This chapter focuses on movements of clear and explicit Nazi-fascist inspiration led by one of the best-known figures of the Portuguese extreme right: Mário Machado. Considering all the movements in this book, the groups linked to Mário Machado, emphasizing the Nova Ordem Social (NOS), are the closest to the old extreme right. Precisely because of the explicit resumption of Nazism, Fascism, and Salazarism, whether in the clothing, speech or even the literature proposed to Portuguese nationalists. They cannot be considered the heirs of Causa Identitária and Terra e Povo but of the skinhead groups that competed with them, especially the Frente Nacional.

It is the Portuguese extreme right network that most reproduces the traits of the skinhead movement. Whether in clothing, speech, theoretical and ideological line, their world setting, or their repertoire of actions, the groups linked to Mário Machado are the ones that fit the parameters of the skinhead movements. They also share important characteristics with the neo-fascist parties of the immediate post-war period or between wars.

NOS core comes from the so-called urban tribes, the Ultras milieus, the Sporting Clube de Portugal cheerleading squads, the skinhead movement, and the political party PNR/Ergue-te activists. However, the group never surpassed fifty members, having been an attempt at political rehabilitation by Mário Machado after the crisis created by his activism in the PNR/Ergue-te. Machado was also unsuccessful in co-opting the skinhead groups Hammerskin and Blood&Honour to NOS and could not create a motorcycle club intended to rival the Hell’s Angels. With insufficient numbers, the organization began to disintegrate due to problems between the leader and members, so the leader decided to continue the activism on YouTube.

The skinhead movement in Portugal began in the 1980s, following the phenomenon that manifested and grew in the rest of the continent. These autonomous groups comprised mostly working-class young people from Lisbon and Porto. The movement was born from the physical conflicts between young Portuguese and young migrants, especially Africans, that took place in these areas. In the 1980s, the Movimento de Ação Nacional (MAN) (Movement of National Action) was seen as an attempt to rally all autonomous skinhead groups. Like the Estado Novo organizations, it did not completely break with traditional Portuguese imperial nationalism. However, whether in its international connections or in the attempt to organize a national militancy, MAN approached groups that defended an ethno-Europe as a framings of the world.

The emergence of MAN is associated, among other things, with the approximation of the ideas of extreme right groups in Europe through newspapers such as Ordem Nova (New Order) (1978–1990) and Último Reduto (The Last Refuge) (1983–1995) (Marchi, 2019). However, the most significant of these groups was Jovem Revolução (Young Revolution), founded in 1987 by Júlio Prata Sequeira, a former member of the Circulo Español de Amigos de Europa (CEDADE), an extreme right-wing organization of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist inspiration. CEDADE was created in 1966, during the Francoist regime in Barcelona, with the support of outstanding former SS fighters, such as the Belgian Léon Degrelle and the German Otto Skorzeny.Footnote 1 This newspaper brings to the Portuguese public the ideas of far-right organizations in Europe, such as the Russian Pamyat, the Dutch Jongeren Front Nederland (JFD), the Coordenadora Estudiantes Nacional-Revolucionários from Spain, and CEDADE, and the ideas of North American White supremacists like David Duke.

The Jovem Revolução was a newspaper full of neo-Nazi references, having signed, in the year of its foundation, the Manifesto for the European Nation, together with members of parties and organizations of the European far-right. In this case, they were Troisiéme Voie and Forces Nouvelles from France, National Front from England, Vlaams Blok from Belgium, Aktion Neue Rechte from Austria, Le Rat Noir from Switzerland, Bases Autônomas from Spain, Bevara Averige Svenskt from Sweden, Euftheris Skepois from Greece, Nation Europa from West Germany, Nordic Order from Norway, The Skorpion from England, Vento del Nord from Italy, and Orientations from Belgium (Marchi, 2019).

Revisionism and Holocaust denial were also a constant in the newspaper, which devoted much of its space to neo-Nazi ideologues from groups such as Germany’s Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei and Wiking Jugend. The newspaper quoted David Duke, along with the National Association for the Advancement of White People in the USA and CEDADE. The first issue of Jovem Revolução published an article called Suplemento História—os Judeus em Portugal (Supplement History—The Jews in Portugal) and brought to the Portuguese audience the ideas of the world’s most extremist right media outlets, such as the Italian Avanguardia, the Belgian Revolution Européene and L’Assaut, the Spanish La Peste Negra, Mundo NS and Revisión, the Greek The Antidote, the French Annales d’Histoire Révisioniste, and the British Holocaust News.

However, another factor that contributed enormously to the emergence of a movement aimed at racialism in Portugal was the conflict arising from the growth of migratory waves from Portuguese-speaking Africa, which headed to Portugal after the independence of their countries (Marchi, 2019). The official number of legal immigrants in Portugal rose from 50,000 in 1980 to 100,000 in 1990 in a population of 10 million (Marchi, 2019). Although the percentage of migrants was low compared to other European countries, these populations were concentrated in the urban perimeters of the two largest cities in the country. In the working-class neighborhoods of Porto and Lisbon, especially in the neighboring municipality of Amadora (Lisbon), physical confrontations between African and Portuguese youth groups became increasingly common, and MAN approached these Portuguese youth groups.

