Abstract

In the postwar cultural climate, the odious atrocities associated with Nazism starved Western Europe’s extreme right of social and political respectability. Not surprisingly, right-extremist parties were pushed to the very margins of mainstream society, and hence, for many years, while the extreme right continued to draw breath, it barely existed as a political force. Admittedly, it would emerge from the shadows every once in a while, but these episodes were short-lived and sporadic. The examples of Pierre Poujade in 1950s France1 or the National Democratic Party (NPD) in 1960s Germany2 readily spring to mind. Since the 1980s, however, after Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National had blazed the trail, right-extremists have taken on a more serious and lasting presence in the party systems of several Western European countries. The times change and over the course of last the two decades or so, rightwing extremism in continental Europe has been given a new lease of life. In this, our final chapter, we will place our subject within its broader West European context.3 This raises a number of important questions. In the first place, how far is the recent electoral emergence of the British National Party a reflection of wider phenomena and trends? Secondly, what does the experience elsewhere tell us about the British National Party and its electoral prospects?

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