Far-right agitators in Portugal now have different reasons to their 1970s predecessors for becoming radicalised and committing acts of political violence – a new study shows. Influenced by the international ‘skinhead’ movement from the mid-1980s, current extremists drawn largely from the working classes have turned to violence to ‘protect’ white Portugal and Europe against the ‘threat’ posed by multi-racial and multicultural society. Radicalised by the 13-year Colonial War, which started in 1961, and the revolutionary leadership’s behaviour after the 1974 April Revolution, their predecessors were active in politically violent organisations aimed at stopping the advance of Communism in Portugal and safeguarding the Portuguese multi-racial and pluri-continental empire. Researchers at the University of Birmingham and Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE) have published their findings in Perspectives on Terrorism. Their findings coincide with publication of a comprehensive Western European right-wing extremism database. They note that far-right political violence in Portugal could be found in two different periods: transition from authoritarianism to democracy (between 25 April 1974 and the mid-1980s) and from the second half of the 1980s to the present. (…) The researchers discovered that the Movimento de Acção Nacional / National Action Movement (MAN) was key in uniting nationalist militants and skinheads. The authorities dismantled MAN, but it was replaced by the Portugal Hammerskins (PHS).
via scienceblog: Far-right violence in Portugal draws strength from skinhead roots – study