Interview with José de Carvalho: 'Portuguese history is not a crime'

José António Ribeiro de Carvalho is a history professor and researcher. A regular contributor to national and regional newspapers on politics, ideology and education, he is the author of several books. Some of them are real bestsellers, such as "Bento XVI o Papa da renúncia. A Missão de um Homem do tamanho do Mundo" (2023), "Os Papas que marcaram Portugal" (2023), "Pio XII: o Papa Amigo do Portugal de Salazar" (2022), "João Paulo II: o Papa dos Afectos" (2020), "Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira: o Homem, Herói e Santo a (re)cconhece" (2019), "Fátima: Portugal e o Mundo do seu Tempo" (2017), "Salazar e Paulo VI: a relação do ditador com o primeiro Papa a visitar Portugal" (2013). Carvalho is a militant of CHEGA, the third strongest political force in Portugal, to which he has belonged since its establishment in 2019.

Álvaro Peñas: What is the situation in Portuguese universities?

José de Carvalho: In Portuguese universities, the left and its ideological congeners in general hold the main professorships and the most varied faculties. When speaking of "ideological congeners", I should clarify that I am referring to those academic individuals who, although they do not identify themselves politically with the traditional left, are ideologically hostage to leftist agendas. We can see this in the militants and leaders of parties such as social democrats, Christian democrats, liberals and "indifferentists", even sympathisers of these so-called "right-wing" parties. In fact, they are not "right-wing" at all, but rather "not right-wing". In essence, although they do not call themselves "left-wing", they are ideology-wise held hostage by the "left" and the left, in these circumstances, lets them live in peace. In other words, they do not attack the left and its ideological choices, they often even agree with them and defend them vigorously, and the left grants them the right to peaceful existence. They live together well. Gradually, however, this cultural and ideological hegemony of the left has been challenged not so much in the academic circles, but among ideological and cultural combat groups in the so-called civil society. Some of these groups are beginning to step out, albeit timidly, and run, among others, think-tanks, debates on ideas, gatherings, publication of magazines, including think-tanks in the political parties linked to the right. The CHEGA movement has been an example at this level, with militants, leaders and sympathisers mobilised for the cause of cultural and ideological combat. They have not yet reached the university or media world in a visible way, but they are mobilising nationally renowned academics for their initiatives. And though it is clear that the fight will be hard, the victory is certain. This is the conviction of the Portuguese conservative right.

So, as in most of Europe, the university is in the hands of the left.

In the area of Social Sciences, i.e. Philosophy, History, Geography, International Relations, Political Science, etc., there is an (almost) absolute dominance of the left. And when I refer to the left, it does not necessarily mean that all teachers are militants of left-wing parties, but that, even if they are “right-wing” or “indifferent” (as if it were possible, in this case, to be “indifferent”), they adhere to the whole left-wing worldview. The left has managed, in recent decades, to colonise Portuguese structural and ideological thinking. It was a job very well done and has lasted for decades. Over the last few decades, the left managed to colonise Portuguese structural and ideological thought. It was a work of larceny that began, in good Gramscian style, in the 1960s, in the midst of the dictatorial regime of Oliveira Salazar and Marcello Caetano, and has continued until today in the 21st century. A bit, if you like, similarly to what happened in Spain in the last years of Franco’s regime, when the universities were captured by the intellectual left. Those intellectual lefts that carried out a true ideological and mental revolution that still continues in both Iberian countries. In the areas of Sociology and Psychology, but also in Teaching/Education, the case of left-wing mental dictatorship is flagrant. The perverse gender ideology and cultural override in these areas are in full swing. It is no longer just a struggle of revolutionary and bloodthirsty far-left groups, but of a whole perverse and hostile environment that seeks, at all costs, to deconstruct what has made our secular national identity: nation, sovereignty, family, history, Christianity, reason, life, etc. The most serious thing is that all abnormality begins to be perceived and accepted with the utmost normality. Fortunately, however, I believe that there is now a certain “reaction” to all this madness, not only mental, but also popular, against the left-wing mental dictatorship that suffocates everything. Yes, the appropriate term to characterise what is happening in the universities and in the national media world is madness. And it is this madness that has brought people together to fight it.

Has the culture of cancellation come to Portugal, and can you give me some examples?

The so-called cancellation culture has existed in Portugal for several years. At first it was linked to the more radical left-wing groups, but today it is becoming a common practice among the so-called “moderate” or “centrist” sectors. The most recent case is that of a young Portuguese writer, Afonso Reis Cabral, a novelist. It came to light in a Facebook post that “went viral” within hours, when Cabral confessed that an American publisher refused to publish his book “My Brother” because “it might hurt the sensibilities of the media”. The book is about the relationship between two brothers, one of whom is mentally handicapped, who have to learn to live together. “My Brother”, winner of the LeYa Prize 2014, by unanimous decision of the members of the jury, is a novel that, dealing with the delicate subject of disability, questions the abortionist and eugenic agenda, since a person with trisomy 21, according to current canons, would have to be aborted and would not have the right to life. The novelist had the audacity to make a man with trisomy 21 the “protagonist”.

