On August 2, 2020, Chega organized a demonstration to say that there is no structural racism in Portugal, in response to everyone who spoke out about the clear evidence that it exists and is serious. After four years, not only does structural racism continue to exist, but this party has been the most active contributor to the legitimization of racist discourse in Portugal, following in the footsteps of its elected partners in Europe and in other countries. They do it without subtlety, in all their anti-immigration speeches, in the absolute lack of empathy for foreigners, in the rhetoric of “us†and “them†. Recently, in an interview with Bernardo Ferrão, I stated that the social network X is, to a large extent, one of the main vehicles used by Chega members to disseminate falsehoods and racist hate speech. Of course, they were outraged and spread a few more lies (about me, the softest ones were made with a signature, those that constitute a crime of insult and defamation protected by the cowardly anonymity typical of these neo-fascists). But just see how, in the comments on their publications, they accept without comment, without discussing or questioning, all the messages about “repatriation†, about the association between crime and immigration already widely refuted, on the paranoid replacement theories. They legitimize, through silence, all the fuss and criminal statements made by their supporters.
In a 2023 study on the language of Fake News, researchers Jack Grieve and Helen Woodfield present a typology that crosses the axis of honesty with truth. There is news that is false, because the facts are wrong, but the author had no intention of lying (it happens in some press that they quickly correct and deny). There is news that is false, not because it contains false facts, but because it is truncated and taken out of context to convey dishonest messages (like all the publications by Chega deputies about subsidies for immigrants, which omit their contribution net positive for Social Security) and there are those that are false because they present data that are not true with the obvious intention of deceiving (an example of which are declarations of a Chega deputy about there being more suicides than deaths from breast cancer or diabetes in Portugal or the video published by another in which, allegedly, the Spanish police were fleeing immigrants). This typology is interesting, because it allows us to understand, in the context of national and foreign politics, where the politicians who most promote false information associated with dishonesty are positioned: on the extreme right.
Cláudia Simões, 42 years old, accused Amadora PSP agent of police violence
Ana Baião
The conviction of Cláudia Simões is a source of shame for all of us and a sign of all Chega’s mistakes: proof that there is structural racism, evidence of unequal treatment due to that of skin color. I have no doubt whatsoever, because it has already happened, that if I forget my pass on the bus, I understand, the police will not be called and if they are called, I will not end up the day with a punched face. As I know that my children, on the way to school, were never stopped to be searched, unlike what happened several times to the son of some black friends, an impeccable young man who was only stopped because he was black. As I know that, if I exalt myself for whatever reason, no one will send me to my land, even if that land is the same one where my black friend was born, who is always sent there. The judge of the Sintra Court who sentenced Cláudia Simões, according to the available reports on the way she treated her during the hearings, is, through her position, legitimizing all the hatred and all the persecution what black people suffer and to be an agent of arriving campaigns. We saw the video of the attacks, we saw the photos of the trampled face. And we saw how André Ventura is enthusiastic about defending all of this, even if indirectly, with his gestures of legitimizing the place where racism grows in the security forces. This judge is normalizing all of this, doing justice a terrible service, because she turns the victim into the culprit, pairing with her fellow judges who have already done the same to victims of domestic violence or of rape, mitigating the guilt of the aggressors or suggesting that the victim “got away with it†. They forget that their role is also pedagogical or they only remember this to carry out the pedagogy that interests them.
From post to post on social media, from sentence to sentence, from comment to comment, we witness the dangerous normalization of all this. To the deliberate confusion between hate and freedom of expression, to the reduction of all forms of segregation and discrimination to the status of opinion. This week, Rishi Sunak shared an undignified video about Labour’s approach to immigration, with the most obvious lack of empathy for all those experiencing the horror of fleeing their countries. That this comes from a conservative party and not from the extreme right is frightening, because it shows the subtlety of the appropriation of racist discourse by those who traditionally were not racist (or did not accept it).
How many black people are there in top positions in companies in Portugal? What is the percentage of doctors, university professors or lawyers? Structural racism is not measured by legislation, but by the delay we still have and which lacks positive discrimination. And this positive statement must also pass through justice, especially when the fights are unequal, when a judge should measure proportionality in the application of penalties, when she could not ignore that a specific crime is not exempt from a larger context.
If the demonstration on August 2, 2020 no longer made any sense, 4 years later it makes even less sense, because Chega has allowed there to be more and more Cláudias Simões in Portugal. Because those bruises have moral authors.
