http://www.npr.org/2011/04/27/135745530/far-right-parties-gain-ground-in-european-politicsEurope has long been home to populist, anti-establishment parties. But today's far-right leaders bear little stylistic resemblance to the neo-Nazis who emerged roughly 20 years ago, at the end of the Cold War.
The fact that they can express extreme views with "a veneer of acceptability" actually makes today's far-right leaders more dangerous than yesterday's skinheads, says Simon Tilford, chief economist for the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank that favors European integration.
Today, there's a greater sense of unease about Europe's place in a globalized economy, Tilford says. To the extent that
far-right parties that can speak to that unease in ways that come off as reasonable, they can not only capitalize on it politically, but potentially force other politicians to adopt similar language or sentiments.
"The far-right movements that we're seeing — not all of them, but a few of them — pose a greater challenge than those we saw in the 1980s and 1990s," Tilford says.
"They're expressing extreme positions but in a far more polished way, and there's a danger of such views becoming more socially acceptable." Aside from a change in tone politically, economists worry that
nativist sentiments promoted by far-right parties will undermine European nations' prospects for pulling each other out from fiscal crises.
"In some ways,
the rise of these right-wing parties is both a cause and a symptom of the trouble that Europe finds itself in," says Kupchan, the CFR senior fellow. "For the first time in my career,
it's conceivable to me that the European Union could start unraveling. I wouldn't bet on it, but the stakes right now are so high that it's conceivable that the EU has hit its high-water mark and will go no further, or go into reverse."
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