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Portugal's election leaves the country uncertain of its future but heartens Europe's radical right

https://apnews.com/article/portugal-election-populist-party-1ea99fde583cd176beb9e21310ef522d

Portugal’s inconclusive general election results mean weeks of political uncertainty ahead. They also give fresh energy to Europe’s shift toward the radical right.

Portugal's election leaves the country uncertain of its future but heartens Europe's radical right

Portugal’s inconclusive general election results mean weeks of political uncertainty ahead, and give fresh energy to Europe’s shift toward the radical right.

A surge in support for a populist party in Sunday’s ballot has placed the hard right at the heart of Portuguese politics. The close contest between two leading moderate parties remained unresolved as they awaited deciding results from voters abroad. Official results are due to be published within two weeks.

The rise of the Chega, or Enough, party — just five years old — has been stunning. It went from 12 seats in the 230-seat Parliament in a 2022 election to 48 seats now.

4 comments

ViXY_DBC

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Sometimes it feels like the same script being deployed again and again. The "left", which is really "center-right" spreads "freedom" and generates refugees en mass in the process, then the hard right rises to refuse those refugees created. It's an endless loop with only bomb makers getting rich and everyone else suffers.

Badeendje

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The left is so bad at telling their story. Too much of it consists of railing against instead of offering people a path to something. It also does not help that immigrants seem to get so much attention from left wing parties, while their own working poor feel forgotten. This allows the right to exacerbate the problem and blame it on the immigrants and the left, a double win for the right.

CoggyMcFee

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I don’t know. When I actually observe what people on the left say, they offer a path and don’t just rail against the right. It just doesn’t make headlines.

And you can say that means they need to do better at controlling the narrative, but I think the problem is that negative stuff has an inherent advantage when it comes to making headlines. So when the right does their outrageous negative shit: automatic headlines. When the left offers hope and reason: crickets.

Doesn’t mean the left can shrug their shoulders and not strive for better, but they are at an inherent disadvantage because of the nature of our society. (And if you want to say this is largely the fault of capitalism out of control then you’d get no argument from me.)

Badeendje

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True. And if you want to root your plans in reality, it automatically means the plans are more moderate too. Build the wall and have mexico pay, get out of nato, brexit makes us better, gay free zones. All good slogans but will they work in reality.. not so much.

It is also unfortunate people fall for it.