A phoenix searching for the ashes?

Palingenesis and imagined communities in the newspaper A Nação (1946-1948)

Abstract

While the Estado Novo was reorganizing itself in the face of rising internal opposition and the new geopolitics of the Cold War, the newspaper A Nação (1946-1948) was an instrument of propaganda and indoctrination of the far-right in the post-Second World War. Its pages were guided by recurring themes of fascist ideology, with the newspaper defending Mussolini and Nazism. Bearing in mind the concepts of «palingenesis» and «imagined communities», as well as other structuring elements of fascism, this article aims to analyze how its leitmotifs were conceived in an aggressive and mobilizing discursive strategy. On the other hand, it attempts to review other elements, such as the poetic section, the iconography and a certain vision of the world that, in a certain way, was thought to be transcendent. Above all, the reference to «palingenesis» will allow us to understand how the hypothesis of a «rebirth» was (or was not) considered.