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climaximo
Portuguese Climate Activists on Trial Represent the True Spirit of April 25
On the eve of the anniversary of the 1974 revolution, 11 climate activists will be tried for actions in which they denounced the war carried out by governments and companies against humanity as a whole.
Apr 23, 2024
In the coming days we will see many celebrations of April 25, the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution. They will be fiercer in the face of the rise of a far-right project in Portugal, but will still far removed both from the revolt against the burden that dragged the people down until 1974, and from the profound transformation achieved at that time. On the eve of the 50th anniversary, 11 climate activists from Climáximo will be in court for standing up to stop the war on society that is the climate crisis. What and how will we celebrate?
"April 25 always, fascism never again," is the slogan most often hurled in recent times, both at the authoritarianism of a police force now intertwined with the far right and at the parliamentary manifestation of the international far right in Portugal called Chega ("enough"). It would be inspiring if these words were more aspiration than remembrance, but it is more part of a ceremony than a collective yearning for the future. On the 50th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew Europe's longest dictatorship, fear of the future dominates those who claim to be part of the revolutionary tradition. And that's why all we hear about is defending the April Constitution, the promises of April, the achievements of April. Because in 2024 wanting and having the courage to set out to conquer much more than in 1974 is considered something for half a dozen dreamers.
On the eve of the anniversary, 11 climate activists will be tried for actions in which they denounced the war carried out by governments and companies against humanity as a whole. The climate crisis is a deliberate act by the capitalist elite in government and companies, whose effects are the death of thousands of people today and hundreds of millions in the future. Our economic system today lives in the death throes of accumulating wealth and power against the viability of society in the future.
A revolution is not, and can never be, about anything other than the future, so there is a contradiction in passively "celebrating" a revolution of the past.
The revolution in Portugal was made in a historical counter-cycle, violently ripped away from a decrepit elite that was killing a generation in a war to pretend that Portugal was still what it had never been: a project by elites who exploited slaves and raw materials from the territories they plundered, while hiring out fables of epic history, paintings and statues by talented artists who needed to not starve to death and would deliver the fantasy. After the revolution, while European countries were beginning to take the first stabs of neoliberalism, Portugal was building the welfare state at full speed to try to cure the social hemorrhages left by 48 years of a fascism so archaic that it would have been fine in the 19th century. In just a few years, public health, public education, and some essential sectors were nationalized, but soon afterward history caught up with us. Reaganism and Thatcherism would arrive a decade later through former President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who reversed the upward redistribution of wealth and power through privatizations and liberalizations, camouflaged by the influx of the first millions from the European Union.
The romantic notion that April 25 was a non-violent revolution clashes with essential information: dozens of tanks, military vehicles, and armed soldiers on the streets of Lisbon; dozens of uprising military units across the country. They captured the regime's leading figures and dismantled the main tools of power of the Estado Novo, Marcello Caetano's dictatorship, at gunpoint. The brute force at the disposal of the military insurgents, the momentary imbalance of forces, and the decision to take risks worked in such a way that the spilling of large amounts of blood wasn't even necessary. In the few places where there wasn't an abundance of military personnel, such as the dictatorship's secret police headquarters in Lisbon, the regime counterattacked by targeting and killing the civilians who were mobilizing outside. But popular disobedience was the key factor in transforming what could only have been a well-executed coup d'état into a social and popular revolution. Those who had spent almost a lifetime obeying a dictatorship decided that enough was enough. The people disobeyed the military, didn't stay home, took to the streets, and pushed the revolution forward, much further forward than the military of the Armed Forces Movement had ever planned.
April 25 was a revolution against a war. It was a revolution against the barbarity and savagery that was killing people in Portugal and independent revolutionaries in Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique. In order to maintain this barbarity, the fascist regime from the 1920s had to resort to all the weapons of repression, keeping entire generations in line. It used the regime's incessant propaganda apparatus, imposing racist, eugenic, and conservative values to justify continued colonialism, even after the end of slavery and the rise global capitalism's demand for more markets to exploit. Years of war eroded the narrative and coercive capacity of the Portuguese fascist apparatus, and the action of the Captains' movement began what was the final blow. The future was no longer written, and what happened next was not the plan of the military or the political forces that claimed to be part of the revolution.
