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Portugal's democracy turns 50
- arawde 3y agoIt's incredible just how long the Iberian fascist regimes lasted. I imagine that if you polled a set of random people from the street, and asked when they thought the last war for colonial indepence from a European power was, very few would answer "the 1979s" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War
- boredpeter 3y ago[dead]
- int_19h 3y agoI mean, if you count Russia as a European colonial power - and you should! - then it's far more recent. Chechnya fought a war over its independence in 1994-96, then another one with an active phase in 1999-2000 that tapered off into guerrilla warfare that lasted until mid-2010s.
- timeon 3y agoThey are currently trying to regain one colony as well.
- int_19h 3y agoI referenced Chechnya because it is a very traditional case of colonialism that very obviously parallels other European colonies in Africa etc: acquired through straightforward territorial conquest in 18-19th century with no justification other than "might is right" (with a dash of "white man's burden" thrown in for good measure), specifically to exploit as a colony. Ukraine is a bit different in that both the official Russian ideology and the prevailing public opinion don't see it as a colony, but rather as "lost heartland" that is inhabited by what are still fundamentally Russians who have "strayed". So the long-term goal there isn't to acquire a new colony for the metropole to exploit - it's to forcibly assimilate its Ukrainian population into the metropole in its entirety. Now in practice this isn't that simple either, because of course the occupied territories are exploited. However, one could argue that it is still not colonial exploitation, because its economic nature is fundamentally the same as the relationship between Moscow and basically every other Russian region. That is, it would make sense to say that occupied Ukraine is a colony if you're also willing to say that pretty much all of Russia is also effectively a colony of Moscow (which is not an unreasonable way to describe it, to be fair - just not a conventional one in Western historiography).
- ein0p 3y ago[flagged]
- neoromantique 3y agoBeslan is indeed very illustrative example, but not of what you are implying.
- quotz 3y agoTheres double standards. Catalonia tried to gain independence from Spain, the EU and the USA condemned it. But when Chechnya or Kosovo are in question, then its totally fine.
- 082349872349872 3y ago"The enemy of my enemy" may be a great way to run a hegemony, but it's lousy foreign policy in general. I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s, re-secularising it in the ~decade before 1992, leading to a post-USSR afghanistan suffering no worse than an armenian/azerbaijani (<40'000) level of violence after collapse? (Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg
- alephnerd 3y ago> Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) 2.5% of the Tajik population died during the civil war, and it absolutely would have spread to Afghanistan, as 20% of Afghans are Tajik. > I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s Afghanistan would have anyhow fallen into civil war even if Najibullah remained in power because Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Turkiye, Iran, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, and other regional powers all meddle there. There's a reason most of Najibullah's and Massood's family live in New Delhi and not Moscow or NoVA.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoThey have all of these big monuments to their "Guerra do Ultramar" too, I don't think there was any sort of nationwide realization of what that implies.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y agoIf you spend any time in Portugal, one thing youll learn is that they are very proud of their past. No self-reflection whatsoever. And I said they even though Im one of them because I hate the culture of the country. Foreigners arent any depper, of course. They go "ohhh lisbon is so beautiful" and that's as far as they go.
- MaxHoppersGhost 3y agoThey should be proud of their past. Every civilization in the world (including the ones they conquered) at the time would have done what the Portuguese did if they could. All from a tiny country of a few million people.
- int_19h 3y ago"Others were bullies, too" is not a valid reason to be proud for ever having been a bully.
- styluss 3y agoYup. There is no self awareness of how much we got from all our colonial history. It is also wild seeing how people are reacting to the President talking about reparations.
- ghostDancer 3y agoSupported by western democracies, USA and UK have always supported dictatorships while they are useful to them, economically and politically, and using the fear of communism they both supported both fascist regimes till the last minute.
- 082349872349872 3y agoThe junta in Greece went next, and Spain made it almost to the end of 1975: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770
- pdpi 3y agoHell, Portugal and the UK ceded control over their colonies in China (Macau and Hong Kong respectively) in the late 90s.
- somenameforme 3y agoFrance is still being kicked out of African states. In recent times it's been Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. [1] There haven't been any wars over this yet, but France (as well as the US) was very much intimating that there would be. That was meant to intimidate the government and/or populations, but instead it just resulted in widespread demonstrations (against France) and people enlisting in the military en masse. So France waved their other flag and went home. It wasn't just troops and bases either. France was also exploiting these countries and extracting their mineral wealth (like uranium in Niger) while offering well below market rate royalties. I assume these 'agreements' have changed, but I haven't been following the exact events there lately. I'm sure there's plenty of others as well. The tentacles of colonialism are getting scarcer, but are still very much there. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-following-coup-says-macron-2023-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-f...
