With a recent past such as that of Europe, the rise of the far Right is profoundly worrying. The presidential election in Austria this week saw the narrow defeat of a candidate who has said that “Islam has no place in Austria”. Austria has had a far-Right fringe to its politics for decades. Many Austrians were enthusiastic supporters of Nazi race policies, and this fanaticism never completely went away. The fact that the Freedom Party nominee Norbert Hofer came within 31,000 votes of being elected head of state means this is clearly no longer a problem at the fringe.
Nor is it in France, where the National Front won the most votes in the first round of regional elections last December. In Germany, social democrats are trying to ward off a serious challenge from Germany’s main right-wing anti-immigrant party, Alternative for Germany, whose leader, Frauke Petry, declared that immigrants trying to enter Germany illegally should be shot.