While European leaders have expressed outrage about the US eavesdropping on the communications of its citizens, for them to symbolically challenge the US is one thing; to challenge it substantively is another thing altogether.
When it comes to European exclusionary politics, the Austrian case is a puzzling story of a historically rooted right-wing extremism which managed to overcome the outdating of its main ideological component – thanks to anti-immigration xenophobia.
"We are a people in mourning." So we are. Wherever we are.
Centre-right parties across Europe are announcing the failure of multiculturalism. We are witnessing a co-ordinated revival of Enoch Powell's idea of the aggressive outsider out to dominate the rest; only now race and immigration are being played out on the terrain of culture and religion
Right-wing populist parties tend to be anti-multinational and anti-intellectual: they endorse nationalistic, nativist, and chauvinistic beliefs, embedded - explicitly or coded - in common sense appeals to a presupposed shared knowledge of ‘the people’.
The emergence of a fresh current on Europe's political right, typified by figures such as Geert Wilders, is being widely discussed. But historically informed scrutiny suggests a different view, says Cas Mudde.
