defense of liberal democracy, but the latter runs a greater risk of dying democratically without the EU than with the EU. And the lefts know from experience that they shall be the first victims of any authoritarian regime. They may be reminded that the differences among them have always seemed more significant when viewed from within the forces on the left than from the standpoint of their opponents. For all the fighting between socialists and communists during the period following World War I, when Hitler rose to power he found no differences between them and therefore no reason to treat them differently. He killed them all.
