ABSTRACT

In the second half of the 1980s, the Portuguese far right experiences the main cultural and generational change in its recent history with the replacement of the radical generation coming from the authoritarian regime and from the transition by a new generation of militants grown in the mid of the decade. This change is both in terms of social and cultural identity. In sociological terms, the flux of African immigrants coming from the ex-colonies in the aftermath of decolonization and their settling in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Oporto caused the emergence of xenophobic tendencies, especially among young people from the working class and the suburbs, attracted by the skinhead subculture. In cultural terms, the consequence is the abandonment of the myth of Portugal as a multiethnic and multi-cultural Empire shared by the old far right – mainly composed by the middle-high bourgeoisie – and the emergence of a new far right coming from the lower classes and inspired by the ethno-centrist idea of Portugal for European white people. This socio-cultural change, shared by other extreme-right milieu in ancient colonial empires of Europe, is embodied in Portugal by the Movimento de Acção Nacional (National Action Movement – MAN). The differences between the MAN and the traditional nationalistic and royalist organization Nova Monarquia (New Monarchy – NM) as well as its attempts to organize the Portuguese skinhead movement involved in criminal cases (especially two murders by skinheads in 1989 and 1995), mould the Portuguese far right at the end of the 20th century in term of groupuscularization of the radical area.