The Groupuscular Far-Right in Portugal

In this chapter, it is described how the book at hand addresses the study of small groups of the Portuguese extreme right as acting mostly in the internet due to their radical opinions. The landscape of Portuguese metapolitics comprises groups that defend a commonwealth between Portugal and its former colonies, i.e., Imperial Patriotism. Second, at the same time, exists a network of ethnonationalist groupuscules, a fact that goes against the traditional linkage of Portugal to the Catholic Church, and its distance to biological racialism. These latter, ethnonationalists groupuscules use biological terms in their online communications and include biological elements into their worldframe. The groups analyzed were chosen based on their ideologies and number of subscribers on social web platforms, specifically on Facebook. Portugueses Primeiro (Portuguese First), Escudo Identitário (Identitarian Shield), Nova Ordem Social (New Social Order / Mário Machado), O Bom Europeu (The Good European), and Invictus Portucale (Undefeated Portugal) represent the ethnocultural and racial field. Nova Portugalidade (New Portugality) and Notícias Viriato (Viriato News), in turn, represent supporters of Imperial Patriotism.

This chapter deals with the arrival of Identitarian ethnonationalist ideas in Portugal. It is divided, basically, into two parts. The first is about the small groupuscules in the Portuguese far-right still during Estado Novo (right-wing dictatorship, 1926–1974), and some decades afterwards. In the 1960s, and 1970s, Estado Novo experienced the existence of small organizations of the extreme right that combined Imperial Patriotism with European ethnonationalism. They defended the Empire in Africa and Asia, but at the same time leaned toward a literature turned to a Europe closed in itself: A Europe that supposedly should not colonize any people in the world, although it should not open its borders to non-Europeans as well. The second part of the chapter contains a description of the splitting apart of such tendencies. That is, from the 1980s on, groups started to appear that defended only Imperial Patriotism or only European ethnonationalism. This culminated in the creation of Causa Identitária (Identitarian Cause), in the 2000s. Old extreme right and Imperial Patriotism rivalized with the new extreme right. This web of conflicts constituted the embryo toward the nowadays Portuguese groupuscular right. Actually, the current groupuscular right still shows the pattern which came up in the late 1980s, namely, organizations exclusively ethnonationalist, pan-European versus organizations exclusively imperial patriotic, lusotropicalist.

This chapter covers the organization called Portugueses Primeiro or Portugueses 1 (Portuguese First). Portugueses 1 has a historical link with Causa Identitária, since one of the latter’s founders is an important member of the former. Portugueses 1 is basically an identitarian, ethnonationalist group. Founded in 2015, they tried to create a system of vigilance toward Asian stores where they believed illegal activity to be ongoing. However, they never were prone to establish nuclei of their group outside Lisbon, their numbers were always low and their public manifestations faded away. Finally, Portugueses 1 remained active mostly in the social web. There, they denounce what they interpret as the detrimental facets of mass non-European immigration and propose identitarian bibliography, specifically the books published by Contra-Corrente, the Portuguese affiliate of the identitarian publishing house Counter-Currents. Portugueses 1 can be described as an organization whose members come from the nationalist scenario from the early 2000’s. It remains mostly confined to bibliography distribution, not being able to maintain itself as a group active in the internet and in the streets, as was intended at the time of its creation.

This chapter is about Escudo Identitário (Identitarian Shield), which has a theoretical and ideological frame, as well as a repertoire of actions very close to the identitarian movements across Europe. Founded in 2017, Escudo Identitário could be described as the Portuguese equivalent of Italian Casa Pound. It emerged as an overtly ethnonationalist grouping, regarding Portugal as exclusively European and aiming at the insertion of Portugal in the European continent. This groupuscule tries to be present both in the internet and in the streets, although their online activities are clearly more pronounced. Some street actions follow the French and German identitarians, such as putting bands with anti-immigration messages in historical sites and public spaces. Similar to Portugueses 1, the number of supporters present in the manifestations is extremely low. Escudo Identitário also proposes a very varied literature, which oscillates between Portuguese history, identitarian literature, Nouvelle Droite style literature, and Portuguese far-right writers from the first half of the XX century. The groupuscule uses biological metaphors, although its literature recommendations are not centered on the biological, genetic and behavioral studies from which the American Alt-right draws its main theoretical fundaments. Escudo Identitário obviously regards the Portuguese and Europeans as a white people, but does not utilize mostly the theories from biological racialism.

