Bernard-Henri Lévy

The echos of May 68 hadn’t yet faded when, in the early hours of April 25, 1974, a group of young Portugese officers of the Movement of Armed Forces (MFA) launched a military operation that, in scarcely seventeen hours, would overthrow the fascist regime Oliveira Salazar had established in Portugal in 1932, inspired by the corporatist model Mussolini had applied in Italy eight years earlier.

The Carnation Revolution, a real explosion made possible by the dazzling victory of the MFA of Portugal, seemed like a singular phenomenon, even a textbook case and one that inspired many with admiration, curiosity, the desire to know more about it, to observe closely and take part in this never-before-seen revolutionary process taking shape in the extreme southwest of Europe.  And so politicians, journalists, writers, columnists, film makers, intellectuals and thinkers from the world over came to a Lisbon virtually transformed into a laboratory for new revolutionary ideas that challenged the society, the system, the prejudices, and the social, political, and familial authority currently in place.

In the group of French intellectuals that came to Portugal to «study» the revolution, the figure of Jean-Paul Sartre, eminent if he ever was, stood out.  Ultimately, I had no contact with him, as the responsibilities that went with the functions I had been assigned took up virtually all my time.  Scarcely over a week after the 25th of April, I happened by chance upon the journalist and writer Dominique de Roux, in the courtyard of the building of the former General Secretariat of National Defense that had become the temporary seat of the National Salvation Junta and the MFA.  The year before, I had received and accompanied Roux to Guinea-Bissau, where he went to  cover a story for Le Figaro. During our encounter, we ran into Sousa e Castro, a captain implicated in the MFA actions, who, his timing unfortunate, informed Roux of the role I had played in the “Historical Turn” movement.  Thus Roux was the first journalist to announce in the media, and so in the pages of his newspaper, that I must be seen as “the real brains of the 25^th of April”.

In 1975, I had the pleasure of meeting, in several brief encounters, a young journalist of Combat, trained as a philosopher at the l’École normale supérieure and author of Bangla Desh, Nationalism in the Revolution, Bernard-Henri Lévy.  He had gone to this little Asian country to cover the war of liberation against Pakistan.  Before that, he had lived intensely the events of May ’68 in Paris and the revolutionary action set off by the student movement that, immediately supported by the working class, intended to challenge the society and the political regime of the bourgeois democracy.  Like the rest of France, Paris was taken by surprise by these events that attracted worldwide attention.  Though a young bourgeois of the upper middle class, son of a millionaire importer of African wood who, in 1968, had just begun to attend the very élitist Ecole normale Supérieur, he had been shocked by the moderation expressed by the CGT [Confédération générale des travailleurs, the labor union] and the French Communist Party (PCF), which had contributed to weakening the fight and putting a damper on the exciting uprising of May ’68.

As early as May and June of 1974, BHL was in Lisbon to experience, with great excitement, the first steps of the Carnation Revolution.  During the Verão Quente («the Hot Summer») of 1975, he took an active part, one that did not go unnoticed, in his presence during demonstrations and actions organized by the workers.  He established contacts with the soldiers of the MFA and was readily granted interviews by prominent figures of the Movement.

In June 1975, he stood with the employees of the newspaper A República in the fight they led against a press organ pretending to be an independent paper of the left that was, in reality, the Socialist Party mouthpiece.  In July, he supported and internationalized the combat of the employees who occupied Catholic radio station  Rádio Renascença to transform it into Rádio do Povo (“The Peoples’ Radio”) and place it at the service of the populace.  He supported the peasants’ occupation of the great landholdings of Alentejo, an occupation encouraged and supervised by COPCON (OperationalCommand of the Continent[1]).  He was also present at the side of workers fighting in the industrial belt of Lisbon.

During our brief meetings, he made a comparison with «his» May ’68.  In the final analysis, the most enlightened elements of the dominant bourgeois class had taken over leadership of the revolutionary action aiming to transform society and open the way to a powerful movement of popular support, and this was true of both events.  Aware that, in the case of the French, six years earlier, the choice of moderation on the part of the CGT and the PCF had weakened the struggle and led to its failure, he was  aware as well that we ran the risk—in a way, it seemed clear as early as the “Hot Summer” of 1975—of seeing the same thing happen in Portugal.   He had attended a meeting of the Communist Party in Alentéjo in the presence of Álvaro Cunhal[2] and had concluded, contrary to other observers, that the role the MFA played at the forefront, its force and its presence on the political scene would lead not to triumph but to the inevitable decline of the influence of the PCP if the military contingent managed to remain united within the Movement and to fight for common objectives.

I shared his point of view.  The young philosopher, journalist and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy was right.  And yet, once more, our hopes would be disappointed.  The pressure and blackmail exercised by the political power of the United States and the representative democratic regimes of Europe led some of my comrades with important responsibilities in the MFA to comply with the propositions of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger and, with the full support of the Socialist Party, the right, and the extreme right of Portugal, the revolution that had had all the promise of triumph was aborted on November 25, 1975.

A man of convictions who fights for just causes, BHL, with a group of young French intellectuals who had deplored the absence of support and political propositions from the PC and the PS during the events of May ’68, founded the school of «New Philosophers” the following year, in 1976.  He definitively adopted a critical vision of communist and socialist Marxism in the 1977 publication of La Barbarie à visage humain [Barbarism with a Human Face], a work in which he denounced the totalitarian temptation of historical fascism and communism.

Controversial, admired, respected and loved by many, detested by others, BHL is today, at sixty and then some, a great French and European intellectual figure I am privileged to count among my friends.  During his last visit to Lisbon, in 2009, I had the great pleasure, over lunch one day, of going back to those thrilling hours when Portugal embarked upon the revolution in 1974-75, that time that he had observed first-hand, and to go over the events of those days, and what might have happened if….  At present, we are here in a state of expectation, so let us remain attentive to what may eventually contribute something positive to the transformation of the world, one in which we are experiencing the profound crisis afflicting the capitalist system that shapes so many of our societies.

Otelo de Carvalho
Translated from Portugese to French by Dominique Nédellec
Translation from French by Janet Lizop

Born the 31th august 1936, at Maputo (Mozambique), General Otelo de Carvalho is one of the most important figures of the « Carnation Revolution» (1974). A legend !

Photo 1 : Otelo de Carvalho (c) D.R.
Photo 2 : Révolution des Oeillets (c) D.R.
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[1] Organ in charge of coordinating security operations, maintaining public order, and guaranteeing the execution of the MFA program (source : Histoire du Portugal, Jean-François Labourdette, Fayard, 2000). N.d.T.

[2] Álvaro Cunhal (1913-2005) : historical leader of the Portugese Communist Party and its Secretary General from 1961 through 1992. N.d.T.