- int_19h 3y agoIn case of Mali and Niger, it seems that the locals have simply traded French boots on their necks for Russian ones, so I doubt that things will get any better for them wrt foreign exploitation of their resources.
- somenameforme 3y agoI see no reason to think this is the case. Time had a reasonable article with some relevant back history here. [1] But beyond this I'd also add that I think colonialism has been an abject failure. It's been a story of small-short term gains for massive long-term losses, the MBA mindset of geopolitics. As soon as colonies start to become successful, they seek their independence. So you just end up with expensive adversarial relationships with anything resembling successful colonies, while getting bankrupted by your unsuccessful colonies. Basically - the story of the rise and fall of the British Empire. It's not something anybody is looking to recreate. [1] - https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/ https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/
- 3y ago
- runarberg 3y agoIt can be argued that the Vietnam war was a colonial war. Even though the original colonial power, France, had (mostly) withdrawn from the conflict after the First Indochina war concluded in 1954. Vietnam was still partitioned with the South having a puppet government from the western colonial powers. By the same logic it can be argued that the Troubles are an extension of the Irish war for independence and as such colonial war. Although I would admit both those examples are quite stretched. Less stretched though is the struggle to end South Africa’s apartheid and the Israel Palestine conflict. Both Apartheid South Africa, and modern day Israel are fighting to legitimize a settler colonial state (preferably ethno-state of European descendants) which unevenly allocates land and rights to the descendants of the European colonizers (see also Northern Ireland before the good Friday agreement). And finally we have Western Sahara, which is a full on colony just like Angola, and has an ongoing colonial war for liberation (just like Algeria). The only difference is that the colonial power is Morocco, which is not a European power.
- rightbyte 3y agoIf you count failed attempts the Falkland war and IRA comes to mind.
- int_19h 3y agoDo you mean to say that invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a war of colonial liberation? If so, who was being liberated, exactly?
- runarberg 3y agoI’m also having a hard time seeing how the IRA “failed”. The Good Friday Agreement brought both Civil Rights and equal political representation for Northern Irish Catholics. It also gave a political avenue for further decolonization (including their ultimate goal of reunification with Ireland), making more terrorist activities kind of unnecessary. I would consider that a pretty good results of violent resistance against your colonizer.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe maybe IRA was a bad example.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe no I would not say it was a war of independence. But a colonial war though.
- defrost 3y agoIt's not just the European powers .. Dutch colonialism in the East Indies was replaced with Indonesian colonialism. For anybody unfamiliar the many many islands in the East Indies historically have had easily distinguishable cultures and largely seperate rule until the Dutch consolidation. The Dutch were replaced as "rulers" by a small group, the most overtly colonial act being the invasion of West Papua following the west largely shrugging their shoulders when independance was sought and "free elections" were rigged via torture. I'm sure there's good writing on the subject, a cursory search turned up https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-colonialism-and-papua/ https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-... which seems adequate as a starting point.
- jimvdv 3y agoI would love some reading recommendations on the history of Indonesia after Dutch colonialism
- anonzzzies 3y agoIt seems in a lot of europe people are over the cycle and are thinking that going ultra right is a Good Plan again. Portugal voted way too right these elections.
- scotty79 3y agoI think it's a general vulnerability of democracies when things go sideways. Hardships bring fear for oneself and fear for oneself is psychological reason why people are conservative and right-wing. Those people vote in right-wing parties. And leaders of those parties are not very smart because position they achieved is solely due to psychology of their voters, not actually earned by their own political merits. So the only way those leaders can imagine for retaining power is to dismantle democracy that handed them this power on a silver plate. If they only cultivated fear in the populace they won over (whist avoiding the blame for the hardships) and create political alliances to avoid being replaced with somebody more right-winged they could retain power indefinitely.
- 082349872349872 3y ago> to dismantle democracy For hard numbers on how quickly that happened in 1933: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877
- bloopernova 3y agoPeople forgot the horrors of world war 2. Once the WW2 veterans started dying, people on the "right" started drifting back to the old, shitty ideas of fascism. I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart.
- unpopularopp 3y ago>I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart. And the socialists and communists, 1945 to 1990 wasn't fun either under the soviet rule. From one shit to another.
- DrNosferatu 3y agoOne iconic photo: https://bit.ly/3y2dYej https://bit.ly/3y2dYej
- worik 3y agoBeautiful What is context?
- jfyi 3y agoI was curious enough to go looking. It's not very well documented, but seems shared quite a bit. I found this: https://blogdelviejotopo.blogspot.com/2014/04/40-aniversario-del-25-de-abril-y-de-la_24.html https://blogdelviejotopo.blogspot.com/2014/04/40-aniversario...
