Salazar’s Estado Novo

Wolfgang Adler

Salazar’s Estado Novo (2017-18)

Reunindo uma série de artigos publicados por Wolfgang Adler no socialmatter.net, entre Maio de 2017 e Abril de 2018, Salazar’s Estado Novo é uma análise cuidada aos fundamentos e práticas do Estado Novo, tentando interpretar as causas dos seus êxitos e as razões das suas falhas à luz do conhecimento actual, com o objectivo assumido de procurar a sua inspiração doutrinária, passível de ser melhorada e adaptada ao tempo presente, traçando paralelos com determinadas orientações presentes na administração governamental norte-americana, avaliando outras que se possam enquadrar uma “Restauração Americana” neo-reaccionária, num futuro próximo, tendo em vista um cenário pós-Trump onde poderão surgir as condições para a sua aplicação.

Aparte uma ou outra ligeira incorrecção que não põem em causa o valor destes ensaios, aqui se pode aprofundar o conhecimento sobre o decurso daquela época e as suas vicissitudes: as origens do Estado Novo; os meios da subversão comunista no derrube do regime; o golpe falhado de 1961; o combate geoestratégico e a frente diplomática; a importância das Aparições de Fátima no contexto nacional e, sobretudo, internacional; o afastamento da elite empresarial e, por fim, a traição de Roma pelo Concílio Vaticano II.

To be a proper imperialist, one needs, crucially, to maintain an authentically Imperial Mindset—no matter how much he aged, Salazar nonetheless exuded such qualities up until the very end as the above manful and energetic response showcases. The same, however, cannot be said of his successors. The following decade, the supporting cast of the 1961 Abrilada—most notably Marcelo Caetano and future post-coup president General Costa Gomes—assumed the reigns of Portuguese government, bringing plausible deniability and copious technocratic efficiency according to the British and American press. However, these men and the generation they led tossed the cohesive ideology of their predecessors and bent to oscillations of near-term politics—which is unsurprising, as the wellspring of their “third way” approach was a Washington security apparatus where the Portuguese Empire was never more than an afterthought intermixed amongst more pressing issues facing the globalist henchmen.

Lacking Salazar’s fully delineated ideological outlook and knack for power politics, these leaders proved no match for a highly regimented, ideologically unified, and hierarchically organized leftist opposition that rightfully approached the “colonial problem” as a truly long game. Although not the case in the short-term for Costa Gomes, the long-term fate of both men shared the same ignominy: the shame of failure in not one, but two Portuguese coups—while forfeiting her Império in the process.

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The long reign of Salazar’s Estado Novo was in no small part the result of his methodical approach to policy decisions. Salazar’s ideology was highly developed, and the policy positions originally were holistic and aimed towards rebuilding the honor Portugal had lost in the period through the First Republic.

Whatever his strengths as a theorist, Salazar was nonetheless helpless to alter certain actualities of Portugal. And grim indeed were many of these realities: impoverished by European standards; fighting political, social, and cultural wars in direct opposition to what emanated from Washington and Moscow; and trying to arrest the dismembering of an empire whose heyday had been five centuries Salazar’s predecessor.

Still, via decisions that maximized short-term gains—averting economic crises, strengthening alliances, and scoring political points for friends and against foes—Salazar and team helped unleash dynamics that cost him one of his key pillars of support. With no other way to fund the Colonial Wars, Salazar had to open to the same foreign trade and foreign investment that would ultimately destabilize the vision of Portugal he had cultivated. And destabilize it did: by inviting foreign ideas opposed to corporatism; by sowing division among the nation’s leading businessmen; and by creating new classes of elites whose interests were no longer aligned with the success of the Império.

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The final years of the Catholic opposition saw great efforts to subvert traditional sexual morality, on a scale hither unseen in Portugal—as evident in the publications of Livraria Morais in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The mild degeneracy in Republican Portugal paled in comparison to what came a mere year after the Revolution; even a correspondent from The New York Times could not fail but to notice that the bookstores in 1975 featured large stacks of communist literature interspersed with publications with pornographic content.

None of this political and social tumult would have ultimately surprised Salazar in the slightest. A pre-Conciliar Catholic fundamentally believed that his duty was to preserve the grand inheritance of the faith for future generations; Salazar believed it, too, was his solemn duty to preserve the achievements of Portuguese history for posterity. That Portugal’s grandest days were many centuries behind it did not matter in the slightest to Salazar; the duty remained all the same to preserve the glories of yesteryear and make them palpable in the present day. Just as the Church’s hierarchy existed to preserve Tradition, so should the state be ordered in a similar fashion.