The Duran Podcast - Portugal Election, The Rise Of Chega Party

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Portugal election, the rise of Chega Party The Duran: Episode 1854

All right, Alexander, we have to talk about the elections in Portugal. And the mainstream media is once again saying this is the rise of the far right. I despise this left-right narrative. I really do. But anyway, this is the rise of the far right. And they're talking about the Chega Party, which I believe they came in third place. but I'm looking at the numbers now. I'm not sure what place.

I do believe they came in third, but the rise is phenomenal. They went from 12 seats five years ago to 48 seats in these elections. 12 seats in 2022 to now 48 seats in the 230-seat parliament in these elections. And they could be playing the Kingmaker, I guess, if they decide to form a coalition with one of the winning parties, most likely it'll be the center, the center right party.

If they do decide to form a coalition, then they could be in government. What do you think of what's happening in Portugal? The Social Democrat-led, the Democratic Alliance is the center-right party that they could form a coalition with the other party that is pretty much even with the Democratic Alliance is the center-left socialist party. So those are the two top parties and then you have Chega right underneath them. Great position to be in. It's a good, very good. In theory, it is a very good position to be in. And of course, if things were to follow the normal democratic book, well, clearly there's been a big swing to the right in this Portuguese election.

I'm going to come back to this issue of left and right, because I agree with you, by the way. But anyway, there's been what is being referred to as a swing to the right. and you would expect that the centre-right party would therefore go into coalition with Jaeger. That coalition would have a clear majority in the Portuguese Parliament and it could provide a clear government to the Portuguese to Portugal, which would be consistent with what one would assume is the wish of at least a plurality of the Portuguese electorate. apparently that isn't going to happen. Because again, what we're actually discovering

is that the centre-right party and the centre-left party, which is, of course, the socialists, have an awful lot more in common with each other than the centre-right party does with Chega. Now, coming to Chega, Chega, I've been researching you. It is a by no means unusual, conservative, nationalist, Catholic, I suspect, party. I wouldn't call it, from what I've read about it, far right.

It's not apparently opposed to NATO. It is skeptical about the EU. It is deeply opposed to immigration. It is nationalist. It supports family. values and by the way it supports Ukraine. So I mean, it's got in some ways a set of policies which once upon a time would have been considered fairly mainstream on the right in Europe. But it's skeptical about the EU. It's nationalist and it wants to take steps to

immigration. So that automatically means that it has to be identified as far right. And that also means that the pro-EU parties, the socialists and the centre-right party are fundamentally hostile to it. And it seems more likely at the moment that they will work together and try to freeze Chega. out. So this is what always happens now in European elections. You get a situation where in more and more countries across Europe, people are becoming increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied with a way in which the, what you might call the system parties, the parties that have dominated politics in any particular country for a long time. In Portugal, since the 1975 revolution, which overthrew the dictatorship of Salazar and Caetano.

Anyway, the two parties that have dominated Portuguese politics since then, socialists and the centre-right party. They've become very pro-European. They're both fervid supporters of the EU. They accept completely the whole framework of EU policies. their policies of these two parties have become less and less distinct from each other. People in Portugal have become increasingly dissatisfied.

They're probably most dissatisfied about immigration. They vote in the way that they do, signaling their disapproval of the system, and the system just carries on. Yeah, this is without a doubt the trend is you end up having these centrist parties combining forces and forming a government. I think probably the best example of that is Germany, I would guess, where you end up having this, this middle core of left, right, center, left, right. And in order to keep the parties which are defined as being on the fringes out of power, they end up ruling. now and then they'll include a green party or something like that in the mix as well. But this is not good for Portugal and it's not good for any European countries.

To have these types of alliances, these types of coalitions. Absolutely. Can I just say, I mean, I want to make it clear I'm not here endorsing Chega. Maybe there would not be a success in government. and maybe they would do bad things in government. But what is happening in Europe, across Europe, is that the electoral process, the democratic constitutional electoral process,

is being in effect dismantled because you might vote to the rights or as has just happened in a local election in Austria. There's been an election in Austria in Salzburg. And there, a part of the election. that is supposedly an extreme left party, a party that has been a new party, working-class party, left-wing party says it represents old left-left ideas, is against many of the identity issues, skeptical about immigration, all of these kind of things. They've done incredibly well in these local

elections in Austria. But whatever happens, they're automatically frozen out. Now, there is an Italian concept, which goes back to the late 19th century, the early 20th century called transformismo, which I used to talk about in connection with the way Angela Merkel ran Germany. And it's also, I think, a good way of understanding EU style politics, which is that you govern from what is called the centre and you exclude everything else outside it. You push all politics to the fringes, all real politics to the fringes. What you get at the centre is not really politics anymore. It's a kind of administrative state which simply reproduces the sort of policies that you get ultimately coming from Brussels. Its loyalties, in other words,

are to Brussels rather than to its old electorate. Now, Transformismo, when it was applied in Italy, it is universally acknowledged by historians who studied that period that what it ultimately caused was a radicalisation in Italian politics, because all political energy went either to the left or to the right, and eventually when the system collapsed,

there was no centre. And step by step, across Europe, we're moving in that direction. And looking at Chega, well, again, as I said, I'm not saying that necessarily a party that, you know, I would be enthusiastic about it. I don't know much about it. But it's not a party that you should exclude from the political system.