From the point of view of social composition, skinhead organizations also constituted considerable changes compared to the Portuguese extreme right until then. During the Marcelist period and even later, movements of the Portuguese extreme right generally consisted of intellectuals and students who sought representation, mainly in university student associations. To a large extent, the skinhead movement was made up of young people from working-class neighborhoods, with physical confrontation as one of its main repertoires of action. In terms of cultural struggle, they organized musical performances by Oi! music groups, the style of rock popular in the skinhead scene with ultranationalist lyrics and themes linked to violence, confrontation, and racial conflict. This was also a novelty as, until then, youthful musical styles of contestation and transgression were not part of the activism used by the extreme right. When trying to co-opt skinheads, MAN focused on music production aimed at young people, proposing the RAC (Rock Against Communism) style, thanks to the influence of Portuguese emigrants living in other European countries (Marchi, 2019). This contributed to the creation of several Oi! style musical groups, such as Maravilhas de Portugal, Guarda de Ferro, and LusitanOi.

Whether because of its ideology or social composition and repertoire of actions, the skinhead scene challenged the idea that the Portuguese are more mixed-race than other Europeans and, therefore, would find it easier to relate to populations of different, more distant origins. More than the number of members that the skinheads had or their real impact on conventional politics, what put the theory of exceptionalism in check is that it appeared in areas where there was precisely the closest contact between Portuguese and Africans. It emerged in the context of redesigning the democratic system with all its equalizing consequences and not within an imperial or colonial construction framework.

MAN, in turn, made an effort to strengthen ties with the European world. It established contacts with the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP), both from Great Britain, with the International Third Position,Footnote 2 and the German National Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD). In 1987, it signed, together with Troisiéme Voie from France and Frente Sindicalista de Juventud from Spain, the Manifesto for the European Nation. In 1988, Grupo Terceira Via was created to align MAN with the European centers of the Third Way Network, active to combat immigration in Europe. Thus, MAN’s ideology orbited around the explicit racism of skinheads—following the model of North American White supremacist groups—and racialism coupled with cultural relativism found in the ideological doctrine of identitarian differentialism. This last aspect usually occurred in the extreme right parties of that period. Moreover, MAN’s ideology incorporated, to some extent, traditional Portuguese nationalism. In other words, MAN merged the currents of the new and old extreme right in Europe and Portuguese imperial nationalism, although it tended much more to ethno-european skinhead-like nationalism.

The rise of Mário Machado and the further development of the skinhead movement in Portugal occurred in this environment of urban conflicts. Machado became one of the most prominent far-right activists in Portugal. Despite leading organizations that were not very large, he had an important impact on the networks of Portuguese extreme right movements and managed to influence party politics. His trajectory began with the hooliganism of the Sporting Clube de Portugal cheerleading squad and the skinhead movement of the 1990s. Activities began during his adolescence, when, at the age of 13, he attended football stadiums, more particularly Sporting, the team he supported. He was interested in their cheerleading chants, war cries, and political stance. He participated in Juventude Leonina, the club’s biggest cheerleading squad, and was a member of Grupo 1143, its most nationalist faction. He was particularly attracted by the use of Nazi-fascist symbols (such as the German SS’s lightning bolts) and a banner with the writing “Força SSporting” by Grupo 1143. Machado later distanced himself from the cheerleading squad, militating, during the 1980s, in groups such as MAN and Ordem Lusa.Footnote 3

These groups were seriously fragmented when, in 1995, Cape Verdean citizen Alcindo Moreira, aged 26, was murdered by a group of individuals supposedly linked to Machado in the Rossio area of Lisbon. This provoked more incisive actions by the authorities, ending in the dismantling of the groups and leading to the arrest of several members, including Machado. During his period in prison, between 1995 and 2001, together with some incarcerated companions, he formed Irmandade Ariana, the Portuguese faction of the Aryan Brotherhood, a famous White gang active in North American prisons. With the gradual release of those convicted of the involvement in the Alcindo Monteiro case and the weakening of organizations such as Ordem Lusa, the Irmandade Ariana gained space on the streets. In 2001, Machado created the Portuguese faction of Hammerskin Nation, probably the largest international skinhead network. The Hammerskin was created in 1987 in Dallas (USA). Despite the weak international coordination, it quickly spread across Europe and arrived in distant countries like Australia (Mudde, 2019). By creating the Portuguese branch of the Hammerskin, Machado took on a considerable role in the skinhead scene in Portugal, and from 2005 onward, he tried to link the movement to a political party. The chosen one at the time was PNR/Ergue-te, a party Machado joined, becoming one of its best-known activists.

Machado planned to create two fronts, one eminently politically active through political parties. The other was active through the movements—in this case, the skinhead movement—with all its direct activities. The organization of musical performances by bands from the Oi! was one of his main themes. Machado created a musical group of this style called Ódio (Hatred). At the same time, he tried to attract members of the skinhead movement to the PNR/Ergue-te militancy. He established the Portuguese branch of the Hammerskins in 2005, based on the existing Irmandade Ariana. His influence on the PNR/Ergue-te was significant since José Pinto Coelho’s arrival at the party’s presidency was largely the product of Machado’s connections within the party’s organization. Pinto Coelho was active in nationalist militancy since the 1970s, following a line more favorable to collaboration with skinheads.

