I regularly come across three phenomena that make political dialogue with our domestic left almost impossible: the first is a judgment of intention, when our actor assumes that anyone who is not “left” has perverse intentions and does not want the same. country and its fellow citizens. The second is what I call “Portuguese exclusivity,” a kind of doctrine based on the fact that our country is so exotic that it cannot be compared with anything else. Thus, this feature does not allow making any judgments based on what other countries could have done to solve the same problems that Portugal suffers from. The third phenomenon is that all communist and socialist regimes were not truly communist and socialist, and only someone especially malicious could claim such a hoax.

The process of intention consists in discrediting the person with whom they are at war, accusing his intentions of reprehensible, which cannot be proved and verified, leaves suspicion in the air that cannot be gotten rid of. In fact, this has the same effect on the dialogue as slow justice with the defendant: it destroys his reputation without bothering to prove something significant in a timely manner. In Portugal, this false argument has a rich history and has been consistently used by most of the most prominent leftists. Alvaro Cunjal published a small book in 1974 with the unambiguous title “Moral superiority of the communists“, Where it is stated that”[o comportamento moral da burguesia é] fierce individualism and selfishness, indifference to the fate of people, greed, venality, complete shamelessness, reduction of cultural and spiritual values ​​to simple goods“.

This Marxist leader then believes that all “bourgeois” are irrefutably corrupted and have the most terrible intentions. Boaventura Sousa Santos, another prominent thinker in the same political field, goes so far as to define what it means to be left and right as follows (“Portugal is a country more to the left or to the righta “, newspaper Público, 01.10.2015):

“In a minimalist concept, the left is any political position that promotes all (or the vast majority) of the following goals: combating social inequality and discrimination through a virtuous articulation between the value of freedom and the value of equality in balance. between civil and political rights and social, economic and cultural rights; firm defense of pluralism in both the media and the economy, education and culture; democratization of the state through republican values, citizen participation and the independence of institutions, especially the judiciary; the struggle for memory and redress for those who have suffered (and are suffering) from violent forms of oppression; defending a strong concept of public opinion that balances diversity of opinion; protection of the national sovereignty and national sovereignty of other countries; peaceful resolution of internal and international conflicts. To be right is to be against all or the vast majority of these goals.“

In short, being left is good, and being right is bad. For them and, unfortunately, for many of those who are under their influence, the concept of “left” has acquired a mystical, almost religious meaning. In recent months, I’ve been interested to hear many socialists advocate for this government budget (abolished by the PCP and BE) to be “left-most ever” in a wording that was actually synonymous with “best budget ever”. The hostages of this paradigm “left = good, right = bad” are not only the minds of communists and blockers, but also the majority of socialists, who, both in deed and in words, are more comfortable with the discourse of the radical left than with the centrism of much more successful workers and socialist parties in Europe.

The second characteristic I found was “Portuguese exclusivity.” Faced with the successes of the more liberal economies in Eastern Europe, they defend themselves by saying “we cannot compare the incomparable.” If we talk about the economic freedom of the Scandinavian social democracies, they reaffirm their conviction that we have nothing to do with them. And when we analyze the rapid growth of Ireland, Holland or Luxembourg, they reaffirm that Portugal is unique: either the size is different, or the religion is different, or the language is different, or the proximity to the centers of power is different, or the historical heritage is different.

The great interest of this kind of reasoning is that then you can offer any explanation for any problem, which, being impossible to prove counterfactual and without accepting any external comparisons, will allow you to safely, proudly and undeniably keep on top of your ignorance. … This is one of the most beautiful techniques of our media specialists. For example, they regularly use the euro as the root cause of our economic underdevelopment, ignoring the existence of so many other countries that have overtaken us using exactly the same currency. They respond to us with the excellent education of former communist countries, ignoring nearly half a century of democracy, which has given us more than enough time to deal with this and more. Almost our entire team was formed after the April revolution. Yes, comparisons are helpful. Especially to demonstrate what we need to change. We must always, regularly, carefully compare ourselves and draw conclusions in order to learn not only from our mistakes, but also from the successes and failures of others.

The third point that repeatedly appears in these discussions is communist denialism. When the communists and their later versions are confronted with the bottom line of the political systems they defend, they object by repeating that “this” is not true socialism / communism. That it was never implemented. In most cases, this resignation was always late and shameful, as we saw with the Chavez / Maduro duo, which caused great excitement until the hunger of the tortured Venezuelan people was no longer hidden. In a related and unfortunately forgotten demonstration, Free Party leader Rui Tavares accomplished the feat of never using the word “communist” in his article “In the careful death of genocide(Público, 09/07/2020) All about the genocide committed by the communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. As my communist friend would say much more openly when faced with Stalin’s crimes: this cannot be true, because a communist would never do that. Deep down, communist denialism turns out to be a less eloquent version of the moral superiority of the left. As so-called scientific ideologies, considered historically inevitable, they cannot afford to be wrong, which forces them to use methods of opacity and distortion of facts to defend the grand ultimate goal. Rather than distance themselves from these criminals, as the right does with Pinochet, Salazar, Mussolini or Hitler, they prefer to shy away, pretend, and hesitate.

There can be no presumption of moral superiority on either the left or the right. Aside from some of the more sinister characters, we all want the best for Portugal and for the Portuguese, disagreeing only on how best to get there. Comparison with other countries, especially those that bear some resemblance to ours, allows us to determine with great certainty what we must change in our institutions in order to achieve the same or better results. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Portuguese, as evidenced by their widespread success abroad. And it is time for politicians to take responsibility for the systems they defend, clearly separating themselves from genocidal and criminal policies, wherever and whenever they are carried out by people under their flags.