With Europe's Far-Right Wave At His Shores, An Ancient City's Mayor Pleads For Moderation
LISBON, Portugal — On a warm evening when the croons of a fado singer in a dark bar where fingers slicked with oil glide between dishes of olives and wineglass stems echo down ancient limestone streets filled with late-night revelers from all over the world, it’s easy to forget that this ancient capital is in a political crisis.
Unlike in London, Amsterdam or Paris, Lisbon’s nearly 3,000-year evolution into a modern hub of cosmopolitan locals and international visitors came without a backlash in the form of far-right populists blaming foreigners and minorities for the problems in the city. Voters here had steered clear of politicians who harkened to the dictatorship that ruled Portugal from the Great Depression until the 1970s.
That is, until now. The wave of right-wing populism sweeping Europe’s democracies is finally crashing on the continent’s western edge, and keeping Portugal out of its undertow is going to be a “fight,” said Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas.
“We have seen the examples in countries like the U.S. and Brazil, where you go to the extreme and you break society. You really break society in two. And it’s very difficult to heal,” Moedas, 53, slender and bespectacled with thick but graying brown hair, said in a wide-ranging interview with HuffPost last month.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/europe-far-right-lisbon-portugal-carlos-moedas_n_65735942e4b001ec86a7d576
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