António Sardinha

António Sardinha (9 September 1887 – 10 January 1925) was a Portuguese writer and leading theorist of the movement known as Integralismo Lusitano. His worldview was strongly conservative.

Early politics Sardinha studied law at the University of Coimbra and graduated in 1911. During his student years, he was a supporter of republicanism and briefly of anarcho-syndicalism, He was also influenced in this regard by the Spanish conservative Juan Vázquez de Mella, who was a close friend of Sardinha from the early 1900s.

Integralism He helped found the Integralismo Lusitano movement in 1913, along with José Hipólito Raposo and Alberto de Monsaraz. He would serve as a deputy for a time under the Presidency of Sidónio Pais, who was vaguely sympathetic towards Integralism. His writings revealed a strong affinity for agriculture as a historical and economic basis, and also for anti-Semitism. His anti-Semitism was influenced by Action Française, from whom he also took a strong strain of anti-liberalism. He added to his ideology a hard-line racism, strongly criticising miscegnation. Further to this Sardinha also grafted elements of the works of Georges Sorel, adopting his theories of revolutionary validity and the social value of myth to his own ideology. Drawing from traditional monarchism, Hispanidad, ruralism, Integralism, scientific racism, fascism and national syndicalism he had created a complex syncretic ideology that inevitably fissured into various factions after his death. Similarly he rejected the widely celebrated Portuguese discoveries as ushering in an era of capitalism and cosmopolitanism and thus flying in the face of his ruralist ideals.