I don't think you should work to exclude parties from a democratic electoral system. I mean, I think that whole conception anyway is by definition, anti-democratic and wrong. And if you look, as I said, the Chega's program, it is the kind of mainstream, right-wing, conservative, nationalist, family-oriented Christian policies, you know, overtly Catholic Christian policies, as I understand it, which once upon a time would have been commonplace in this part of the world. and which would have been thought of, well, you might agree with them or not agree with them, but you could, you know, it was part of, you know, the tapestry of politics in southern Europe. The Christian Democrats in Italy, for example, once upon a time long ago back in the 50s, they were not so different from this. but if you keep pushing people like that aside,

if you insist that anybody who deviates from the Brussels line and is at all sceptical about it, they can't be admitted into the system. You know, we have the same in the Netherlands with, you know, Gertilders did very well, but he's still not in power. They're still trying to create parties, governments around him, rather than governments with him. If you go on doing it,

then eventually what you're going to do is you're going to discredit the entire system of politics in Europe completely, which is of course exactly what happened in Italy in the first half of the 20th century. It's exactly what's happening now across Europe. It's exactly what's happening now across Europe.

It's hollowing out politics. This is to the benefit of Brussels, though. It is to the short. term benefit of Brussels. The short term, yeah. Now, bear in mind... Do they ever see it long term? No, no, they never did.

Bear in mind, the reason why Chega did so well in Portugal is because people in Portugal, clearly, a lot of them, are not happy with the politics, which ultimately are being imposed on their country by Brussels. I mean, they're not happy with large amounts of immigration into Portugal, but they're not happy perhaps with some of the economic policies that the socialist governments and the centre-right governments in Portugal have been following in recent decades. Chega is a nationalist party.

There may be a desire on the part of the Portuguese people to reassert Portuguese national. identity. As I understand it, Chega is big on these things. Brussels, of course, opposes all of that. And the fact is, it is a pushback against Brussels, but it's a pushback against Brussels that Brussels will neither learn from nor accept. They won't modify or change or adapt their policies to take into account what people who vote for Chega feel. On the country, they'll be working at this moment of time,

there'll be the phone calls going on between Brussels and Lisbon, trying to find ways of getting around Chega. And that's what the EU always does. And you're right, in the short term they win. And unfortunately, in the world of politics, the short term can be very long. It can be five years, ten years, longer still. But in historical time, when the whole thing collapses and is discredited, it might not be that long at all. Yeah.

it goes against the entire structure of the EU, the entire goals of the European Union to centralize more power. And if you're going to centralize more power under the EU flag and the EU anthem and all of these EU European things, well, you have to hollow out the nation state. You can't have any type of sovereign nation state. And that's the ultimate goal of the European Union, the United States of Europe. This is where they want to take things. Well, absolutely. You can't have a strong periphery. You can't have a strong periphery.

And a party that is nationalist and patriotic and wants to create a strong, you know, to strengthen. It's impossible. By definition, it's unacceptable. And of course, it has to be labelled with all the labels that you were talking about. It has to be called far right associated with all sorts of things from the past, which, as I said, as far as I can see in Chega's case, that bears no reality to the party that it actually is. So, I mean, I'm just saying all of this.

But that's exactly what the problem, the problem that the EU is creating. It is, if it's hollowing out the states and it is making the conduct of democratic politics impossible and eventually, as happened with transformism in Italy, it means that political energy will eventually move to the to the fringe to the left and to the right and well that that might produce when the whole system starts to crumble all kinds of problems as well because in the meantime what you're doing is you're creating a political desert all around you we see the effect of that in Germany we've seen the effect of that in France we've seen that the effect of that in country after country across Europe.

There's a reason they call it the EU project. Nothing can derail the project. Not Chega, not IEVD, nothing. Nothing. No. Box. Not vult builders. No.

Yeah. All right. We will end it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichute, Telegram, Rockfin, Finn, and Twitter X. and go to the Duran shop and pick up some limited edition of St. Patrick's Day merch. Take care.