There is no firm historical consensus about the precise origins of death by crucifixion, though we know it existed at least as far back as ancient Persia and was later refined by the Roman Empire, which turned it into the most humiliating and definitive punishment imposed on an individual—alongside its campaigns of mass extermination—particularly as a tool for crushing large rebellious populations. What we do know is this: crucifixion consisted of nailing a human being to a cross, raising that body into the air, and leaving it there to suffer until it finally collapsed under pain, hunger, thirst, and despair.

It may seem strange to describe all of this, especially in an archipelago that is deeply Christian and thoroughly accustomed to crosses. Yet it feels necessary that we collectively visualize the pain of a crucifixion in order to return to the most disturbing piece of news to emerge last week.

With the complicity of a substantial group of officers from Portugal’s Public Security Police, two have reportedly been charged with a wide range of criminal acts associated with the torture of people—most of them unhoused or struggling with addiction. The list of allegations is long and chilling: torture, abuse of power, rape, sodomy, physical assault, among other acts driven by hatred and rancor. Law enforcement authority transfigured into emotional psychopathy. It is yet another grim example of what happens when a country chooses to follow the model of a nation notorious for its war crimes—the United States. Portugal rebuilt itself in the shadow of a neoliberal ideology that has now metastasized into savage capitalism, regressing more than five decades toward an authoritarian state, one in which the force of the agent outweighs the freedom of the citizen.

Don’t believe it? These so-called public (in)security officers are accused of acts such as inserting a baton into a human being’s anus. According to information still under investigation, there is also an allegation that they handcuffed a woman to a bench inside a police station, as if crucifying her. While she prayed and begged her God for help, they laughed and violated her physical and emotional integrity, committing gestures too obscene to reproduce here. Other officers, it appears, laughed and filmed the scene as it unfolded. Whether complicit or merely careless, what they revealed was a textbook example of what we have come to call the banality of evil. If it isn’t happening to me, why should I care?

This is the concerted consequence of a mission structured by the great fascist movement of the twenty-first century, which bombards us nonstop with grotesque images, numbing us to sadism and to the chaos such actions produce. For the average citizen who turns on the news or scrolls through a feed, it has become normal to see innocent people beaten or arrested in the streets of Minneapolis. When they hear of a crucifixion in Portugal, they sigh and think it is just one more sorrow. But it isn’t. It is an outrage—one that should strike all of us deeply. Provoke indignation. Stir revolt. Call us to action.

For years now, far-right forces funded by major economic groups—some foreign, others Portuguese—have been winking at the police. It is true: there are many good officers in Portugal. Decent people who strive to help and to act correctly in a world that grows more divided and increasingly unfit for human consumption. But there are also those who choose the profession in search of power, or as an outlet for their inner nature. And it is these individuals—frustrated by lives that do not understand them—who gravitated toward the so-called Movimento Zero, the first of the armed wings of the party of the “fourth little shepherd,” which later merged with other groups such as 1143. For those who may not remember, Zero emerged from earlier accusations of police abuse involving officers who pursued and beat residents of Cova da Moura. At the height of the pandemic, the movement took on a life of its own, entwined with so-called “truth” organizations. It is worth recalling that the official newspaper of Chega was once called Folha Nacional Pela Verdade, bound up with all those conspiratorial delusions.

As documented by the investigative reporting of Miguel Carvalho—recently censored by a PSD mayor in yet another demonstration of the ties binding Spinumviva to Ventura—Movimento Zero evolved in the shadows and in backroom meetings, laying the foundations of the party’s unofficial security apparatus and maintaining an active presence within the security forces. It does not campaign openly, so as not to violate the laws that still exist, but it votes and strong-arms whom it wants, in an unmistakably muscular way. Over the past five years, there has been no shortage of reports and allegations against officers. There have been very few consequences.

And so we return to the crucifixion at police station No. 22 in Rato, Lisbon. And to all the other abuses those women and men endured—filmed, passed from phone to phone as if they were toys for psychopaths to tear apart. I do not know whether these officers belong to Movimento Zero or were ever connected to it. What seems clear to me is that they are people in need of psychological support, who learned from what they see on television and in the streets, absorbing the political messages of the dangerous leader of the Salazarist party, while witnessing the rise of a fascist state in the country Portugal once believed to be the beacon of freedom in the West. In truth, what is happening with ICE forces and Roman-style decimation is not so far removed. Just days ago, the political leader of that project, Noem, appeared before a podium bearing a Nazi-style slogan: “When they attack one of us, we attack all of you.”

The world has changed definitively. That much seems undeniable. At every moment, we are flooded with an absurd quantity of stimuli that make everything feel as though it is rushing past us. Suddenly, yesterday and tomorrow slip from memory. Only the present exists. This condemnation of memory—something the Romans themselves sought to perfect—means that the shock of a crucifixion in Rato becomes nothing more than a comma in the passing week. Yet a brief excavation of the recent past is enough to show what this truly signifies: Movimento Zero did not die. It is among us, ready to serve fascism in what is shaping up to be Portugal’s future. In the United States, people are fighting for their lives.

One day, it will be us.

Will you stay on the couch?

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives on Terceira Island in the Azores. She is a regular contributor to several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with a sense of the significant perspectives on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).