Once the war was over, the people set out to achieve much more than just ending a war and a regime that existed to prevent them from being free. Over the next year and a half, in the typical confusion that any revolution entails, the Portuguese people leapt 60 years in history, moving faster than ever toward a better future. It fell at the wrong time to improve people's lives, as the global capitalist elite was about to launch the biggest assault on society in its history, which has led to an even more unequal world and the first stages of environmental collapse.
The social mobilization against the war today is taking place in a context that is as adverse, if not more so, than in 1974. The dictatorship is inside our heads. Passivity and respect, obedience, cynicism and hypocrisy are inculcated incessantly, and the main argument, even from the "heirs" of the revolution, is that there are no conditions for moving forward, only for staying on the defensive. Who knew in 1974 that there were? Other attempts, such as the military-civilian Beja Revolt in 1962, had failed to topple the regime. But who even knows if there would have been a 1974 revolution without the bravery and martyrdom of 1962? Or the years of resistance by anti-fascist and anti-war militants, killed and persecuted by Salazar's dictatorship?
The legacy of the revolution can not be to dwell on what was and complain about what is. A revolution is not, and can never be, about anything other than the future, so there is a contradiction in passively "celebrating" a revolution of the past. In April 1974 everything was about the future, the doors to the new were open, while the anchors of the past were being lifted. In the enthusiasm and eagerness to move forward, many of these anchors were not picked up. That is why a far-right project can exist in Portugal today.
Fifty years later, on the eve of the anniversary of the revolution, the April Eleven, climate activists from Climáximo arrested for actions in recent months to stop a war declared by governments and companies on the whole of society, leading to climate catastrophe, are to stand trial and face jail time for disruption a war waging government and regime. It's an important political signal, not about the past, but about the future.
How will we remember 2024 in 2074? As the moment when the impossible once again became reality? Passively celebrating the revolution, or, as Zé Mário Branco used to sing, "going out into the street with a carnation in our hand without realizing that we go out into the street with a carnation in our hand at the right time," is contributing to the revolution not being part of the future?
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What Do You Do When Avoiding the Climate Crisis Isn't On the Ballot?
In the run-up to recent Portuguese elections, the climate justice collective Climáximo carried out a series of actions to bring the climate crisis to the center of debate; what can other countries learn from their experience?
Mar 29, 2024
In the last weeks Climáximo, a climate justice collective in Portugal, carried out actions related to the Portuguese elections: gluing messages to the billboards of all major political parties to point out the lack of plans to stop the climate crisis; interrupting the big television debate between parties with parliamentary seats to say that "stopping the climate crisis is not on the polling station;" and painting the building where the right-wing party (that narrowly won the election) was celebrating, to say that "there is no victory in guaranteeing climate chaos."
The actions were different and had different reactions, but one thing was common: They sought to bring the climate crisis to the center of debate. The defensive and diverting reactions to them failed to deny that no party had a plan to halt the collapse of civilization.
2023 was the hottest year on record and the year with the highest global emissions. By now, all parties that believe in the existence of climate change know that the only way to stay below 1.5ºC to 2ºC of warming is to cut global emissions in half by 2030. All Portuguese parties that recognize principles of global justice know that Portugal must cut at least 85% of its emissions by 2030. However, in the run up to the elections, which elect a government to run the country until 2028—a year in which Portugal must already be very close to achieving carbon neutrality, if we care about the future—no party presented a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
Regardless of who you vote for, what are you going to do to stop the climate crisis and achieve climate justice when all political parties have demonstrated that they won't?
