Yeah, well, in the first round of the Presidential Elections the Fascist candidate had the 2nd largest number of votes and the one from the Hard Neoliberal Party (who in their early days wanted to privatize the National Health Service until they discovered that was incredibly unpopular) had the 3rd largest number of votes.
The Revolution was over 50 years ago and a lot of people have forgotten how things used to be before that or simply don’t value genuinely Leftwing conquests like the National Health Service and Universal Education (which have been slowly undermined in the last 2 decades or so) from the short post-revolution power period when Leftwing ideals were much more dominant (before things slid into the “2 main parties dominance” system that voting systems with electoral circles and no proportional vote invariably create).
I agree with everything you are saying. What I’m saying is actually living under fascism has made Portugal and Spain more resistant to fascism and other right wing non-sense than other countries in Europe. Not perfectly immune, and this will not last forever in the face of limitless digital propaganda, but for now resistant enough.
Look at Germany, not just the obvious part with AfD but also the unwavering support for a certain middle-eastern nation dominated by an extremely racist ethno-Fascist ideology whilst they were committing Genocide in Gaza.
(Also look at Italy which currently has a far-right government).
Given enough time that protection against a certain kind of authoritarianism because of a nation having been through it, fades away.
Unlike in Germany were it was foreigners that kicked the Fascists out, in Portugal it was actually the Portuguese that freed themselves from Fascism, so hopefully that protection will last a bit longer in Portugal.
There is about a 50 year lag between the departure of fascism in Iberia vs Italy and Germany, it seems like they were trying to say that there are still people around who lived through it while in Germany and Italy they are all but dead.
Those people are people like my parents, my uncles and aunts.
The thing is, from my own experience being involved in a small leftwing party in Portugal and with my own family, it’s pretty much only those who were politically aware back in Fascist days (and Fascism had things like Censorship, so most people were not politically aware and thought of Fascism that “it’s the way things are”) that still hold strong to traditional Leftwing values. Further, the level of Education of people seems to be positivelly correlated with how much they understand and value Democracy, and back in the days of Fascism most people were either illiterate or had about 4 years schooling as that was the mandatory level of schooling until the late 60s.
Meanwhile young people’s politics are the product of growing up during the Neoliberal era, with no real strong well structured ideologies beyond Neoliberal-Capitalism providing a framework of thinking and policy making and instead with tactical, one-problem-at-a-time, “moderate” politics with no clear vision for the future or strategy, so they don’t really have top-down thinking hence even their Principles are easilly misdirected and subverted (such as how the fight for Equality For All has been transformed by Neoliberalism into a “divide and conquer” version were people are grouped by characteristics they were born with and then treated as differently deserving of their “equality” being fought for depending on such characteristics - so, an unequal form of equality, thus not really Equality - which very purposefully avoids talking about the greatest inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - and is called Identity Politics).
So yeah, the old guezers still in leftwing parties whose political awareness came during Fascist days plus quite a bunch more of their age cohort are still a strong bullwark against Fascism, but party of those people have already been converted towards Fascist ideas (mainly because of immigration, as Portugal used to be an incredibly uniform country and in maybe 2 decades immigrants became almost 10% of population, which is extra hard to older people who grew up in those days when everybody shared the same cultural background are thus are nowhere as socially and culturally flexible) whilst the younger generations often think Neoliberal Capitalism “is the way things are” since that’s all they’ve known their whole lives and even the ones with Leftwing principles, having confused messaging pushed by the not-quite-as-righting neoliberals from places like the US and UK with leftwing ideas and are busy pushing the divisive “Equality” of Identity Politics that pits parts of the Left against other parts of the Left AND against the mainstream depending on which Identitarian Group they feel should be more protected which fuels the kind of environment were Fascists can pedle their ideals (the subject immigration has been especially useful for Fascists in this, especially given that as studies have shown Immigration lowers salaries for unspecialized occupations, which is exactly were the poor and the poorest working class sits, so they’re naturally drawn to anti-immigration discourse).
TL;DR
In summary:
Only the old people with higher education and political awareness dating back to Fascist days still hold strong against Fascism.
Most old people have low education or did not have political awareness back then. They’re also naturally inflexible and have trouble dealing with things like the rise of multi-culturalism from immigration so more easilly fall prey to people preaching a return to the “old days”.
Young people whilst having much higher levels of formal education know nothing else but Neoliberal Capitalism. Even those who have leftwing principles usually follow political frameworks from anglo-saxon countries which are de facto not leftwing (i.e. not seeking pure “Equality For All”) and instead are divisive equality-but-not-equally constructs which naturally pit some people against other people purelly based on genetic characteristics they were born with or the geographical location of their birth, thus both dividing the left AND at the same time antagonizing the poorest segments the many since the “groups” those liberals-thinking-they’re-lefties fight for are minorities hence by definition “the few” and they don’t fight as hard, if at all, against that which plagues the weakest amongst the majority - wealth inequality.
So the bullwark against Fascism was never as strong as it might seem, is naturally eroding as those people die and due to imported supposedly “leftwing” political frameworks which are really just a Neoliberal perversion of core Leftwing ideals it’s not actually being rebuilt but actually is being eroded even faster.
