The Duran Podcast
Portugal Election, The Rise Of Chega Party
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 that 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. No, 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 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 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 that you have, Chega, right underneath them. Great position to be in. It's a good very good is 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 center right party would therefore go into coalition. With Chega, 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, except apparently that isn't going to happen. Because again, what we're actually discovering is that the center right party and the center left party, which is of course, the socialists, have an awful lot more in common with each other than the center 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 storm 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 center right party, are fundamentally hostile to it. And it seems more likely at the moment that they 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 the way in which they, 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 Platoano. Anyway, the two parties that have dominated Portuguese politics since then, socialists, and the center right party, they become very pro-European. They're both fervent supporters of the EU. They accept completely the whole framework of EU policies. That 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 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. You end up having 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. Every 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 people. They have these types of alliances, these types of coalitions. Absolutely, can I just say, I want to make it clear I'm not here endorsing Chegg. 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 right, or as has just happened in a local election in Austria, there's been an election in Austria, in Zaltzburg, and they're a party 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 ideas, is against many of the identity issues, skeptical about immigration, all of these kinds 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 Transford Mismol, 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 center, 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 center 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, Transford Mismol, when it was applied in Italy, it is universally acknowledged by historians who studied that period that what it ultimately caused was a radicalization 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 center. And step by step, across Europe, we're moving in that direction. And looking at Jager, well, again, I said, I'm not saying that necessarily a party that I would be enthusiastic about. I don't know much about it, but it's not a party that you should exclude from the political system. I 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 Jager's program, it is the kind of mainstream right-wing, conservative, nationalist, family-oriented, Christian policies, 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 it was part of 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 on the Brussels line, and is at all skeptical about it, they can't be admitted into the system. We have the same in the Netherlands with, you know, filters did very well, but he's still not empowered. 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. Exactly what's happening now, across Europe. It's exactly what's happening now. Yeah. 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, they never do. Bear in mind, the reason why Chegga 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. 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 government and the center-right governments in Portugal have been following in recent decades. That Chegga is a nationalist party that may be a desire on the part of the Portuguese people to reassert Portuguese national identity. As I understand it, Chegga 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 Chegga feel. On the contrary, they'll be working at this moment in time. There'll be the phone calls going on between Brussels and Lisbon, trying to find ways of getting round-shaking. That's what the EU always does. You're right. In the short term, they win. Unfortunately, in the world of politics, the short term can be very long. It can be five years, 10 years, longer still. But in historical time, when the whole thing collapses and is discredited, it might not be that long at all. It goes against the entire structure of the EU, the entire goals of the European Union, to centralise more power. If you're going to centralise 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, 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 to strengthen. 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 Jage's case, that bears no reality to the party that it actually is. So, I mean, I'm just saying all of it, but that's exactly what the problem, the problem that the EU is creating. It is, 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 fringe to the left and to the right. And well, that might produce where 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. Nothing can derail the project. Nothing can derail the project. All right. We will end it there, the Duran.locals.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichute, Telegram, Rockfin, and Twitter X. And go to the Duran shop and pick up some limited edition St. Patrick's Day merch. Take care. [Music]