Why Europe's far-right is winning
Concerns about Immigration and corruption lead to a good result for another far-right party, this time in Portugal.
Elections in Portugal rarely get a lot of attention, and the latest is absolutely no exception. I didn’t even know they’d had an election at all until after it had happened.
But the results prove, yet again, that the European far right is on a roll:
Portugal's centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won Sunday's general election, its leader Luis Montenegro said, though it was unclear if he could govern without the support from far-right Chega, with whom he again refused to negotiate.
Chega's parliamentary representation more than quadrupled to at least 48 lawmakers in the 230-seat legislature, giving the combined right a majority.
The result underscores a political tilt to the far right across Europe. Portugal, which only returned to democracy after the fall of a fascist dictatorship 50 years ago, had long been considered immune to the rise of right-wing populism across the continent, which is expected to result in gains for far-right parties in European elections in June.
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Issues dominating the campaign in western Europe's poorest country include a crippling housing crisis, low wages, sagging healthcare and corruption, seen by many as endemic to the mainstream parties.
(As a Canadian, I can’t relate at all to this.)
Portugal was ruled by a far-right dictatorship for decades, and it was long assumed that any political party which so much as hinted at national conservatism wouldn’t stand a chance. (This is a country where the main center-right party is called the Social Democrats, after all.)
But it’s been literally half a century since the “carnation revolution” which brought down the fascist regime, and that leaves many millions of Portuguese voters who have no memory of the dictatorship but are very familiar with high levels of immigration and scandals engulfing both of the “mainstream” parties:
Home furnishings giant Ikea recently placed billboards in Portugal advertising a self-assembly bookcase, with a wink at the country’s political upheaval. “A good place to stash books. Or to stash 75,800 euros,” it said.
That’s the amount of cash, equivalent to $82,000, police found stuffed in envelopes on bookshelves when they searched the office of the prime minister’s chief of staff last year during a corruption investigation.
The discovery triggered a scandal that brought down the government and led to an early general election on Sunday.
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The election is taking place because Socialist leader António Costa resigned after eight years as prime minister amid the corruption investigation. He hasn’t been accused of any crime.
Also, a Lisbon court recently decided that a former Socialist prime minister should stand trial for corruption. Prosecutors accuse José Sócrates, prime minister between 2005-2011, of pocketing around 34 million euros ($37 million) from graft, fraud and money laundering during his time in power.
The Social Democratic Party is not unblemished, either.
A recent graft investigation in Portugal’s Madeira Islands triggered the resignation of two prominent Social Democrat officials. The scandal erupted on the same day the party unveiled an anti-corruption billboard in Lisbon that said, “It can’t go on like this.”
Reactionary social conservatism and opposition to immigration are the main drivers for far-right political parties, but let’s not overlook the role played by corruption and a stagnant two-party-plus electoral system where the same people keep switching control of the government every few years.
That’s when you get a political party literally called “Enough” winning almost 50 seats in your national parliament.
And it’s a lesson that American political observers should keep in mind, considering their own stagnant two-party political system - though with one of the two major parties now consisting of populist radicals wearing the party brand like a skin suit - and corruption scandals.
As with most bad things about American politics these days, the rot can be found in most parties - as a rule, any politician credited as “D-NJ” should be presumed guilty until proven innocent - but the problem is much worse in the Republican Party, which is now effectively a wholly owned subsidiary of The Trump Organization.
That’s not just rhetoric. The Trump family has pretty much taken over the Republican National Committee in 2024.
If I can let out my inner JVL for a moment, a good rule of politics is to assume that something can always get worse.
And if Trump is actually re-elected in 2024, and we get another four years of shocking, unrepentant corruption at the highest levels of government, well…I’m not sure I want to see what kind of populist movement we’d get as a result of that.
The good news is, Trump is running the GOP like he ran his wildly successful casino business. I mean, who needs experienced communications and data professionals in an election year?
Donald Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the Republican National Committee on Monday began the process of pushing out dozens of officials, according to two people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC.
All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut.
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The overhaul is aimed at cutting, what one of the people described as, “bureaucracy” at the RNC. But the move also underscores the swiftness with which Trump’s operation is moving to take over the Republican Party’s operations after the former president all but clinched the party’s presidential nomination last week.
Trump’s campaign took over operational control of the RNC on Monday. On Friday, former North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley was elected the RNC’s new chair, and Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump was elected as co-chair. Both had Trump’s endorsement. Additionally, Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita was named as the RNC’s new chief of staff.
Meanwhile, a reporter for MSNBC suggests that the RNC under Trump is so broke, it might not be able to afford any of his trademark WWE-style rallies.
Despite this, I think the RNC under Trump is so broke, it might not be able to afford any of his trademark WWE-style rallies:
MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard suggested that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and its allies are so light on cash that the former president may not be able to hold many of the signature rallies he so enjoys during the 2024 cycle on Katy Tur Reports Monday.
“Let’s start with Trump’s finances. He owes half a billion dollars more and counting in legal judgments. How is that putting a strain on his ability to run a campaign?” eponymous host Katy Tur asked Hillyard during the segment in question.
Hillyard began by pointing out that the Trump campaign spent $600 million less than Joe Biden’s did back in 2020.
“And so what was the consequence?” asked Hillyard rhetorically. “Joe Biden, barely, was able to win that election in several key states. But fast forward here to 2024. Not only are they looking at a deficit in finances compared to Biden, but also there’s the reality here at play that $80 billion have already gone towards legal-related expenses over the last two years from Trump-affiliated super PACs. So they’re already starting into a deficit.”
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“And you can go and have a rally in those places, but those rallies cost $400,000,” he continued. “I mean this is where — don’t expect to see Donald Trump to be parading around the country, because those events cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on. They’re in a predicament now, whether they like to admit it or not.”
Whenever I get depressed about recent polls, I remember that the Republicans’ own incompetence is good for at least three or four percentage points in Biden’s favor.
It may partly explain why the GOP has underperformed, compared to polling, in the past few election cycles. If you have the support of, say, 51% of the electorate, that doesn’t mean anything unless you can actually get that 51% actually voting for you.
I’ve seen this making the rounds on social media, and I’m calling BS:
I think these were likely printed and posted by pro-Israel activists - not because of some nefarious false-flag plan to discredit their pro-Hamas opponents, but to viciously satirize their beliefs and to take their insistence that Palestine should be “freed” “by any means necessary” to its logical conclusion.
Of course it’s absurd and defamatory. Surely no progressive human rights activists would really say anything like [record scratch]
…anyways, let’s move on.