Who's Afraid of the European Radical Right?

Many observers of European politics warn that democracy on the continent is in peril. Conservative authors argue that European governments are threatened by a spineless surrender to "Islamofascism," while liberals fret that Europe is being overtaken by "ghosts of a tortured past," that is, parties on the "far Right." Whereas the Islamofascism argument lacks empirical substance and is mostly based on (Islamo)phobia, the "tortured past" claim is largely the result of conceptual confusion and an exaggeration of reality. Neither contemporary European democracies nor the contemporary "far Right" groups are similar to their "equivalents" in the 1930s. The contemporary populist radical Right does not dominate European politics, and democracies on the continent have been resilient in the face of this new challenge.