Last Friday there were Yellow Vest demonstrations across multiple cities in Portugal, here's a few notes on it and the general situation in this small country, for those who are interested:
Two days before the protests, the Facebook group that was organizing it was taken down. The organization then switched to Whatsapp.
Numbers were low (in the low hundreds in each location), and they mostly failed to stop traffic in the locations they chose, at least for the most part.
There were significantly more police than protestors, most of them 'riot police', but there was no violence on either side.
The most interesting aspect of it was not the demonstrations, but the MSM reaction: all TVs, newspapers, 'official' sources and commentators are deeming the protest a 'fiasco' and making fun (seriously) of the low numbers, stopping just short of calling the protestors idiots. Whereas usually the TV stations will cover a minor protest for some leftist cause organized by one of the far-left parties as 'massive' (and especially during center right government tenures), using special camera angles to inflate the numbers, here they used 'drone shots' and other wide angles to show exactly how many people were there and show, for example, that the 2 to 3 hundred people in a certain location failed to fill the square or whatever it was. All headlines use words like 'fiasco' or 'fail' to describe the protests and treat the protestors as morons, as if the country is doing well (it isn't) and people aren't hurting financially, socially and the government is not faced with many corruption scandals, minor and major, and some incredible failures for the last two years. Most articles contain mentions in the article to 'far-right' support for it, despite the organization being clear about its apolitical nature. The fact that the only nationalist party (PNR) showed support for it didn't help, but the fact was the protests were not politically affiliated.
In other words, the propaganda is blatant, and running from far-left to center-right sources. The neoliberals and neocons especially seem to take their positions as safe. However, on Reddit, Twitter, etc - it seems a lot of people are seeing through this propaganda.
To give some context: the current government is a coalition between center-left and far-left. Their policies however are socially liberal and economically conservative (in the sense of being good for oligarchs and bad for the people), and get support from center-right parties as well. So the usual suspects doing usual suspect things. The big difference this time is that, unlike anytime previously in our democratic system, the far left parties (PCP and BE) are part of the government, and have completely failed (purposefully or not) to stand up for the little guy, instead selling out to capitalist interests in exchange for public sector guarantees (PCP) and LGBT/Gender Ideology (BE). They have literally turned the country into a tourist resort, which will completely bankrupt us once we lose our 'novelty' status or there's a dip in the world economy. In the meantime, outside of tourism jobs, there's been contraction everywhere and both prices and taxes are going up. So the common man, as opposed to the cosmopolitan atomized man, has majorly lost their faith in the 'people's parties' - he doesn't really care about LGBT ideology and has seen his economic well-being decline or at the very least fail to increase since the recession 10 years ago. At the same time, the MSM paints the country as never having been better, despite all outward signs of it being on the verge of collapse.
Despite not having a massive immigration problem as France, Germany, Italy, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if next year's election was the first where the nationalist party (socially conservative and economically reactionary) got some of its people elected to parliament.
I guess only time will tell.
Two days before the protests, the Facebook group that was organizing it was taken down. The organization then switched to Whatsapp.
Numbers were low (in the low hundreds in each location), and they mostly failed to stop traffic in the locations they chose, at least for the most part.
There were significantly more police than protestors, most of them 'riot police', but there was no violence on either side.
The most interesting aspect of it was not the demonstrations, but the MSM reaction: all TVs, newspapers, 'official' sources and commentators are deeming the protest a 'fiasco' and making fun (seriously) of the low numbers, stopping just short of calling the protestors idiots. Whereas usually the TV stations will cover a minor protest for some leftist cause organized by one of the far-left parties as 'massive' (and especially during center right government tenures), using special camera angles to inflate the numbers, here they used 'drone shots' and other wide angles to show exactly how many people were there and show, for example, that the 2 to 3 hundred people in a certain location failed to fill the square or whatever it was. All headlines use words like 'fiasco' or 'fail' to describe the protests and treat the protestors as morons, as if the country is doing well (it isn't) and people aren't hurting financially, socially and the government is not faced with many corruption scandals, minor and major, and some incredible failures for the last two years. Most articles contain mentions in the article to 'far-right' support for it, despite the organization being clear about its apolitical nature. The fact that the only nationalist party (PNR) showed support for it didn't help, but the fact was the protests were not politically affiliated.
In other words, the propaganda is blatant, and running from far-left to center-right sources. The neoliberals and neocons especially seem to take their positions as safe. However, on Reddit, Twitter, etc - it seems a lot of people are seeing through this propaganda.
To give some context: the current government is a coalition between center-left and far-left. Their policies however are socially liberal and economically conservative (in the sense of being good for oligarchs and bad for the people), and get support from center-right parties as well. So the usual suspects doing usual suspect things. The big difference this time is that, unlike anytime previously in our democratic system, the far left parties (PCP and BE) are part of the government, and have completely failed (purposefully or not) to stand up for the little guy, instead selling out to capitalist interests in exchange for public sector guarantees (PCP) and LGBT/Gender Ideology (BE). They have literally turned the country into a tourist resort, which will completely bankrupt us once we lose our 'novelty' status or there's a dip in the world economy. In the meantime, outside of tourism jobs, there's been contraction everywhere and both prices and taxes are going up. So the common man, as opposed to the cosmopolitan atomized man, has majorly lost their faith in the 'people's parties' - he doesn't really care about LGBT ideology and has seen his economic well-being decline or at the very least fail to increase since the recession 10 years ago. At the same time, the MSM paints the country as never having been better, despite all outward signs of it being on the verge of collapse.
Despite not having a massive immigration problem as France, Germany, Italy, etc, I wouldn't be surprised if next year's election was the first where the nationalist party (socially conservative and economically reactionary) got some of its people elected to parliament.
I guess only time will tell.