"European Far-Right Parties: Rise or Twilight?"

Speaker(s): Jean-Yves Camus

The European Extreme-Right is too often seen in the continuity of Fascism, National-Socialism and the authoritarian regimes of the 1930s, and its ability to adjust to our epoch and to the rules of the electoral game in Modern Democracies have been too much ignored. Since the 1980s, such parties have become major players in Western Europe, trying to find a balance between their Radical opposition to representative Democracy and the multicultural society on the one hand, and the necessity to become more mainstream on the other hand. How did the Extreme-Right parties fare in the elections that were held in 2017? Why are they, with the exception of Austria, still unacceptable as coalition partners? Cannot it be said that even though they are very seldom in power, they have succeeded in exporting their political agenda on immigration and identity to the  mainstream Conservative Right?
 
Jean-Yves Camus is the co-author, with Nicolas Lebourg, of Far Right Politics in Europe (Harvard University Press, 2016), and has published over a half dozen books on the National Front and radical far right movements in Europe. He is Director of the Observatoire des radicalités politiques at the FondationJean Jaures and an Associate Research Fellow at IRIS.
 
The talk is co-sponsored by the French and Italian Department, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, The Taube Center for Jewish Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. With the participation of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.