Thread by @Timotero2

Thread based on the result of the poll

Antonio Salazar & Fascism

There is a Trifecta of leaders that get accused of being Fascists, causing a lot of discussion both in Fascist & Non-Fascist groups; Francisco Franco, Augusto Pinochet & Antonio Salazar. It may seem like the three are very similar, and they weren’t…

anything remotely close to Fascism; be it for their rejection of it, the persecution of Fascists, or, due to the personalized character with no proper ideological foundation of their regime. In today’s thread we will delve into Salazar, a figure whom’s appearence…

is not what it seems. What makes Salazar stand out from the three is that, even after his passing, the country remained doing what he had been doing, only through colonial war exhaustion and an internal revolt, the system would change. It is here…

where his person becomes interesting, since we can see a clear distinction between the Portuguese experience & the Spanish/Chilean one. What really were Salazar’s foundations? Was he really a Fascist or just a succesful form of Right Wing Socialism?

Coming from a background of Catholic Corporatism, Salazar would take part in a military dictatorship established in 1926 on Portugal. Working as a Finance Minister, he would quickly gain notoriety for keeping control of the budget and…

mantaining government finance in control. By 1932 he became Prime Minister, installing a Corporative system with a strong Catholic influence, alongside a moderate authoritarian State. The regime would quickly consolidate its power through…

carefully controlled elections and the infiltration of his followers in administrative branches. At the words of Salazar, he rejected the “pagan caesarism” and lack of moral limits of Fascism. Whenever a Fascist movement tried to owe support to…

him, he would reject it, as well as taking a clear hostile approach at Fascist Culture. He opposed cultural modernization, and any type of attempt of accelerated economic development. Militarism would be outcasted by him…

and a strong sense of partial isolationism would be put into place, since Portugal didn’t need to pursuit more colonial posessions, just mantain what it had. At the same time, as Salazar rose to power, a cry for Fascism…

would spawn in Portugal. A movement of National Syndicalist nature would rapidly earn membership and support across the population, its leaders would criticize the rightist nature of Salazar by describing him as a moderate.

This new movement would generally identify itself with Fascism, and would emphasize social transformation. The National Syndicalist membership would be consistent of sections of the working class, white collar employees, shopkeepers…

petty entrepeneurs and farmers. Compared to Salazar’s National Union party, that held professionals, landowners, and conservative middle class elements. By 1934, Salazar would dissolve the National Syndicalist movement…

under the note that the government rejected their “exaltation of youth, the cult of force through so-called direct action, the principle of the superiority of state political power in social life, the propensity for organizing masses behind a single leader.”

Afterwards, certain members of the National Syndicalist movement would be included in the government as a way to appease them, nevertheless they held little to no power compared to the members of the National Union of Salazar.

In Portugal, we get to see Fascism in the role of opposition against a system it deems moderate or “too rightist”, with the interesting phenomenon that under Salazar, an established foundation of authoritarian catholic corporatism can be found, which…

although this may seem enough to cathegorize Salazar as a Fascist, at the end of the day, the political manifestation is not what determines what is Fascism and what’s not. The Corporatist tradition, coming from centuries ago, can…

be foreign to Fascism, and if we consider the background of Salazar, we can see that this Corporatist tradition wasn’t based on Fascism, but on that of the Catholic School. Although this ideological foundation could give away for a form of Fascism…

in the case of Salazar, the most we see is a system *partially* analogous to that of Dollfuss in Austria. In this way, we could perhaps consider the idea of Salazar being a figure whom, outside of Fascism, establishes a parallel system…

to it, while also never fully becoming a Fascist. One of the most interesting aspects to note about him, is that even after his death, the government of Portugal remained under his ideas and foundations, which, separate him from Franco & Pinochet.

The latter two had their systems completely change once they died/left power, displaying the personalized character of their regimes, whereas Salazar, albeit not a Fascist, clearly established foundations and an ideological background for his Estado Novo.

As a final note, although Salazar admired Mussolini and kept a portrait of him on his desk (which, he would hide after WW2), he didn’t precisely agree with the methods nor philosophy that was put into practice on Italy. Which displays that…

admiring a political leader doesn’t necessarily mean one has to agree, let alone support what they do. At the end of the day, Salazar could be rightfully seen as a figure that, through certain clear rejections of Fascism and a grounded catholic foundation…

distantiates himself from Fascist Philosophy, to embrace a current more similar to that of Right Wing Socialism. Considering him a figure parallel to Fascism is not a stretch at all, since compared to Franco & Pinochet, there’s more of a relation to be…

found, since some of his criticisms on Fascism, such as the accusation of turning the party into the state, were based on a simple misinterpretation, coming from actual concerns, instead of a place of slander; making him more nuanced than the Chilean & Spaniard leaders.

The End

I want to say thanks to @Makashura for translating some excerpts from Salazar's book "Como Levantar um Estado" and giving input on certain details of the thread.