- DrNosferatu 2y agoGot some context: Those soldiers were part of the outer siege [more precisely at the beginning of Rua de Serpa Pinto] to the crowd-packed Largo do Carmo where Marcello Caetano (the successor to Salazar) went to seek refuge from the rebellion - inside the GNR (sort of Gendarmerie) barracks there. Portuguese state broadcaster RTP has a documentary called “Os Olhos da Revolução” about the ‘lost footage’ of the Revolution. ca. 28m53s: https://www.rtp.pt/play/p13273/os-olhos-da-revolucao https://www.rtp.pt/play/p13273/os-olhos-da-revolucao (the whole thing is worth to watch ;)
- 616c 3y agoI went in the last few years to Porugal with my partner and it was so beautiful and modern history was so dark and rich and self aware. I loved Lisbon and Porto. I immediately went back to the site of what I call the Museum of Torture in Lisbon which was essentially the old political prison with the worst rep. They did a fantastic job breaking down torture and the collapse of the end of Portuguese colonialism and fascist rule. Now that I think of it maybe one of my top three museum experiences. Do go if you ever have a chance. https://www.museudoaljube.pt/en/ https://www.museudoaljube.pt/en/
- DrNosferatu 3y agoAlso Tarrafal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrafal_concentration_camp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrafal_concentration_camp
- JetSpiegel 3y agoWhich is basically abandoned. I think there were some talks with local authorities to recover it, but I don't think it will happen in my lifetime.
- JetSpiegel 3y agoFantastic museum, 5 floors of incredible information. Smack in the middle of the hip neighborhoods too.
- DrNosferatu 3y ago‘Everyone was in the streets. I just felt happiness’ - Portugal recalls the Carnation Revolution: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/25/everyone-was-in-the-streets-i-just-felt-happiness-portugal-recalls-the-carnation-revolution https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/25/everyone-was-i...
- H8crilA 3y agoThe entire European Union project is a direct result of the failure of colonialism - if we cannot be colonisers competing over far away resources then it makes sense that we should start playing nice together, without war, and present ourselves externally as a single, more powerful organism. Colonialism itself did not stop in 1945, not at all, in fact the very last European (or European/Asian) empire is on its last stretch trying to re-colonise Ukraine. Timothy Snyder explains it perfectly here: https://youtu.be/JVs2y-YeiFM?t=3682 https://youtu.be/JVs2y-YeiFM?t=3682 EDIT: Given the replies below that I suggest reading my comment perhaps more than once. It seems some people are quick to jump onto some wrong conclusions after grep'ing two or three words from the paragraph I wrote :)
- fsckboy 3y agothe whole world is the direct result of colonialism, so what? meet the human race.
- alephnerd 3y agoIf EU "colonization" was so bad, why did formerly developing countries like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, etc work so hard to join the EU, and currently developing countries like Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Bosnia, etc still try to ascend into the EU? And also the fact that HDI metrics of most of Eastern and Southern Europe only broke the 0.9 (very very highly developed) because of EU funding and support. Edit: you aren't arguing that the EU is a neo-colonial/imperialist project. I answered as such assuming you are anti-EU. +1 on Snyder btw - highly recommend reading "Postwar" if anyone has the time.
- Macha 3y agoI don't think the claim is that the EU is colonizing people, but rather the impulse for the large European countries was basically "we can't be relevant by having huge colonies any more so let's try being relevant by being a unified block" Which is basically true, though the primary motivator was to interlink economies to avoid another war in Europe as started ww1 and ww2
- 3y ago
- Tagbert 3y agoWe Americans may need to take notes on this depending on the results of this fall's election.
- redeeman 3y agomaybe americans should try do sometyhing about the obvious messing with fair elections.. perhaps it could start by copying the EU system of voter ID and paper ballots
- worik 3y ago...and proportional representation
- redeeman 3y agomost definitely, but of course, that might also include deporting illegal aliens that are significantly skewing the seats each state gets, but yeah. I dont care if its inconvenient for one or the other party, it has to be PROPER
- int_19h 3y agoOr we could just allocate voting districts proportional to the number of actual voters. I always found it rather weird as a legal immigrant that my presence in my district somehow increased the voting power of all the citizens there. Or we could just switch to an electoral system where that point is altogether moot... However, none of this is going to happen because federal politics is pretty much completely deadlocked at this point. We can't even pass regular legislation on critical matters reliably, never mind constitutional amendments.
- Tagbert 2y agoAnd yet every time claims of large scale voter fraud have been brought to courts where actual evidence is required, it has been found to be bogus. Perhaps the “proper” part should be in how politicians honor actual elections instead of lying and claiming fraud when they lose.
- euroderf 3y agoIIRC... In the Yom Kippur War (1973), (fascist) Portugal was the only country that allowed American heavy lift (C-5's) to land & refuel whilst ferrying armor & supplies to Israel.