Mário Machado tried to amalgamate the extreme right into a single force, placing political parties and networks of skinhead movements under the umbrella of a single organization. The same happened with the Frente Nacional, a group Machado created in 2004 and dissolved in 2008. The group had a few hundred members and was established because Machado thought PNR/Ergue-te was becoming too institutionalized, abandoning street demonstrations. Frente Nacional was a prominent competitor of Causa Identitária in street politics and the main skinhead group operating around the Portuguese identitarians. Gradually, Machado managed to include the members of Frente Nacional within the ranks of the PNR/Ergue-te.

The entry of members of these groups into the PNR/Ergue-te caught media attention as the party was increasingly becoming an expression of the old extreme right in the Portuguese electoral party arena. The transformation of skinhead networks into grassroots militancy of the PNR/Ergue-te, among other problems, placed Mário Machado and his activists again in the crosshairs of judicial and police maneuvers. In addition to the problem linked to their ideology, other types of accusations were reasons for putting the groups on the radar of police operations. Such accusations involved extortion, physical aggression, defamation, kidnapping, illegally possessing weapons, and disseminating racist propaganda. Most accusations revolved around conflicts between Machado and former Hammerskins colleagues or rivals from the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club, leading to conviction and a cumulative sentence of ten years in prison (2007–2017). He remained a leading figure of the Portuguese extreme right, at least regarding the right-wing movements, obtaining attention from the media. The vacuum left by these judicial, police, and political episodes was the space occupied by the Portuguese extreme right movements studied in this book. Notwithstanding, Mário Machado managed to reorganize his groups despite the turbulent context he was dealing with.

Of all the groups linked to Mário Machado, Nova Ordem Social (NOS) stood out in recent years. However, Machado interrupted the group’s activities in 2019, dissolving the movement and focusing on his YouTube channel. In some relevant aspects, NOS was not different from the precedent skinhead and neo-fascist movements. NOS was founded in 2014, when Machado left the PNR/Ergue-te, as it began to seek a less radical position, moving away from the movements that had entered the party. NOS was a small group, remaining on the fringes of the extreme Portuguese right-wing groups. Its importance was more linked to the figure and activism of Mário Machado than to the real impact of its set of actions. His open esteem for Nazi-Fascism made some of the movements of the Portuguese groupuscularity avoid association with him. A good example is the greater proximity between Escudo Identitário and Portugueses 1, groups that organized conferences together, and the distance they maintained from NOS.

His speech used biological metaphors without delving theoretically into analytical proposals of biological order, something that O Bom Europeu does. On the old NOS website, in 2019, a photo of Prime Minister Antônio Costa and other cabinet members—one carrying an Israeli flag—was posted. The group argued that this was the most alien government Portugal has ever had (http://new-order-social.blogspot.com/). However, it does not enter at any measure into the discussion within a biological analytical, theoretical framework as O Bom Europeu does. The use of biological metaphors, devoid of a more detailed biological discussion, is also different from the style of Escudo Identitário, which couples biological terms with cultural ones, similar to identitarians and Nouvelle Droite.

The group’s repertoire of actions included street demonstrations, the organization of conferences with members of hyper-radical movements from several European countries, and online activities. This was the focus of its weblog, where the group published notes of repudiation directed to the mainstream media, disseminated the demonstrations and activities of NOS, and shared videos of Mário Machado. The blog became central especially after NOS’s Facebook page was banned from the platform. Street activism consisted of demonstrations, usually with a few dozen people, but also activities such as delivering food to shelters for abandoned dogs and helping the homeless in Lisbon.

Its discourse is full of open praise for former Nazi and Fascist regimes, often quoting speeches and writings by former German SS Schutzstaffel members. The symbols are often the same as those seen on flags and Nazi-fascist-style clothing. Although not so openly defended by Machado, the praise of violence was not absent from the discursive repertoire and proposals for action by the NOS. On the group’s old website, baseball bats were for sale with NOS’s symbol engraved next to the writing “wolves don’t wear collars.” In addition, the online store offered T-shirts, college-style jackets, hats, and scarves with the words “race and homeland,” among other souvenirs. The photos with the members carrying all these apparatus show a group that aspired to be a uniform organization.

NOS and Mário Machado adopt a discourse that, at least in what can be seen from the publicized contents, has been abandoned or placed in a secondary plane by the other movements, even those more focused on racial and biological elements. These are the traditional anti-Semitism of the extreme right of the interwar or the more immediate post-war period. Jewish conspiracy theories, added to theories that the Holocaust was a hoax, or at least an exaggeration on the part of conspiratorial elites, are constantly presented by Mário Machado. The proposed literature is generally not very different from neo-Nazi groups, with books such as “Mein Kampf” and others that argue about a supposed illusion arising from the memory of the Holocaust, in addition to those that try to praise the Nazi-fascist regimes. Overall, they are books little used, produced entirely outside the universe and academic debates, and read by very small groups of highly radicalized activists. It is worth noting that Mário Machado suggests this literature as an individual, i.e., NOS do not make such suggestions. This became clearer when NOS was put on hold, and Machado dedicated himself to producing YouTube videos.

