Why the rise of the Right should worry us

Last week's assassination of Pim Fortuyn has ghastly echoes of the savage political violence of the interwar years, when politics moved from the ballot box to the street. Fascism, it seems, is on the march again.

Europe should be deeply worried by the rapid rise of the extreme Right. The proportions of the popular vote it has been winning are dangerously high. Opinion polls in Holland suggest that in the Dutch election today, the far Right is likely to make big gains. This is particularly significant because the Netherlands has little tradition of fascism - at least before a few months ago, when the ultra-Right astounded Dutch liberals and socialists by winning more than a third of votes in local elections.

In France's presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen gained 18 per cent of the vote in the final round of the poll. There was a sigh of relief at the size of Jacques Chirac's eventual victory. But there is no reason to be complacent. Eighteen per cent is exactly the proportion of the vote won by Adolf Hitler in 1930. This was the breakthrough election for the Nazis. Three years later Hitler was Chancellor of Germany, and Nazi thugs battered the other parties into submission.

Eight years before, Mussolini had come to power in Italy with only six per cent of the popular vote. In last year's elections in Italy, which allowed the Right-wing media boss Silvio Berlusconi to take power, the neo-fascist National Alliance, which has five ministers in his government, won a considerably larger share of the vote than Mussolini did 80 years before. In Austria three years ago, Jorg Haider's Freedom party won nearly a third of the vote.

There are important differences between the interwar years and the current revival. Fascism in the 1920s emerged under the shadow of the First World War. The sense of moral decay and political corruption was overwhelming. The Russian Revolution produced a counterrevolutionary terror across Europe. Fascist parties depended for their first support on angry men who had learned tough lessons about life in the trenches and who refused to settle down into a world of cosy party politics.

The First World War was followed by economic crisis. There have been ups and downs since 1945, but nothing to compare with the economic chaos of the inter-war years. Between 1929 and 1932, half of the world's trade disappeared; more than 25 million people were thrown out of work. Small wonder that millions of Germans turned to Hitler; "Our last hope", claimed the election posters. Even in Britain people became restless. The young Oswald Mosley founded the New Party to transform British politics. In 1932 he called it the British Union of Fascists, direct ancestor of today's neofascists. To the credit of the British public, Mosley remained a marginal figure.

Things are very different in Europe now. It is the richest continent in the world. There are plenty of unemployed - Germany has almost as many as it had when Hitler was struggling for power - but they are bought off with welfare. There is nothing like the cataclysm of world war hanging over European politics.

But there are also some striking similarities. Fascists in the inter-war period traded on disillusionment with contemporary politics. Parliaments were seen as corrupt institutions out of touch with ordinary people. There is once again in Europe a cynical rejection of parliamentary politics, and growing distrust of politicians. As popular votes decline at election time, the proportion voting for the new Right goes up. If they get a taste of real power, as they have in Italy at the moment, then parliament can be tamed and then ignored.

Fascism profited between the wars from the weakness of the Left. There was no shortage-of Left-wing voters, as today, but the Left was completely disunited. They had no real answer to the economic crisis. They were reluctant to fight fascism on its own terms. They outnumbered Mussolini's fascists four to one in parliament, but it did them no good. They had 38 per cent of the vote in the 1930 election in Germany, when Hitler won his 18 per cent, but just three years later their leaders were being rounded up and put in concentration camps.

Once again, the Left in much of Europe is in disarray and divided. Marxism has been discredited. Revolutionary enthusiasm is simply out of place in the consumerdominated politics of today.

Above all, neo-fascism relies on the same cross-section of support it enjoyed between the wars. It is ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, racist; it stresses authoritarian moral values and family virtues; it is often hostile to big capitalism.

Its main areas of support are found among those who feel threatened by economic decline, or competition from immigrant labour, or are hostile to the growing cosmopolitanism and multi- culturalism of the European Union.

What today's neo-fascists lack are leaders with the appeal of a Mussolini or a Hitler. Le Pen and Haider are no more than pale imitations. What they also lack is a clear ideology.

But what of the future? Could a meltdown in the world economy usher in a new age of European dictatorship? Could a long struggle between the West and Islam provoke a revival of violent racism on a large scale? Sadly, the answer must be yes. The terrible destruction of Yugoslavia in the 1990s is a warning that Europe can still tear itself apart after 50 years of political peace.

There are hopeful signs. Millions of Europeans have protested in the past year against the new Right, against racism. The media is almost united in its condemnation, where between the wars it was divided. When fascism was a rising force in the 1920s thousands of intellectuals gave it support in the belief that European society and politics needed a violent shakingup. Now those who shape opinion are for the main part hostile to the new Right.

For another Hitler to happen, circumstances must change greatly. But who, in 1928, with a Europe returning to prosperity, shored up with American money, intent on living it up in the new boom, could have predicted that only five years away Germany would be plunged into the most criminal dictatorship of the century? History has the unhappy habit of springing surprises. The new Right will not go away. It, too, is conscious of history. The vote for Le Pen may have been less threatening than it seemed, but the new Right everywhere will take heart from it. Fascism has always been opportunistic. Let us hope the opportunity never comes again.

Richard Overy is Professor of Modern History at King's College, London