The problem is not recent - it started more than 10 years ago. Of course, everyone relativised it then, and today we have a whole culture of censorship dominant in society (not yet dominant in the number and quantity, but practised by people with the power to apply it to the rest. And this makes a difference). That pseudo-intellectual elite, as we have seen, not only in Portugal, but also abroad, understands that it can alter the text of authors at will, to satisfy the current agendas of customs, forgetting that  literary work must be respected with regard to the person of its author and the era when it appeared. This is no longer just a disease, but I fear that all this indicates a crime of adulteration of literary works.

Like Marxism, wokism is nothing but an ideology that ignores history, traditions, customs and identity and places all “evil” in the past, aiming at a purified future in order to subvert power relations in the present. Adherents of wokism want to judge (and condemn) the past with their eyes, i.e. with the concepts and moral judgements of the present. They want official apologies for past injustices and violence. They want material or symbolic reparations for Portugal’s involvement in slavery. They want – or have wanted – to foment a great public debate, giving the false impression that the issue has never been debated before, in order to try to impose their version of events. They want to change the teaching of history according to this modern version of minority agendas and unhealthy wokism. In these times of cancellation, there are jokes that can no longer be told. There are things that can no longer be said. There are clothes that can no longer be worn. There are books that can no longer be read. There are words that can no longer be used. The most serious thing is not that some people are heralds of the “culture of cancellation”. What is shocking is that the majority of people consider all this nonsense and accept, complacently, that all this is indeed so, without a real revolution for the defence of freedom. Yes, it is freedom we are talking about when we refer to this issue. Contrary to what we are told, all this is not a campaign for tolerance. What is at stake here is intolerance at its highest level, perpetrated by the so-called tolerant and supporting “inclusion” who in fact practice the utmost intolerance and exclusion for those who think differently.

In 2021 the socialist MP Ascenso Simoes proposed tearing down the Monument to the Discoveries because it was built in Salazar’s time. Is there in Portugal, like in Spain, a historical revisionism of the left to erase everything they do not like?

Yes, according to the former socialist MP, there was an urgent need to destroy the Monument to the Discoveries because it represented “fascism” and “colonialism”. Others said immediately that we should destroy the Jerónimos Monastery, the Belém Tower, the Clérigos Tower, the Estrela Basilica and all the other monuments showing workers without the right to a well-deserved rest, working from sunrise to sunset to eat a little soup, and thus being slaves of labour. Let all the monuments that remind us of our glorious past and reveal our secular identity be blown up – was the slogan of some of the voices that made themselves heard. The themes of the discoveries and slavery, as we know, are recurrent in that collective condemnation, to which its proponents are trying to subject the Portuguese in general and Westerners in particular.

On the subject of the discoveries, they want to condemn the Portuguese of that time by making monuments to African slaves, but they do not want us to talk about the Africans who enslaved other Africans and run the slave trade. They want to compensate the slaves, but they do not allow discussing the 1961 terrorist attacks in Africa which killed thousands of whites, blacks and mixed-race people at the hands of Africans supported by the former USSR. They want to compensate the descendants of slaves, but dare not touch the issue of forcing the Romans to compensate Portugal for the invasions carried out by the Roman Empire and the process of Romanisation. In case of the Arabs, do they also want to demand compensation for the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, or was the Arabisation of medieval Europe already a good thing? By all accounts, Islamisation was a marvellous thing. In fact, it was and is a good thing. The bad thing was the westernisation of Africa. These people are sick. And they are so selective in their agenda that they don't realise how ridiculous their positions are. The sect to which they belong has long since decreed that the history of Portugal begins on 25 April 1974 with the famous "Carnation Revolution", while others, older ones, define 5 October 1910, the beginning of the Republic, as a milestone. There is a small but big difference: the latter do not deny our glorious history.

This way of analysing the past is a real crime that we call (now forbidden) an anachronism. That is, analysing the past with the eyes and vision of the contemporary world. This has long since ceased to be history and is now limited to a mere ideology that is infected with surrender to wokism.

In addition to this revisionism with history, is there any attempt to present Portugal's history as a racist country?

Yes, this seems to be increasingly evident. In fact, left-wing activists have already realised that the “racism” vein is profitable for the prime-time media. To this end, the current socialist government of António Costa has doubled the funding of the Observatory for the Fight against Racism, run by people from the radical left who need to exploit the racist streak of the Portuguese people to exploit many thousands of euros from the state budget. Their “workers” strive to find racism everywhere, as a way to ensure their survival and their fat paycheck at the end of the month. According to their narrative, everything and everyone is racist. For them, Portugal’s past is a constant history of racist and xenophobic attitudes. Against this backdrop, let’s imagine spreading the idea that the Romans were slavers, that they forced the indigenous people to build roads, bridges and baths, that they were thieves who stole the mines, and so on. And yet the Romans were civilisers, through laws, art, language, Latin. The same applies to the lands and people that we, the Portuguese and also the Spanish, took over from rule of barbarians. In Africa and America, which we Iberians discovered, abortion, infanticide and cannibalism had been practised, and it was with the arrival of Christian values that those horrible customs began to disappear, and relations between people became humane. Of course there were abuses, but where there is human presence, there will (almost) always be abuses.