The international networks to which Mário Machado and his organizations, including NOS, were connected were/are neo-Nazi groups from the rest of Europe. These groups are not the identitarians mentioned several times in this book. Although both the identitarians and the neo-Nazi groups are ethnonationalist, the former are rather a product of a theoretical line rooted in Nouvelle Droite’s theories. The networks of groups of the former NOS leader, in turn, literally copy the theories and clothing of the Nazis and fascists. NOS was close to the Nordfront, an extreme right-wing organization in Scandinavian countries, and to small marginal groups in several other countries, such as Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, and Poland. The NOS symbol was almost the same as the Nordfront, a Nordic rune in the shape of an arrow pointing upward. For NOS, the rune is sometimes in the center of a laurel wreath. NOS was also linked to the network of groups that tried to found a Nazi party—certainly illegal—in Italy, a National Socialist Italian Workers’ Party, of which the swastika was the main symbol. The Italian police dismantled this network in 2019 in operation “Ombre nere” (Black shadows), and the party was never formed. Smaller or even illegal ultranationalist parties were at the center of the magnetic field of relationships woven by Machado. The proposed model was that of interwar Nazi-Fascism in practically all its scopes. Even the typical Nazi-fascist salute, the Roman salute with the arm extended forward, is given without any embarrassment by Mário Machado and those surrounding him.

Mário Machado’s radical behavior did not align with the PNR/Ergue-te anymore, and the activist lost interest in the relationship with the political party. After the 2019 legislative elections, in which the party obtained a meager 0.3% of the votes, NOS posted a note on its blog stating that PNR/Ergue-te had abandoned ethnonationalism. For NOS, the party also abandoned civic nationalism—or nationalism in general—when trying to be more palatable to a broader electorate, and the party Chega played a more substantial role in embracing such ideology in the field of representative politics. That note marked the “divorce” between Mário Machado and PNR/Ergue-te. According to the movement, the end of this relationship condemned the party to its “definitive evaporation.” In its last days of operation, NOS was amid a serious controversy for having hosted a colloquium in Lisbon, with the participation of members of some explicitly neo-Nazi organizations from Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, and Germany. The event was subjected to a great deal of negative media coverage, particularly for its anti-Semitism (it is noteworthy that such feeling puts NOS and all the groups linked to Mário Machado as the closest to the old extreme right of the interwar and immediate post-war period). For example, the leader of the far-right movement Britain First, Paul Golding, was not invited because he was considered a “pro-Zionist.” The anti-Semitism is also one of the most distinctive features of NOS compared to the other four groups analyzed in this book.

On August 10, 2019, Mário Machado managed to rent a venue at the Hotel Sana in Lisbon, using his mother’s name. The meeting was marked by the presence of several NOS members and figures who define themselves as National Socialists from various countries, performing Roman salutes to the sound of Sieg Heil!, with emphasis on the Italian Francesca Rizzi. Sporting a huge swastika tattooed on her back, Rizzi spoke about the need to safeguard the Aryan race and fight against Jewish tyranny. Machado, who wore a ring with the SS emblem at the time, applauded vehemently. Rizzi was part of the neo-Nazi organization, which aimed to found the National Socialist Italian Workers’ Party, and, as mentioned before, it was dismantled in operation Ombre nere in 2019. The operation brought to justice 19 members of neo-Nazi organizations behind the party’s formation, which had an anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial program. These organizations had an internet chat channel called “Militia,” discussing weapons and military training issues. In addition to the symbolic fabric and discourse totally focused on Nazi-Fascism, it is noteworthy that Francesca Rizzi participated in a beauty pageant organized by the Russian social network VK, aiming to elect Miss Hitler 2019. She competed under the pseudonym Eva Braun, the name of Adolf Hitler’s companion, who married the leader of Nazi Germany in the last days of the War.

In this conference, Machado exposed the dissolution of NOS for reasons linked to the group’s leadership. In a video released on November 4, 2019, he explains the reasons for dissolving NOS, given that he had already led it for five years and believed that no organization should be led by the same individual for more than five years (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kyIDyl-x-U). Those he counted on to assume leadership were unavailable, and many NOS members did not trust anyone else to lead them, so Machado saw the suspension of his movement as the best alternative. According to him, NOS was the nationalist organization that carried out the most street activism during its existence. And, even though he had made street demonstrations against Freemasonry and for the memory of Salazar—with no more than 50 activists—it was time to continue the fight in other ways, focusing on social media. His YouTube and Telegram channels were the chosen route. In Telegram, he has about 5510 subscribers. His YouTube channel had more than 12,000 subscribers—apparently, it was closed recently—having broadcasts videos dealing with themes related to the activation of nationalism in Portugal and sometimes in Europe and the USA.

In general terms, NOS was the resumption of Machado’s movements dismantled with his imprisonment, either in the 1990s after the murder of Alcindo Monteiro, or in the 2000s, after another period in prison due to carrying weapons and other crimes. In addition to re-connecting a series of traits from the previous movements, the resumption also re-established with the current right-wing parties what it tried to do with the PNR/Ergue-te, but much more discreetly. On his YouTube channel—with more than 12,000 subscribers—NOS’s former leader instructs his old comrades, when they join Chega, not to go against the party’s guidelines, even though it, according to Machado, does not present the type of ethnonationalism that NOS defended. In a recent YouTube video, Machado advises former NOS comrades who want to join the Chega party (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQU09ZMeh-M).

