ET

Neofascism, the movements that claim to be affiliated with classical fascism, is a marginal phenomenon. One of the keys to the new radical right’s success lies in their depiction of themselves as something new. Either they do not have fascist origins (Trump or Salvini), or they broke significantly with their own past (Marine Le Pen, who banned her father from the National Front).

The new right is nationalist, racist, and xenophobic. In most Western European countries, at least those where the radical right is in power or has grown significantly stronger, it adopts a democratic and republican rhetoric. It has changed its language, its ideology, and its style.

In other words, it has abandoned its old fascist habits, but it has not become a completely different thing yet. It is not yet a normal component of our political systems.

On the one hand, the new far right is no longer fascist; on the other hand, we cannot define it without comparing it with fascism. The new right is a hybrid thing that might return to fascism, or it could turn into a new form of conservative, authoritarian, populist democracy. The concept of post-fascism tries to capture this.

It is impossible today to predict its future evolution. On this point, the comparison with the twentieth-century interwar period is important: in both cases, there is a lack of international order. The chaos after the Great War was the result of a breakdown in the so-called “Concert of Europe” — nineteenth-century classical liberalism — and today it is a consequence of the end of the Cold War. Fascism and post-fascism have been born from this chaotic and fluctuating situation.