- 082349872349872 3y agocurrently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajes_Field#United_States_Air_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajes_Field#United_States_Air_...
- forinti 3y agoPortugal is perhaps the best example of how colonialism doesn't really benefit the common man. The colonial wars only made sense to those few rich portuguese who had land in Africa. The whole Salazar period was one of stagnation and many people (my family included) had to leave Portugal for better (or just some) opportunities elsewhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 3y agoTo me, it is remarkable how many things we think utterly unthinkable today are actually quite recent, very much in living history. Western Europe had an officially fascist government 50 years (+1 day) ago. ~60 years ago Black people in the US were officially discriminated, enshrined in law. Franco-Algerian wars also finished 62 years ago, and saw atrocities worthy of the worst ethnic cleansing of WWII. Balkan wars are still more recent and depressingly deadly too. Alan Turing committed suicide 70 years ago, being pursued after the "crime" of homosexuality. Not to mention some of the stuff going on today... We take so much for granted, the world really is a nicer place than it used to be.
- anthk 3y agoTwo fascist goverments, actually. Also, the US one it's worse: apartheid like laws happened under a democracy, not under a banana republic.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago> We take so much for granted, the world really is a nicer place than it used to be. And because we take it for granted, we act as though it'll be around forever. There are still people who don't want these things. If we get complacent, they'll be gone before we know what we've lost.
- bencelaszlo 3y agoThere were "human zoos" in Western Europe even after WWII... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo
- renewiltord 3y agoIt's interesting that societies accidentally mimic Roman Dictatorship. Periods of change result in the populace voluntarily handing over power to some sole authoritarian that they hope can cut through the coordination problem and fix some big problem. Then inevitably that person overreaches and we have to overthrow them.
- banish-m4 3y agoFord and Hearst were Nazi sympathizers who almost push the US into the arms of fascism against Britain. The US wasn't flirting with catastrophe, it was banging it 2x a week. FDR saved America not once, but twice.
- davoneus 3y agoLet's not forget Charles Lindbergh in that group either. He was wildly anti-semitic, and spoke glowingly of Hitler frequently, even into the 40s. Maybe it was due to that medal he received from Hermann Gohering.
- banish-m4 3y agoAye. Ford and Hitler were BFFs. And Smedley Butler stood up to an alleged cabal of industrial fascists who believed he would support an American domestic coup. In 1934, America Nazis even had their very own summer camp for boys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Wille_und_Macht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Wille_und_Macht The German-American Bund (American Nazis org) held a rally of 20k in NYC @ MSG in 1939. Political scapegoating, violence, and propaganda twisting narratives and history are as old as time. Recall the fate of the Cathars, Armenians, Romani, and the Holocaust.
- mopsi 3y agoLindbergh was a prominent speaker for the America First Committee, which has uncanny resemblance to the MAGA crowd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee The Iranian attack on Israel seems to have had similar (but milder) effect on MAGA as Pearl Harbor had on AFC.
- banish-m4 3y agoThe sustainable growth of hate groups (or even cults) requires they remain within proscribed bounds of decorum while blowing their dogwhistles discreetly and tricking the unaware to support a cause they don't realize is terrible. History won't be kind to show the KKK, AFC, and MAGA as anything other than softer and cuter forms of the same troglodyte venom. Inversely, the silencing of starving and dying civilians by discriminatorily and ignorantly, and outright lying with fabricated stories, painting an entire people as barbaric monsters by falsely weaponizing cultural sacred lambs like the Holocaust is another form of evil that threatens both Judaism and Zionism.
- TaurenHunter 3y agoLongest dictator rule so far: 1 Fidel Casto Cuba 52 2 Chiang Kai-shek Republic of China 47 3 Kim II-sung North Korea 45 4 Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal Mongolian People's Republic 44 5 Muammar Gaddafi Libyan Arab Republic 42 6 Paul Biya Cameroon 41 7 Omar Bongo Gabon 41 8 Enver Hoxha People's Republic of Albania 40 9 Mohamed Abdelaziz Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic 39 10 Francisco Franco Spanish State 39 11 Eamon de Valera Ireland 37 12 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Equatorial Guinea 37 13 Gnassingbe Eyadema Togo 37 14 Jose Eduardo dos Santos Angola 37 15 Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe 37 16 Josip Broz Tito Yugoslavia 36 17 Antonio de Oliveira Salazar Second Portuguese Republic 36 18 Todor Zhivkov People's Republic of Bulgaria 35 19 Ali Khamenei Iran 35 20 Alfredo Stroessner Paraguay 34
- DrNosferatu 3y agoWhy was this post’s original title changed? It provided important context: “Portugal Overthrew its Fascist Regime 50 Years Ago Today to Become a Democracy”.