ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the second post-war period, a new generation of young far-right intellectuals starts its militancy in the Portuguese nationalist camp. That generation grows up in the shadow of Alfredo Pimenta, a monarchist thinker, veteran of Portuguese nationalism and leading figure of the pro-Axis faction of the regime during the years of the Second World War. That milieu promotes a doctrinarian debate led by Portuguese far-right intellectuals in radical journals like A Nação and Mensagem, with respect to the new scenario opened by the defeat of fascism. Here the aim of the Portuguese extreme right is to provide survival strategies for Portuguese New State authoritarian regime in order to secure it beyond its founder António de Oliveira Salazar and to avoid the implantation of the democracy. These themes fit within the European far right’s common concerns at the end of the Second World War and permit the contextualization of the Portuguese extreme right in the European extreme right milieu.