If you know there is a climate crisis and you look at reality and see that no party has targets compatible with the emissions cuts necessary to safeguard the basic living conditions of millions of people, you can decide to discuss whether Climáximo's actions were proportionate to the seriousness of the situation—climatic and political—in which we find ourselves. In the light of analysing the reality we find ourselves in, it is easy to rebuke any criticism.
No, the portuguese political parties are not all the same. Yet, the plans of all parties lead to climate collapse. There are parties that admit that climate change exists, and others that don't. Within the parties that admit there is climate change, there are parties proposing more measures to reduce the asymmetry of the consequences of the climate crisis on the population. Some have plans for 4°C of warming by 2100, and others have plans for perhaps 3°C of warming. However, no party has a plan that is compatible with staying below 1.5°C to 2°C of warming. Factually, no party proposes a programme adequate to the task of avoiding climate collapse, none proposes the necessary emissions cuts, none avoids current and new projects that will lead to increases in emissions, none manages to tell us that if we vote for them we will comply with what the climate crisis demands of us.
The shocking thing here is not that Climáximo made this reality visible, the shocking thing is that this is the reality we are in. In particular, it's shocking that parties that claim to defend the interests of the population ignore science and climate, social and global justice, thus giving up the fight for the basic conditions of life without which the struggles for housing, workers' rights, equality, dignity, and so many others are impossible. The parties that should be pushing ahead with the most ambitious measures to confront the current system that is leading us towards climate chaos refuse to face up to the greatest challenge humanity ever met: to stop increasing emissions and end fossil fuels by 2030 through a just transition. Is all this necessary? Yes, if we want to avoid climate collapse and if we believe that Portugal must cut emissions more than Mozambique. And is that difficult? Yes. Is it incompatible with capitalism? Yes. Is it impossible? No. Should it be an obstacle for anticapitalist parties to put forward measures that involve doing away with capitalism? No.
However, while the level of ambition should increase because we are running out of time, the left-wing parties refused to take on this historic task, presenting plans that are less and less ambitious and closer to the status quo. This happened, according to them, to prevent the rise of the far right. How are we going to stop the far right in a context of worsening economic conditions? How are we going to stop the far right in a context of worsening migratory crises, drought, fires, or crop failures that we are already experiencing today? If stopping the climate crisis isn't on the table, neither is stopping the collapse of civilization as we know it. And certainly not stopping the rise of the far right.
Climáximo did not call on people not to vote. The question Climáximo asked to society as a whole was: regardless of who you vote for, what are you going to do to stop the climate crisis and achieve climate justice when all political parties have demonstrated that they won't? This was not a call to give up on democracy, quite the opposite. It was a call for everyone to fight for their right—and that of others—to thrive on a viable planet. It was a call for radical democracy via public disruption. Fighting for democracy—both in Portugal and in the other countries from which Portuguese companies continue to extract fossil fuels—means refusing new projects that increase emissions and cutting 85% of emissions through a just transition, even if that option was not up for debate and not on the ballots.
Whether before or after the elections, the fight for climate justice will always be legitimate, relevant, and indispensable. When faced with the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, inaction and complacency are illegitimate, undemocratic, and incomprehensible. Every day—especially during the days that should be decisive in dictating what any country's next four years will be like—we urgently need to show that another world is possible.
In the end, despite the moderation of left-wing parties, the far right had 18%, over a million votes, when six years ago it had zero, and the right-wing party won by a slim margin.
Regardless of the results of these elections, we face two options: The next four years could go down in history as the period in which everyone knew for decades about the existence of the climate crisis, and the associated social collapse, and still decided to continue heading towards climate hell; or as the turning point years in which society had the courage—that current politicians still lack—to accept the historic responsibility that falls to those alive in 2024: to resist the collapse of civilisation as we know it and fight for our lives and those of the next generations. That has nothing to do with electoral cycles and everything to do with revolutionary action. Knowing what you know about the climate crisis, and knowing that probably there will be an election in your country this year, what are you going to do?
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