Machado’s suggestion to his former activists to join Chega is not to go against its leader André Ventura, in addition to not clash with the party’s guidelines. It is possible to say that, to some degree, the attempt made years before with the PNR/Ergue-te was repeated. The position of the leader about nationalism in the relationship with Chega is the same defended with the PNR/Ergue-te at the time NOS and the party ended their connection, around 2014. For Machado, Chega defends civic nationalism but does not embrace ethnonationalism as desired. Also, according to Machado, the party adopts an exaggerated market liberalism.

Notwithstanding, the leader does not see the entry of former NOS activists in Chega as something negative. He also sees no problem putting his activists alongside those of the party in street demonstrations, as occurred in the Chega demonstration, entitled “Portugal não é racista” (Portugal is not racist). On September 14, 2021, Machado shared a video on YouTube defending Chega from the alleged vandalism it suffered during the municipal elections. The video demonstrated solidarity despite Machado’s criticisms of the party (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzFB7LXsKzk) and the fact that the party seeks to be distant from these activists, as observed at the time of this manifestation.

In the same way that he penetrated the PNR/Ergue-te with elements of the extreme right and skinheads, he also tried to link NOS with Chega. Despite all the divergences exposed in relation to the party, it was still an attempt to bring Mário Machado closer to conventional politics through instructions given to former NOS members who could join the party. Considering that NOS was an attempt to resume the project of Hammerskin Portugal and the Irmandade Ariana, one could say that, through YouTube, Machado still tried to connect figures from the skinhead scene to political parties and the conventional representative politics of Portugal.

Machado advised former members of NOS to refrain from explaining their political history when registering for the political party and mentioned the importance of not revealing to authorities who their colleagues were during the time of activism in the group. Since only the leader has a list of names, he is the only one capable of pointing out the members of Chega who have passed through NOS. Machado guarantees that he will not reveal such information under any circumstances. Thus, the connections between skinheads, the old extreme right, and political parties come to light again. Nowadays, however, these connections are sparser, with much less impact than when Machado included Hammerskin Portugal in the bases of the PNR/Ergue-te. Trying to introduce individuals from the skinhead scene into Chega does not come close to the importance the same activity had before in the case of PNR/Ergue-te.

Mário Machado’s activism on YouTube is a shift in his repertoire of actions, from street demonstrations to exclusive online activism through social media. However, the ideological substance does not seem to have changed significantly. Mário Machado’s YouTube channel became a vehicle for the ideas that emerged during the skinhead wave and the old extreme right but without groups wearing uniforms and engaged in face-to-face demonstrations. Among these ideas, it is worth highlighting and detailing the literature proposed, which is the typical literature of the old extreme right. On April 13, 2020, Machado dedicated a long video to this topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2FWkZ35S0I). The first book recommended is “E acabou o gás! O fim de um mito” (And the gas is over!… The end of a myth), by Brazilian denialist author Siegfried Ellwanger Castán, who disputes the veracity behind the very high number of Jews killed in the gas chambers during World War II. Machado says that most of his comrades do not have a good opinion of Brazilians, but that does not mean that everything from the South American country is necessarily bad, placing the work of Ellwanger Castán as one of the positive things that can emerge from there. Machado also recommended the book “Not Guilty At Nuremberg” by C.W. Porter, which discusses the Nuremberg trials.

On the theme of World War II is “Outras Perdas” (Other Losses) by James Bacque, which discusses the German soldiers sent to concentration camps administered by the Allies after the German defeat. Machado claims it is an important book for describing the experience of the concentration camps administered by World War II winners, not just those administered by the defeated. In an attempt to present the point of view of the Axis forces during World War II, Machado also suggests the book “Berlim, vida ou morte” (Berlin, life or death) by Miguel Ezquerra, a Spaniard who fought alongside the Germans on almost all fronts of the war. Finally, Machado recommends the biography of Joseph Goebbels by David Irving. He introduces Goebbels as the great genius and master of propaganda behind the Third Reich, and Irving, in turn, is described as the greatest revisionist and historian of World War II currently alive.

Turning to Portugal’s history, the list includes the biography of Dom Afonso Henriques, founder of Portugal, by Diogo Freitas de Amaral, former university professor and founder of the CDS. Despite claiming not to feel any sympathy for the author, Machado points out that the book is very well written and very important in the dissemination of the biography of the Portuguese national hero. The works “Homens, espadas e tomates” (Men, swords, and tomatoes) and “Mulheres de armas e coragem” (Women of arms and courage) by Reiner Daehnhardt were also recommended. The author descends from Germans and Austriasn and lives in Portugal. According to Machado, he is just as patriotic or more patriotic than many Portuguese and dedicated his work to the heroic deeds of Portuguese men and women. In the same theme, Machado suggests reading “A voz dos deuse” (The gods’ voices) by the Portuguese writer João Aguiar, a novel that tells the story of Viriato, an Iberian leader who rebelled against the Romans. Aguiar tells the story through the narrative of Tongio, a priest of the pagan god Endovelico, who had contact with Viriato.

