Political-Media power has not yet realized

What happened in Portugal on May 18 was not just another election. It was the foreshadowing of a break. An authentic political tsunami. It was only surprising for those who continue to form their opinion through television, which has long become an extension of the system’s ideological apparatus. How could Millôr Fernandes say, Who informs themselves on television or the great media is very poorly informed.

This Sunday, in a restaurant with a TV on high volume, the echoes of the official concern are heard. “Scary,” the commentators say about the arrival results. At the next table, two men-one young man and one middle-aged-exchange impressions sobriety: “Scary is our salary compared to countries such as Spain; the price of housing, gasoline, the state of the NHS, the impunity with which so many PS and PSD politicians have been serving from power for decades, protecting their own groups…”.

The contrast is revealing. As the system’s commentators rush to impose their moralizing and ideological reading, the real country reacts with pragmatic lucidity. The political-metal system that gave rise to forces outside its control continues without understanding what happened. And even less what is about to happen.

The decline of the left and the collapse of media intermediation

There are two clear trends, supported by facts and not mere perceptions.
First, the traditional left, especially the center-left, is in a sharp decline and reveals a profound inability to understand the time in which we live.
Second, the conventional average, largely dependent on the economic and symbolic structure of the instituted power, are aligned with a left ended in a self-referential ideological bubble, disconnected from the real conditions of the population.

This left, culturally dominant but socially distant, no longer understands the world. No longer hits one. And the average, survey companies, etc., that accompany it share the same destination. There is also a noisy minority, formed by proselytes that repeat the mantras of the official discourse, devoid of their own thinking.

The elitist left media force extends to the entertainment programs, now converted, in practice, in disguised doctrination sessions of pluralism. And its “radical” version, no matter how much iconoclastic proclaims, does not understand the 21st century. People don’t want to « tax the rich. » They want to be rich. They want security, social mobility, material stability. They live in the real world. And in this world the identity causes and the obsessive denunciation of “structures of oppression” became irrelevant or counterproductive.

Elite alienation and system resentment

Those who followed the television comments of recent times easily realize that the dominant media do not understand the country. They live in a narrative built from ideological desires and not from the observation of reality. Look at the people with a mix of fear and contempt, like Hillary Clinton, nicknamed deplorable those who did not fit their view of progress.

They suspect the electorate and consider it late, ignorant or manipulable. When electoral results do not favor the system parties, there is a threat to democracy, in « populism », « fascism », « ultra-right. » As if democracy were only valid when it produces the right results. It is a strangely conditional conception of democracy: the elections are free until they vote for « evil. »

The average and their usual « experts » have become unable to interpret the world. These are, more and more, figures of a burlesque comedy, isolated in a closed circuit of references, weaving absurd theories about a reality that no longer inhabit.

In Portugal, it is factual: PS and PSD have failed to rotate in the objective of development. Without the structural financing of the European Union, the country would have collapsed. Economic hyperliberalism, coupled with cultural progressivism and university left, created an artificial world, where there is abundance of goods and a shortage of meaning. A world where stability has been replaced by precariousness, and freedom by moralistic normativity. But reality begins to impose itself.

From popular disenchantment to the emergence of a new political wave

The neoliberal model destroyed the popular left and replaced it with a technocratic and identity caricature. The system parties were aligned with the Empire of Markets and the logic of shareholders, abdicating the defense of the common good. The ordinary citizen does not live better. It actually lives worse and worse.

Dislocations, loss of economic sovereignty, dignified dignity and the crushing of the middle classes generated revolt. The arrival in Portugal is the legitimate expression of this revolt, which takes different forms in different countries.

The commentators of the regime continue to label everything that bothers them from “fascism”, “far right”, “populism”. This language reveals more despair than analysis. They use these labels to defend their privileges, acquired and maintained since the 1980s, and to protect the ideological consensus that serves their interests. But the true people on the left, who works, pays taxes, supplies the car, looking for home and support, is no longer manipulating. Dissociation is total. And the legitimacy, lost.

The new generation and the collapse of the traditional average

Channels such as CNN Portugal, SIC or Now have become, for many, irrelevant or derived. Younger people don’t even consume television. Your informative universe is another. And those who still connect the screens do so with skepticism. What they find is ideological proselytism, symbolic censorship, and obsession with what they can no longer control.

The world has changed. It’s changing. And these new political forces are not “extremely right,” as the system proclaims. They are anti-system forces, born of the concrete experience of the failure of the promises of liberal modernity. A system that presented itself as the only way to prosperity, but produced instability, disintegration and social resentment.

Today, the average serve above all ideological bias disguised as factual information.

About Ventura, it comes and critical thinking

The arrival must largely its doctrinal structure to the influence of Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, a classic liberal conservative who found in André Ventura the charismatic expression of his vision. And in mass phenomena, such as contemporary democracies, charisma is decisive. And it is not explained rationally. Today arrives has a wider dimension but this genesis has to be recognized.

Ventura may have defects, like any political figure, but today it is the most charismatic and intellectually incisive politician in Portugal. Reducing the arrival is a mistake. The party represents a large -scale sociological movement, which channeled diffuse discontent and converted it into concrete political demand.

This is not an apology. This is analysis. And confusing analysis with apology is a totalitarian addiction, inherited from the old Bolshevik tradition that tries to suppress everything that challenges the dominant discourse.

It is worth remembering that Guilherme Valente was one of the first to identify this emerging phenomenon, even in electoral terms. His lucidity was, like so many others, marginalized. Because thinking critically, beyond dominant ideologies, it is today a task for the few.