I took it upon myself not to immediately reject Portuguese content on TikTok, recently.
I feel like that makes it sound like I was immediately rejecting it, which was not the case, but I mean more so that I'm now actively inviting it. I've been following several Portuguese accounts for months, if not years, at this point, but the number has been going up dramatically the past few weeks. Political content, cultural stuff like food reviews, music recommendation, linguistics... It's lovely.
It's also changed my perspective a little bit on how young Portuguese people think. I'm in the unfortunate-fortunate situation of having very highly educated friends and family... The only person in my life that even acknowledges the far-right as legitimate candidates is my grandma, which is love, but, to be quite frank, she's not the brightest and age has taken its toll quite severely. I keep telling her that they're not very good, but I don't think she cares about politics, she just likes that the front-man for the far-right is cute and has the same last name as her...
Regardless, the TikTok comments on political videos can get pretty nasty and insulting, but generally speaking the people engaging with the videos that I'm engaging with are young Portuguese people that actually try and think about politics. Of course, I'm aware that this is selection bias, but I find it comforting to see that there really are young Portuguese people getting into politics, educating themselves on our political parties and system, and trying to use their vote in a way that benefits their goals for the country. In other words, I'm glad I'm not the only one trying to learn about what the hell is going on in our country, and what I should do about it.
When I see rallying cries for the far-right, it's always framed as a sort of defeatist attitude, or perspective on the system, and a simple rejection of the established parties. I find that to be profoundly sad, to be honest. It feels like the flip-side of where I'm getting at. I saw that things weren't great, looked into why, decided to find a party that aligns with my goals. But these far-right supporters seem to have just decided that the established powers are bad, so they'll vote in whoever presents themselves as the opposition. They're not voting in favour of what they want, they're just voting against who they perceive to be "the bad ones." And mind you, I do agree that our 2 biggest political parties are corrupt failures. I do not like them very much at all. However, to come to the conclusion that the way to go around that is to just vote in a party that points a finger is so brainless. Really, I mean that. It's like they don't think. I find it very upsetting.
There's also a lot of racists, of course. People that don't know anything about immigration, but just don't like brown people, pretty much. That's also brainless, of course, but at least they're voting with some sense of what they're going to achieve by doing so. It's upsetting in a different, more familiar way, I suppose.
You know, something specific: I saw a video wherein someone presented a flyer by an ultra-nationalist Portuguese identitarian group. In said flyer, they stated that, in 2024, 25% of Portugal were immigrants. The person in the video said that they had no clue where they'd gotten the data for the flyer, but that they couldn't find any source. Now, it just so happened that I'd actually looked up that data only a few months ago, so I knew where to find it. Only about 11% of people in Portugal are immigrants. It's not a very high number at all. It's a little higher than the EU average, but lower than the US, for example, and much lower than countries like Australia, Norway, and Switzerland. I posted a comment saying this (in fewer words, of course), and somehow got two replies that... Well, they just didn't sit well with me.
One of them tried to argue something very weird. It said that, even if the rate of immigration continued at the current pace, which is exceedingly unlikely, Portuguese people would still be a majority by 2050. Now, OK, sure, but that's so irrelevant. And the comment as a whole was so weirdly abrasive and combative. It really felt like they thought that I was somehow trying to argue something there, when I very much wasn't. I aimed to correct the racist-ass flyer. I was trying to point out that those ultra-nationalist scumbags were straight-up lying to scare people. Another comment I got was purely incorrect, stating that most of the immigrants were rich people from the US and other EU countries and that they were buying up all the houses in Portugal, which is causing our housing crisis. Now, I do agree with the fundamental argument that allowing the wealthy to hoard housing is terrible and that that needs to be curbed, but most immigrants are not of that sort. They're people looking for opportunities and wanting to get a job and contribute to society. Not rich pricks hoarding homes.