He then suggested “Tudo pelo homem, nada contra o homem” (Everything for the man, nothing against the man) by Rolão Preto, a Portuguese national-unionist leader in the interwar period and considered the leader of the only genuinely fascist movement in Portugal (Costa Pinto, 2000; Paxton, 2007). Sun Tzu’s classic “The Art of War” comes to the fore as a strategic manual for the activities of nationalists. Machado described it as a guerrilla manual that remains valid today. In a more philosophical line, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” by Friedrich Nietzsche, emerges as the most relevant work for the reflections on the idea of Übermensch (Overman). Machado considers it the best philosophical work to guide nationalists in their day-to-day issues. When entering the debate about global elites, Daniel Estulin’s book, “O Clube de Bilderberg” (The Bilderberg Club), is the first to be presented. Machado pointed out that many “notable” Portuguese are supposedly part of this club. Thus, a greater understanding of how “O Clube de Bilderberg” is coordinated is important for Portuguese nationalist movements. By Oswald LeWinter, the book Desmantelar a América (Dismantling America) is recommended following the theme of the struggle of nations against supranational organizations.

As for the debate around the “Jewish question,” Machado presents “Mossad: os segredos da espionagem israelita” (Mossad: the secrets of Israeli espionage) by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, which describes how the Israeli secret service is organized and operates, the small number of agents balanced by the agency’s relationship with synagogues and Jewish communities around the world. In this explanatory framework, the Rabbis are Mossad’s intermittent agents, so the organization does not need to have agents in a given location to keep itself informed there, as long as there is a synagogue. “The International Jew” by the famous American industrialist Henry Ford was also suggested. The book was written before the rise of Nazism in Germany and focused on describing what he saw as the hatred that the “Semite” propagated against the Germans within the USA. By Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry” was presented by Machado as the work of an extreme leftist author who has nothing to do with his movement; however, he found the literature useful since it addresses how the Jews supposedly benefited from the holocaust to have advantages in their relations with other peoples.

From the Brazilian Integralist Gustavo Barroso, Machado recommends “Brasil, terra de banqueiros” (Brazil, land of bankers), remembering that Barroso had a very negative view of the Jews. Imperium, by the American Francis Parker Yockey, one of the most central works in developing anti-Semitic ideas, and focused on the hypothesis of a Jewish plot against Europeans and their descendants, makes the list of recommended literature. Parker Yockey was a jurist at the International Criminal Court invited to report on the Nuremberg Trials. According to Machado’s descriptions, Parker Yockey was persecuted for making reports that diverged from what was desired by the so-called Zionist occupation government in the USA. He presents the book with great enthusiasm because of the dedication made to it by Richard Evans, at the time number two of the British National Party.

In denouncing communism during the Cold War period, Conquistadores do mundo (World’s conquerors) by the Hungarian dissident writer, poet, and essayist Louis Marschalko is suggested. Marschalko writes, among other things, about how communism has plans for global domination and how western political elites are naive and vacillating about it. In this presentation, Machado highlights what he considers “the great work of Brazilians” since his version of the book was published in Revisão by Siegfried Ellwanger Castán. Machado also states that in the 1990s, the Brazilian publisher was the only one in the world that still published books of this nature. The well-known “The Black Book of Communism,” edited by Stéphane Courtois, is suggested to denounce the number of deaths generated by communist regimes throughout the twentieth century, especially in Russia and China. The book is the main critique of the highly disseminated idea that Nazism was the ideology that killed the most in the past century, claiming that it was, in fact, Communism.

Regarding the discussion about law and order, Machado moves from a model in which he tries to connect groups in confrontation (or at least in competition) and the state, i.e., offering support to police agents. While leading NOS, he organized his activists to act as a parallel parastatal force, as when he stated that he had 850 militants ready to track down a young Black man accused of shooting an employee at the Lick nightclub, in Algarve, in 2019. According to the news of August 19, 2019, by CM Portugal, Machado instructed his militants not to hand over the suspect to the police, advising the population to do the same, asking that, instead of contacting law enforcement agents, they send a private message to NOS.

NOS was still trying to be a force for organizing social life parallel to the state, following a certain pattern of classic fascist organizations. But as portrayed on his YouTube channel, Machado demonstrated a closer relationship with the state, expressing more explicit support for the security forces. In one episode in particular, he posts a video about the military policeman and Brazilian federal deputy Gilson Fahur for the Social Democratic Party of Paraná (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5uXjqmV_kU). Fahur stood out on social media and YouTube for videos that showed him acting tough against individuals accused of various crimes in the Brazilian state of Paraná, which gave a lot of impetus to his entry into politics. Machado shows an interview in which Fahur exposes his ideas about the death penalty, criminal factions, the moments when he had to shoot to kill, and how Brazil, in the short term, needs “criminals in jail or in the cemetery.” The title of the video states that “Portugal precisa de polícias assim” (Portugal needs police officers like this).

In another video shared on October 4, 2019, within the same discussion, Machado talks about the PSP (Public Security Police) and the GNR (National Republican Guard), the two security forces that have the most contact with social neighborhoods (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-alo0oWaAY). In a place decorated by a sword adorned with an SS banner and a cross with pagan symbols in its center, Machado criticizes the police forces, stating that their officers have become lackeys of the political and judicial powers and the front-line police “administrative civil servants.” He accuses journalists, in general, of being terrorists in the service of the ideological Marxism that had dominated the Portuguese state. Machado denounces what he considers the passive behavior of police officers in the face of the violence offered to them in these areas, citing the case of a police officer beaten unconscious by Africans in Bairro da Jamaica, in Lisbon, where his partner watched the scene without doing anything.