As we have seen, the activists already wanted to dynamite the banner of discovery, destroy ancient monuments, change the names of streets -  just as they have changed the names of bridges, squares and avenues. Tomorrow they will want to abolish the names of various hospitals – Santo António, São João, Santa Maria, etc. – because they invoke religious notions, and so should be replaced by neutral names. The same for the names of lands, cities and districts. These activists, little by little, intend to destroy our identity. If we allow them to do so, of course. Fortunately, there are those who are already reacting to these attacks. In Portugal, excluding the academic world dominated by wokism, the issue of slavery and possible reparations/compensations to African countries goes unnoticed. However, the same people who demand reparations for the crimes of slavery selectively forget the heinous crimes of communism and the need for reparations to the families of the victims. They acclaim reparations for Nazism, but cannot bear to hear about the crimes of the regimes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, etc.

Just a month ago I visited the army museum in Lisbon. It is a place worth seeing, but I was surprised that there was nothing about Portugal’s most decorated soldier, Marcelino da Mata.

Portugal boasts a beautiful epic of soldiers, warriors, saints and entrepreneurs. That is how this nine times secular nation was built. As for Marcelino da Mata, the most decorated soldier in the Portuguese army and a contemporary of ours, he was born in Guinea and died in 2021. For many Portuguese, Marcelino da Mata embodies the true spirit of Portugal, serving as a model national hero of our time, but also as a representation of a greater, imperial Portugal that no longer exists. He actively participated in more than 2,400 combat operations in the Overseas War or African War (Colonial War, as the Marxists say). At the time of the military coup of 25 April 1974, Marcelino was tortured and flogged at the hands of the left-wing “heirs” of the coup, and imprisoned in the Fortaleza de Caxias without charge for five months. When he was released from the “democratic dungeons”, he went into exile on the outskirts of Madrid, returning to Portugal in 1976. At the time of his death, the defenders of his memory were called racists by some. It should be noted that whites who defended the honour of a black soldier were called racists. If he had been a coward, a simple fugitive from the Overseas War and a traitor to the fatherland, if he had stolen a plane, a ship or robbed a bank, he would have made the front page of the news and the newspapers. As he did not belong to that group, he was only remembered by Portuguese ex-combatants and ordinary nationals. At this stage, we still do not know what the homeland, always ungrateful, will do to preserve his memory. Some suggest his enshrinement in the National Pantheon. However, his name and achievements have long been part of the history and memory of our people. And history does not deceive…

Is there a monument or a tribute to the 7,000 Portuguese killed in the massacre in Angola in 1961?

As we know, history is always told by the victors. The vanquished, with rare exceptions, are not remembered. History is selective and whoever controls history controls the memory of the future. In this respect, until now, history has been very well controlled by the leftists who dominate the research centres and who have access to million-dollar grants, television studios and publishing houses with wide distribution. And those, for obvious reasons, are not interested in addressing the heinous crimes committed in brutal attacks on defenceless human beings, such as the massacres in Angola in 1961. Not least because those crimes were committed, according to the leftist narrative, by men who were "fighting for freedom from the Portuguese colonial oppression". Moreover, the perpetrators were black and, for obvious reasons, cannot be accused of "racist attacks". In fact, according to the dominant narrative, racism only exists when attacks are perpetrated by whites against blacks. In short, as far as I know, there are no monuments in Portugal commemorating this heinous crime, let alone public ceremonies in remembrance of the victims and their families or even major publications of books about the event. There is a clear attempt here to silence those attacks. Here, like in so many other episodes in our history.

Do you think that one of the reasons for CHEGA's growing support is its defence of Portuguese history or is this reason, largely due to ignorance, unimportant to voters?

CHEGA has come to defend what is obvious and which many want to censor and make disappear. Portuguese history is one of its causes. I joined CHEGA, at the end of 2019, because I understood that this was a space of freedom, and my opinions have been accepted. My motivation has always been the cultural and civilisational struggle, and in CHEGA there is a clear concern for defending our history from the most atrocious attacks of left-wing activists. This cultural and ideological struggle is a decisive struggle for the collective future of the Portuguese, to put an end to the global stupidity of associating Portugal’s past with a crime. No, Portugal’s history is not a crime. Many prefer to forget it, others want to adapt it to their politically correct delusions. I have so far chosen to study it, honour it and pay tribute to those who came before us. CHEGA has so far followed the same line and, in little more than four years, has become a political phenomenon with exceptional growth on the national and international scene. At the moment, polls give it figures in the order of 15% voting intentions. This is a figure that carries an enormous responsibility towards the electorate and towards the construction of a decent Portugal that is not ashamed of its past and hopes to build a future out of the convulsive present in which we live.