Far-right conspiracism between the New State and the democratic transition (1945-1975)

Abstract

During the New State and the democratic transition, the Portuguese far right analyzed all the regime’s crises in the light of a conspiracy theory. Inherited from the counter-revolutionary political culture of the 19th century, conspiracism was applied by the Portuguese far-right from 1945 onwards to uncover the alleged plan against the Portuguese Empire. In this sense, the far right denounced a pyramidal and hierarchical structure controlled by the globalist elite and made up of different national actors. Although there is no single version of the plot shared by all the protagonists of the far right, the agents of the conspiracy denounced tend to always be the same. The Portuguese far right did not make any doctrinal contribution to the conspiracism developed by its European counterparts, but merely limited itself to applying it to the Portuguese case, without achieving the expected goals of mobilizing, radicalizing and leading the authoritarian and imperial right-wings.