Claiming that it is a problem throughout Europe and citing an episode in Paris where four police officers were stabbed to death by a single individual within the police station, Machado proposes greater legitimacy for police action, assuming society would support such a measure. This police action consists of weapon use, ranging from truncheons to firearms, which must be used to neutralize suspicious or violent individuals, either by shooting them in the leg or vital areas for their immediate elimination. The former NOS leader goes on to say that the best and most dedicated police officers have either already been expelled from their corporations or find themselves immobilized by the fear of being denounced by their own colleagues meddling with the “spirit of a public official.” The main proposal of the video is a request for nationalists and patriots to offer support to police authorities.

To summarize, Mário Machado’s online activism moves away from a centralized effort in the constitution of a parastatal security force. It moves toward the support of the state forces of order, even if it is in a more rough way. Activism focuses more on a set of guidelines to be adopted in the relationship with the police, supporting them and not trying to consolidate a parallel force. In this context, the police officer and federal deputy Gilson Fahur emerges as a great example of action for Machado, who calls him a Brazilian hero.

In general, the relationship established with Brazil is similar to that of Portugueses 1. There is praise for right-wing politicians highly focused on security issues, such as Gilson Fahur and—in the case of Portugueses 1—Jair Bolsonaro. However, like Portugueses 1, the YouTube channel of the former NOS leader shows a hostile view of the presence of Brazilian and non-European migrants in Portugal. On August 30, 2020, he shared a video entitled “Brasileiros espalham terror em V.N de Gaia, vários feridos nos confrontos (Jardim do Morro),” (Brazilians spread terror in V.N de Gaia, many wounded in the struggles—Jardim do Morro) in which they show a street fight involving Brazilians (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8teeKse9uo). In the platform area for comments, a Brazilian writes addressing Machado as a “friend” and stated that the individuals in the video should be sent back to Brazil. For the commentator, they were people without respect and did not honor the Portuguese origins of the South American country. He also said that good Brazilians, who are proud of their homeland and Portuguese pioneers who ventured through Brazil, will be welcome in Portugal. Machado personally responds to the comment, thanking and referring to the commentator as a “friend,” greeting all good Brazilians of European descent. Notably, he adds “Euro-descendants” to the supposedly good Brazilians.

Mário Machado and NOS nationalism can be said to be a radical form of ethnonationalism. Despite viewing the figure and government of Antônio Salazar with great esteem, Machado does not share the Estado Novo ideal aimed at the overseas and civilizing vocation of the Portuguese. The video shared on YouTube on February 12, 2021, called “António de Oliveira Salazar – o último avatar” (António de Oliveira Salazar—the last avatar) shows signs of this, placing Salazar as one of the greatest heroes in Portuguese history. The cult of the historical figure of Salazar takes place in a sense similar to that given by Escudo Identitário. Salazar is a national hero within a pantheon that dates back to Viriato’s time. Salazar is a hero to be worshiped for his achievements as a leader of the Portuguese people but not for the ideological and theoretical principles underpinning Estado Novo. Like Escudo Identitário, Portugueses 1, and MAN from decades ago, Machado’s ideas converge ethnonationalism and banal Portuguese nationalism.

In this sense, the ethnic and racial dimension gains great proportions in Mário Machado’s speech. Although using theoretical bases different from O Bom Europeu, Machado believes in a similar idea, that Europeans, as any other people on the continent, are central in the discussion. Therefore, racial controversies are always surrounding the figure of Machado, taking as an example the CMTV report that he had a black great-grandfather. He denied the news in a video released on YouTube on March 4, 2020, showing data that confirmed the non-truth of what was presented by the media network (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gE-wiOiYIA).

The activism of the Afro-descendant congresswoman Joacine Katar, in turn, was the target of a criticism posted on October 25, 2019, in which she is accused of being an African extremist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8AnkO5g0r4). He pointed out that if a White person gave Joacine Katar’a speech, would be very easily labeled as supremacist and could be the target of legal measures. In the same video, there is a denunciation of parliamentarians who went to the Assembly of the Republic wearing skirts in support of Katar, a demonstration of the axis established by the so-called gender ideology and by organized ethnic minorities. Regarding Mamadou Ba, former Bloco de Esquerda, Machado considers him someone who lives off what he calls the “racism industry.” In the same way as a “holocaust industry,” there is also a “racism industry,” represented by hundreds of NGO’s. In Machado’s opinion, these nonprofits often work together with state agencies, bringing structure for permanent sources of income and strengthening social control mechanisms, with the NGOs themselves being part of these mechanisms.

One of the points to which Machado tried to draw attention within the ethnoracial theme was the possibility of racism and violence with a racial bias in the opposite direction, of Africans and Blacks born in Portugal against Whites. This is what he does in a video from March 20, 2020, in which he talks about physical aggression and insults directed at the Portuguese community living in Angola at the time of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIMVvtv01Zw). A report from the Jornal de Notícias talks about the attacks and threats suffered by the Portuguese in Angola under the pretext that they were spreading the virus in the African country. The case of a Portuguese woman aged around 50 who suffered head trauma from the aggressions is highlighted, as well as the shouts of “go back to your land” by the Angolans toward the Portuguese. Machado points out that the newspaper could be considered as from the extreme left, which would not call into question the veracity of the news since it is a topic generally explored by the extreme right.

