André Ventura already statedwith his usual grandiloquence, that God entrusted him with the mission of saving Portugal. But the question that remains is: which Portugal? For Chega, the homeland is a hollow concept, a flag waved in nostalgic directions, but which ignores the History it claims to defend. Chega, as a far-right party fueled by the racist legacy of colonialism, repeats the historical gestures of the Estado Novo — only now with a modern perversion: the total exclusion of the Other. Ventura invokes Salazar as if invoking a patron saint, but his nationalism is so shallow and mediocre that not even Salazar would recognize it.
