Under Estado Novo people were discouraged from discussing political matters in public. This was a matter left to a few intellectuals to discuss in cafés and other small circles. One of the phenomena that impressed me most in the April 1974 revolution was that one month later virtually everyone in this politically illiterate population was professing some form of socialism. They were divided about the kind of socialism they embraced, from Mao to Enver Hoxha to Marx to socialismo à la sueca - as social-democracy was called then. But there was no doubt in my mind that, with a few exceptions, all the Portuguese people had massively turned socialists overnight. Actually, I was one of them.
I came to understand this phenomenon only recently. This is a people who needs a common orthodoxy to live together. Their most ancient and strong orhodoxy of all was that of Catholicism. It was under the Catholic orthodoxy they always performed the great deeds of their history, such as the Discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They never discriminated people for their sex, colour or race. They did discriminate people, though, for their creed, for what they thought and said. "If you think like us you are one of us", this was the Portuguese banner.
It still is. It should be emphasized, though, that what unites the Portuguese, and other Catholic peoples as well, is merely the outward expression of adherence to an orthodoxy, not necessarily the strict following of that orthodoxy in practice. Catholic peoples are not known for being too good Christians, as compared to their Protestant counterparts. This is part and parcel of the flexible ethical system of Catholicism which allows them an ample freedom of action bordering on the unlawful and the sinful.
What decisively matters is their outward expression of adherence to the orthodoxy - that is, the words. As for acts, they can do exactly the opposite that nobody cares. Thus, that extraordinary mass conversion of the Portuguese people to socialism following the 1974 Revolution was a cultural, defensive reaction to hold their society together. The orthodoxy of Estado Novo - Deus, Pátria e Família - was under attack. They needed desperately a new orthodoxy in order to prevent their country from falling apart. Socialism was the most popular ideology in Europe at the time. They embraced it. They could have embraced a different one. They embraced socialism, not because they are or have ever been socialists, but because they needed an orthodoxy and socialism was just at hand.
I came to understand this phenomenon only recently. This is a people who needs a common orthodoxy to live together. Their most ancient and strong orhodoxy of all was that of Catholicism. It was under the Catholic orthodoxy they always performed the great deeds of their history, such as the Discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They never discriminated people for their sex, colour or race. They did discriminate people, though, for their creed, for what they thought and said. "If you think like us you are one of us", this was the Portuguese banner.
It still is. It should be emphasized, though, that what unites the Portuguese, and other Catholic peoples as well, is merely the outward expression of adherence to an orthodoxy, not necessarily the strict following of that orthodoxy in practice. Catholic peoples are not known for being too good Christians, as compared to their Protestant counterparts. This is part and parcel of the flexible ethical system of Catholicism which allows them an ample freedom of action bordering on the unlawful and the sinful.
What decisively matters is their outward expression of adherence to the orthodoxy - that is, the words. As for acts, they can do exactly the opposite that nobody cares. Thus, that extraordinary mass conversion of the Portuguese people to socialism following the 1974 Revolution was a cultural, defensive reaction to hold their society together. The orthodoxy of Estado Novo - Deus, Pátria e Família - was under attack. They needed desperately a new orthodoxy in order to prevent their country from falling apart. Socialism was the most popular ideology in Europe at the time. They embraced it. They could have embraced a different one. They embraced socialism, not because they are or have ever been socialists, but because they needed an orthodoxy and socialism was just at hand.
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Obviously the freedom they were celebrating at the time (see picture) was largely freedom of expression. They were about to lose a lot of their former freedom to act.
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