This chapter is about the most prominent grouping of the old extreme right studied in this book. It analyses the skinhead movements, the ones that orbit around Mário Machado, who is, perhaps, the most known skinhead in Portugal. Machado’s network stems from a variety of urban tribes, soccer fans, skinhead groups, motorcycle clubs, and the like. He was also involved with Frente Nacional, the skinhead organization with clear nazi-fascist traits, which competed against Causa Identitária for the protagonism within the pan-European ethnonationalist movements in Portugal. Machado intended not only to organize movements of the extreme-right, but to also penetrate party politics. He was prone to incorporate Portugal Hammerskin as the movement basis of PNR/Ergue-te! party. After enormous polemics in the media, the arrangement was undone, PNR/Ergue-te! remained as an insignificant party in the electoral arena, and Machado returned to the only-movement sphere. Later, Machado focused on the internet, opening web pages of Nova Ordem Social on the main virtual platforms. The use of symbols such as swastikas, SS lightning bolts and Nordic runes was maintained. After his organization was banished from Facebook and dissolved, he opened a YouTube channel where he centers on news about violence committed by minorities and proposes bibliography more typical of the old skinhead extreme right.

This chapter is about a groupuscule that sets itself out of the ethnonationalist line. Indeed, the ideology of Nova Portugalidade (New Portugality) is profoundly connected to the lusotropicalist worldview that comes from Brazilian intellectual Gilberto Freyre. There, the Portuguese are seen as more prone to mix with non-Europeans than any other people of Europe. It was created in 2016 and dedicates itself basically to internet activism and the organization of conferences. In spite of the low number of members, it has almost 60000 subscribers on its Facebook page. It is also the most institutionalized from all the groupuscules studied in this book, having a more direct contact with intellectuals and researchers from the academic mainstream, especially in the field of History. Thus, Nova Portugalidade could be considered a kind of Think-tank. According to its founders, the organization’s first goal was to fight what was regarded to be “political correctness” and the wiping out of Portuguese history and heritage. Importantly, it is radically different from Escudo Identitário or Portugueses 1. The Imperial Patriotism of Nova Portugalidade wants Portugal to organize a Commonwealth, a single political unit, with the nations of its old Empire (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, and East Timor).

This chapter is about O Bom Europeu (The Good European), which could be described as the Portuguese representation of the American alt-right. Created in 2018, O Bom Europeu counts no more than 20 members. It reached more than 9000 subscribers on Facebook before being banned in 2021. Its online activities comprise proposing books and reading in the social web, and then debating online these contents. Thereby, the recommended books deal principally with biological, genetic, and paleoanthropological studies. O Bom Europeu has as ideological basis mostly the writings of Guillaume Faye—from Nouvelle Droite—and Friedrich Nietzsche. Moreover, it uses mostly theories from biology, evolution, evolutionary psychology, behavioral sciences, and genetics. For O Bom Europeu, all white people should be united in a political unit only for whites. This political bloc comprises Europe from Portugal to Russia and even other areas inhabited by whites. Although, it does not openly praise old-style Nazi-fascism, and avoids completely the term “Aryan,” it is the most extreme and racist group from all groupuscules studied here.

This chapter analyses two different groupuscules. They are joint into one chapter, because they are not dedicated to metapolitics in general like the other groupuscules, but, rather, constitute a form of alternative news. These two groupuscules contribute to Portuguese metapolitics in a significant way, however, they do so in a more restricted spectrum: they act as news carriers for the ideologies of the other 5 groups studied in the book at hand. The groupuscules’ names are Invictus Portucale (Undefeated Portugal) and Notícias Viriato (Viriato News). The former can be described as newspaper for ethnonationalists and the latter one for Imperial Patriots. Invictus Portucale takes news from mainstream newspapers and posts them at its Facebook page, rewriting them in a way that emphasizes the ethnic origin of criminals. The worldframe of O Bom Europeu and the other ethnonationalist groupuscules is manifested through this news, whereby, Invictus Portucale uses a very rudimental style. Notícias Viriato, in turn, produces news whose core ideology is rooted in the contents shared by Nova Portugalidade and is more institutionalized than Invictus Portucale. It can be seen as the news representative of Nova Portugalidade.

In sum, the book suggests that the rhizomatic, groupuscular right in Portugal can be best described as cleaved into two lines, the ethnonationalist line and the Imperial Patriotic line. At one side, there is Bionationalism, a sub-type of ethnonationalism, represented mostly by O Bom Europeu. It is a nationalism rooted in biological theories, in which different cultures are regarded a natural expression of biological race. At the other side, Cosmopolis Nationalism is a sub-type of civic nationalism, mainly defended by Nova Portugalidade. It is a kind of nationalism with cosmopolitan and multiracial leanings, but with an imaginary and historical memory centered in Portugal. That is, its supporters defend a style of globalization that contains a political pact and covenant centered in the old colonial metropole. With regard to the variety of nationalist styles found in the Portuguese case, the book concludes that the groupuscular right goes beyond the survival strategy of fascism. The author states that the groupuscular space of the Portuguese extreme right is more than a fascism hideout. Rather, it constitutes a space to debate nationalist ideas with few limits, and at the same time, with a radical bias.