I bring this up because it showed me that this sort of gut-response to "data" really does exist everywhere, and it's not exclusive to the far-right. Very left-leaning people are also averse to discussing the reality of our society, I guess because they are afraid to face the possibility that there really might be problems different from the ones that they think should be the focus of discussion, on a moral level, maybe. They ended up perceiving a basic statement, basic nonpartisan data, as an endorsement of policy they disagree with. Moreover, they threw meaningless and incorrect data in my face, like it did anything. I can fully understand how someone might come across this someplace else and be discouraged of the state of political literacy in the country.
It did remind of the that old, and still occasionally brought up adage that is "13/50." Using skewed, unrepresentative statistics to make a wrong point. It wasn't my intention at all, but I do see how it might've been perceived in that manner. I can't stand with the idea that data shouldn't be shared because posting numbers is the tool of the enemy or something, though. I think it's important to be educated. If the data said that we needed less immigration, or that the kind of immigration we have is problematic, I would be in favour of curbing immigration. However, that simply is not the case, so I'm not! There's no reason to be afraid of data, as long as it is properly collected, analyzed, and interpreted, it can be a fantastic tool to develop quality policy, in my opinion. I don't think this should be a hot take. I don't think it is a hot take, really, but I do feel that it may be the case that it can touch a nerve here and there.
Another interaction I had was a more positive one. Someone was supporting our (ex-)prime-minister, saying basically that he did nothing wrong. He did do many things very wrong, in my view, but I digress. I posted a reply explaining that they were misunderstanding the issue. Basically, our prime-minister did some shenanigans with a company of his: he sold it to his wife so he wouldn't have to report it; his wife sold it to his kids when he got called out; he refused to be investigated for it; and that ended up leading to a vote of confidence in parliament and the fall of the government. Huge oversimplification of the whole mess, but that's what happened. The person in the comments said basically that the Canadian prime-minister was extremely rich and there was no issue, so why was it an issue with our prime-minister. I've heard this before, that there should be no problem with having a businessman in politics. That's not he issue, of course, and that's what I said. The problem isn't that he has a company, not even a company that had deals with the state, but rather that he had control of said company and a clear conflict of interest; as CEO of the company, it was hard to trust that he wouldn't use his knowledge of what was going to be decided by the state to steer it unfairly to greater success. I pointed that out. Then, someone replied that the Canadian prime-minister retained his wealth and shares of the company (different phrasing). I pointed out in return that Mark Carney put everything in a blind trust to avoid that very issue when he got called out, while our prime-minister very much didn't do that, instead choosing to try to run around the reasonable questions of the parliament. Up to this point, it was OK, frankly. Then, I got complimented for my reply!
That made my happy... They also commented on my profile picture, on TikTok, which I thought was kind of a cute thing to do.
I try to leave comments on videos and reply to comments that provide some value to my daily life. I love showing support to people that take some time out of their day to post something informative on a public platform, so I thought it was nice to receive some words of encouragement myself.
When I first got on TikTok, I actually avoided Portuguese content like the plague. It was a different time, and I was a different person, to be fair. I don't necessarily regret it, as what I was getting on my FYP were grainy videos of kids dancing or families posting random stuff... But I'm glad that I've been reintroduced into the Portuguese side of the app.
Again, I am reminded to steer away from nationalism. I think it's great to feel love for my country, and to aim to improve it. To make it so that the young ones that are now growing up here can have an even better time than I did, so that the next generations can prosper more than I ever have. That would be amazing, but I can't let myself fall into weird identitarian politics like the ones on the flyer... It was a really disgusting piece of propaganda, really. The person that discussed it on TikTok that I saw was very eloquent and I thought they had really great analysis. I'm glad that was the case... Maybe some people that didn't see anything too wrong with that sort of thing came across her video and realized how terrible the messaging really is.
Completely unrelated, I've decided to learn more about XMPP. I've been looking for something that could replace WhatsApp, and all alternatives put forth seemed insufficient... Signal is American, Threema is paid, Matrix is terrible
I really hate Matrix, by the way, terrible experience every time I use it ---, Session doesn't have video calls, et cetera, et cetera. But this XMPP stuff seems somewhat promising. I installed Monocles Chat. We'll see how this goes.
