Society & Economy

Journey to the end of the right

The National Front in France, Vlaams Blok in Belgium, Republikaner in Germany, the "Liberals" in Austria, the Northern League and MSI in Italy, to name but a few, consistently appear in the news across the European Union. Populism, it seems, is in vogue across Europe. Populism, this virulent expression of a refusal to open up, and accept difference, of looking inward, carries along, in a backdrop of real socio-economic humiliation and frustration, a mish-mash of nostalgia and myths which are as irrational as they are obscure. With its ramifications, it plunges Europe once more into a range of current issues which the democratic side of Europe believed all but eradicated since 1945. A sobering genealogy is once more upon us.