Neo-Fascism Is Re-Emerging In Europe
Image by Getty Images
By Sam Kestenbaum March 20, 2017
Neo-fascists are seeing a revival in Europe.
In Slovakia neo-fascists are winning regional offices and taking seats in Parliament, the New York Times reported on Monday. This fits into a trend seen elsewhere — Golden Dawn in Greece and the National Democratic Party in Germany, for example — of rising political parties with neo-fascist views.
Not all right-leaning nationalist groups explicitly embrace neo-fascist ideology, the Times reported. For example, there are others, like Jobbik in Hungary, which are extremist and right-wing but stop just short of outright fascism.
But what groups like this do is shift general discourse to the right.
“Before, pro-fascist sentiments were kept hidden,” said Gabriel Sipos, director of Transparency International Slovakia, told the Times about the national trend. “Parents would tell their children, ‘You cannot say this at school.’ Now, you can say things in the public space that you couldn’t say before.”
Members of America’s own “alt-right” movement — comprised of contemporary white nationalists and provocateurs who like to play with those attitudes — have celebrated the rise of right-wing groups in Europe, particularly identifying with the France-born anti-immigrant Identitarian Movement.
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. We’ve started our Passover Membership Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community. This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
