Many Portuguese, including the middle class, are being priced out of Portugal’s property market by rising rents, surging home prices and climbing mortgage rates.
The country has a Communist Party who are pro-Russia, put Party above everything else all the time, haven’t updated their slogans in over half a century and until not that long ago were Stalinists. They are quite literally dying as a political force as their supporters die of old age (and given Portugal’s relativelly high life expectation, you can imagine just how ancient most are).
Meanwhile the newest ecological party just went into a coalition with the mainstream Right and the convervative traditionalist Right (who are the leftovers from the Fascist days) in regional elections. I would love to hear how exactly Ecology is compatible with the kind of core policies of the mainstream and conservative Right, like the Consumer Society.
Meanwhile the supposedly Thinking Leftwing party is busy parroting the Liberals (i.e. neoliberals) of the US and UK (which are countries far more to the Right than mainland Europe and were those movements “strangelly” never worry with wealth inequality) and have no actual vision for a better Portugal, spending their time running in firefighting tactical mode running after the news (they’re led by people in their 30s with zero professional experience outside politcs). Also they’re painfully established middle class (the scions of well-off families) and most definitelly interiorized the whole idea that trying to get what’s better for you and those like you is fine, aka Greed Is Good.
Unsurprising the only growth you see in Portugal is an ultra neoliberal party which looks suspiciously like they’ve been launched with money from what Steve Bannon brought to Europe a few years ago for that (their launch marketing material stood out as done by the kind of real expensive international marketing company that a party that size can’t afford and they rely mostly of ex-finance types to front them) and a nationalist fascist-inclined populist party started by a guy who was in the mainstream Right party were he didn’t get any really big money-making sinecures, became a TV soccer commentator and then leveraged it to make a (surprisingly successful) far-right populist party.
Most of the parties with ‘Communist’ in the name are exactly what you said: dinosaurs from a bygone era that either abandoned Marxist thought decades ago or are Stalinist offshoots (the leader of the Portuguese Communist party frothed at the mouth to worship at the altar of BRICS, conveniently forgetting that BRICS is simply another imperialist approach to controlling the world economy to the benefit of a few wealthy individuals). Same goes for here in Canada as well. The name has brand recognition, but the Communist Party of Canada 1. Isn’t a political party really; and 2. doesn’t do anything beyond go to a few protests throughout the year. Hilarious.
There’s a ton of young marxists that don’t belong to these archaic parties though. In Canada, 1 million people under the age of 25 admitted to being communist last year. Seems like everyone is just waiting for a revolutionary force to develop.
The country has a Communist Party who are pro-Russia, put Party above everything else all the time, haven’t updated their slogans in over half a century and until not that long ago were Stalinists. They are quite literally dying as a political force as their supporters die of old age (and given Portugal’s relativelly high life expectation, you can imagine just how ancient most are).
Meanwhile the newest ecological party just went into a coalition with the mainstream Right and the convervative traditionalist Right (who are the leftovers from the Fascist days) in regional elections. I would love to hear how exactly Ecology is compatible with the kind of core policies of the mainstream and conservative Right, like the Consumer Society.
Meanwhile the supposedly Thinking Leftwing party is busy parroting the Liberals (i.e. neoliberals) of the US and UK (which are countries far more to the Right than mainland Europe and were those movements “strangelly” never worry with wealth inequality) and have no actual vision for a better Portugal, spending their time running in firefighting tactical mode running after the news (they’re led by people in their 30s with zero professional experience outside politcs). Also they’re painfully established middle class (the scions of well-off families) and most definitelly interiorized the whole idea that trying to get what’s better for you and those like you is fine, aka Greed Is Good.
Unsurprising the only growth you see in Portugal is an ultra neoliberal party which looks suspiciously like they’ve been launched with money from what Steve Bannon brought to Europe a few years ago for that (their launch marketing material stood out as done by the kind of real expensive international marketing company that a party that size can’t afford and they rely mostly of ex-finance types to front them) and a nationalist fascist-inclined populist party started by a guy who was in the mainstream Right party were he didn’t get any really big money-making sinecures, became a TV soccer commentator and then leveraged it to make a (surprisingly successful) far-right populist party.
Most of the parties with ‘Communist’ in the name are exactly what you said: dinosaurs from a bygone era that either abandoned Marxist thought decades ago or are Stalinist offshoots (the leader of the Portuguese Communist party frothed at the mouth to worship at the altar of BRICS, conveniently forgetting that BRICS is simply another imperialist approach to controlling the world economy to the benefit of a few wealthy individuals). Same goes for here in Canada as well. The name has brand recognition, but the Communist Party of Canada 1. Isn’t a political party really; and 2. doesn’t do anything beyond go to a few protests throughout the year. Hilarious.
There’s a ton of young marxists that don’t belong to these archaic parties though. In Canada, 1 million people under the age of 25 admitted to being communist last year. Seems like everyone is just waiting for a revolutionary force to develop.