On September 11, 2020, a video that had circulated on social media was shared, showing a young Black woman who denounces the Portuguese who go to Brazil on vacation or even attend a semester during the university exchange. She claims that they are the same young people complaining about the presence of citizens of the former colonies in Portugal. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH5ojdqpIfo). She also speaks of what she sees as the contempt suffered by members of the former colonies in Portugal, who migrated after their lands were occupied and looted. She considers this a pattern in European countries that had colonies outside Europe. The video title given by Machado is “Ódio e rancor contra portugueses” (Hatred and resentment against the Portuguese). In the same vein, on March 11, 2020, he posted a video entitled “Negras racistas agridem portuguesa à porta de escola” (Black racist women attack Portuguese at the school door), in which he talks about aggression that took place in Sacavém, in the metropolitan area of Lisbon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKvWtkMabsw). In this episode, a Portuguese woman, described in the video as Caucasian, is surrounded by a group of Afro-descendant women and is hit in the face twice by one of them. On June 1, 2020, another video by Mário Machado focused on the same issue, dealing with the death of George Floyd in the USA, the riots and racial tensions that followed, and the performance of Antifa in the streets of North American cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSSGob08lHw). He says that Floyd was not suffocated to death by the police but died because of a drug overdose and that the episode served as a justification for looting by Black protesters and vandalism by Antifa.

By proposing a debate on such a controversial topic, Machado brings to Portugal a theme quite common in the USA today, Black-on-White crime—crimes committed by Black people against White people for supposedly racial motives. It is a topic that has become much debated on social media after the books, “White girl bleeds a lot” and “Don’t make the black kids angry” by American journalist Colin Flaherty. Flaherty has already debated this point with American Renaissance coordinator and leading alt-right figure Jared Taylor, who regularly touches on the subject. This problem was already posed by white supremacist William Pierce, who, through his radio channel, the National Alliance, spoke of the need for White people to one day have to use weapons to defend themselves against aggression by the Blacks and Latinos in the USA. By gaining more and more protagonism in affirmative action policies and fueled by the idea of historical injustice, these minority groups feel increasingly free to attack White people in face-to-face interaction spaces, according to Pierce. He claimed that not only social niches but entire governments act based on reverse racism, as in post-independence Haiti and Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe came to power.

Unlike Taylor and Flaherty, Pierce works with theories of the Jewish plot and with absolutely open praise of the German National Socialist regime, bringing him closer to Machado than the other two opinion makers. However, Pierce also works with theories that flirt with the possibility that racial differences go far beyond the level of skin pigmentation linked to differences in physical and mental faculties. Machado does not work with these theories—at least, he does not make them explicit, even though he defends a White and Caucasian Portugal within a White and Caucasian Europe. What seems to bring him closer to Pierce is the interpretative proposal that there can also be racial violence by Black people against White, in addition to antisemitism and open praise to Nazism. He finds such kind of violence likely in areas where the Afro-descendant community is numerically significant, in political environments linked to international power structures and environments coordinated by Jewish elites, who act in a shady way. In short, the points of convergence between Machado and Pierce are at the heart of the theories of Francis Parker Yockey, the author of “Imperium.” They are theories of Jewish elites in action against the White world and in association with racial minorities anxious for more rights but which, in truth, harbor a desire for revenge against the Whites. These are points that can be found in the “old extreme right,” especially in the National Socialism of the interwar period and the small parties that tried to give continuity to them in the first decades after World War II.

On November 9, 2021, another police operation was carried out against Mário Machado. The reason was a complaint related to the propagation and encouragement of hatred on the Internet. Machado was arrested for illegal possession of a weapon but later released. As he left the police station, he stated that he would close his YouTube channel. However, he does not seem to have followed through with that decision, as videos of him continued to circulate. On the same day of his arrest, a video from his channel was aired, entitled “A Grande Substituição Populacional e a Invasão da Europa através das fronteiras da Polónia” (The Great Population Replacement and the Invasion of Europe Across Poland’s Borders) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojcNphk2o_0). The publication showed an apparent reference to the book by Rénaud Camus and displayed the banner of the Identitarian Movement, which means, in a certain way, a novelty in Machado’s discourse due to its historical competition with the identitarians. On February 19, 2022, another video, Espanha e o regresso dos Mouros (Spain and the return of the Moors), was aired (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgMcCmmasAE). With the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Machado headed to the eastern European country to fight alongside the Ukrainians, possibly alongside paramilitary groups of neo-Nazi inspiration. However, after a few days, he returned to Portugal after a controversy in which the Ukrainian state declared that he was not welcome in the country.

Machado’s ideology is thus an attempt to reconnect the old extreme right outside the political party spectrum, but still with some attempt to approach it. It is the main heir of the 1990s skinheads and was developed through Machado’s Frente Nacional, which competed with Causa Identitária in the twenty-first century’s first decade. Like Escudo Identitário, and Portugueses 1, it combines ethnonationalism with banal nationalism but with the prerogative of the former. However, the convergence of esteem for German National Socialism shows how Machado’s thought is the closest expression of the old extreme right among all the political manifestations analyzed in this book. The literature analyzed in this chapter, the use of Waffen-SS and Salazarism symbols—specially the former—and the theories of the international Jewish plot leave no room for other interpretations.