(Most of that 50 year extra period after Fascism for countries like Italy and Germany over countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece was during a time were the Leftwing was far more effective and created things like universal healthcare, universal education and social security, things which generally have been slowly destroyed in the last 4 decades)
IMHO, just like American-style “Liberals” are de facto facilitators of Fascism, the ideas they have exported during their period of cultural dominance in the West are also weaking the capability of being a bullwark for Fascism of the newer Leftwing generations elsewere.
The Iberian peninsula being incredibly based off late
It helps that millions of voters here actually grew up under fascism and still clearly remember how much it sucks.
Yeah, well, in the first round of the Presidential Elections the Fascist candidate had the 2nd largest number of votes and the one from the Hard Neoliberal Party (who in their early days wanted to privatize the National Health Service until they discovered that was incredibly unpopular) had the 3rd largest number of votes.
The Revolution was over 50 years ago and a lot of people have forgotten how things used to be before that or simply don’t value genuinely Leftwing conquests like the National Health Service and Universal Education (which have been slowly undermined in the last 2 decades or so) from the short post-revolution
powerperiod when Leftwing ideals were much more dominant (before things slid into the “2 main parties dominance” system that voting systems with electoral circles and no proportional vote invariably create).I agree with everything you are saying. What I’m saying is actually living under fascism has made Portugal and Spain more resistant to fascism and other right wing non-sense than other countries in Europe. Not perfectly immune, and this will not last forever in the face of limitless digital propaganda, but for now resistant enough.
I wouldn’t be so sure.
Look at Germany, not just the obvious part with AfD but also the unwavering support for a certain middle-eastern nation dominated by an extremely racist ethno-Fascist ideology whilst they were committing Genocide in Gaza.
(Also look at Italy which currently has a far-right government).
Given enough time that protection against a certain kind of authoritarianism because of a nation having been through it, fades away.
Unlike in Germany were it was foreigners that kicked the Fascists out, in Portugal it was actually the Portuguese that freed themselves from Fascism, so hopefully that protection will last a bit longer in Portugal.
There is about a 50 year lag between the departure of fascism in Iberia vs Italy and Germany, it seems like they were trying to say that there are still people around who lived through it while in Germany and Italy they are all but dead.
Oh yeah, I got it.
Those people are people like my parents, my uncles and aunts.
The thing is, from my own experience being involved in a small leftwing party in Portugal and with my own family, it’s pretty much only those who were politically aware back in Fascist days (and Fascism had things like Censorship, so most people were not politically aware and thought of Fascism that “it’s the way things are”) that still hold strong to traditional Leftwing values. Further, the level of Education of people seems to be positivelly correlated with how much they understand and value Democracy, and back in the days of Fascism most people were either illiterate or had about 4 years schooling as that was the mandatory level of schooling until the late 60s.
Meanwhile young people’s politics are the product of growing up during the Neoliberal era, with no real strong well structured ideologies beyond Neoliberal-Capitalism providing a framework of thinking and policy making and instead with tactical, one-problem-at-a-time, “moderate” politics with no clear vision for the future or strategy, so they don’t really have top-down thinking hence even their Principles are easilly misdirected and subverted (such as how the fight for Equality For All has been transformed by Neoliberalism into a “divide and conquer” version were people are grouped by characteristics they were born with and then treated as differently deserving of their “equality” being fought for depending on such characteristics - so, an unequal form of equality, thus not really Equality - which very purposefully avoids talking about the greatest inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - and is called Identity Politics).
So yeah, the old guezers still in leftwing parties whose political awareness came during Fascist days plus quite a bunch more of their age cohort are still a strong bullwark against Fascism, but party of those people have already been converted towards Fascist ideas (mainly because of immigration, as Portugal used to be an incredibly uniform country and in maybe 2 decades immigrants became almost 10% of population, which is extra hard to older people who grew up in those days when everybody shared the same cultural background are thus are nowhere as socially and culturally flexible) whilst the younger generations often think Neoliberal Capitalism “is the way things are” since that’s all they’ve known their whole lives and even the ones with Leftwing principles, having confused messaging pushed by the not-quite-as-righting neoliberals from places like the US and UK with leftwing ideas and are busy pushing the divisive “Equality” of Identity Politics that pits parts of the Left against other parts of the Left AND against the mainstream depending on which Identitarian Group they feel should be more protected which fuels the kind of environment were Fascists can pedle their ideals (the subject immigration has been especially useful for Fascists in this, especially given that as studies have shown Immigration lowers salaries for unspecialized occupations, which is exactly were the poor and the poorest working class sits, so they’re naturally drawn to anti-immigration discourse).
TL;DR
In summary:
So the bullwark against Fascism was never as strong as it might seem, is naturally eroding as those people die and due to imported supposedly “leftwing” political frameworks which are really just a Neoliberal perversion of core Leftwing ideals it’s not actually being rebuilt but actually is being eroded even faster.
(Most of that 50 year extra period after Fascism for countries like Italy and Germany over countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece was during a time were the Leftwing was far more effective and created things like universal healthcare, universal education and social security, things which generally have been slowly destroyed in the last 4 decades)
IMHO, just like American-style “Liberals” are de facto facilitators of Fascism, the ideas they have exported during their period of cultural dominance in the West are also weaking the capability of being a bullwark for Fascism of the newer Leftwing generations elsewere.