Public political tolerance of the far right in contemporary Western Europe

Abstract

Political initiatives promoting a far-right agenda have gained significant political influence in Western European democracies. This has occurred despite apparent broad-based public rejection of Europe’s Nazi past. This is a puzzle, since there are affinities between the old and the new far right. This article addresses that puzzle. Theoretically, the article distinguishes between broad and narrow interpretations of what it means to reject Europe’s Nazi past. Empirically, it shows how a well-established survey experimental template reveals substantive variations in public political tolerance of the far right. For citizens in five key Western European democracies, rejecting the Nazi past only means rejecting initiatives explicitly identified as neo-Nazi. For other far-right initiatives, political tolerance is more common and increases in accordance with these initiatives’ institutionalisation in the party system. For far-right parties fully institutionalised in the party system, public political tolerance is at the same level as for other political parties.