Marine Le Pen, center, far-right National Front candidate for France’s 2012 presidential election,  with her father Jean Marie Le Pen, right, after her speech during the traditional May Day march in Paris, May 1, 2012 (AP photo by Francois Mori).

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. Political extremism has, in many places, become a kind of new normal. In most democratic political systems, whether firmly established or still early in their consolidations, we find parties deemed “extremist” by the mainstream that routinely enjoy sustained electoral success. These political parties espouse rejectionist philosophies, proffer illiberal policies and promote intolerance of targeted groups. They typically do this, however, while playing within the rules of the democratic game. Putatively extremist parties […]

Europe has consistently struggled to escape fully from the shadows of fascism and far-right politics. At various points since 1945, and despite continual attempts to forge European unity, mainstream political elites have been faced with a revival of public support for politicians or parties that are associated with fascism, anti-democratic ideas and prejudice. Whether expressed in strong performances by right-wing extremist parties at elections or periodic surges in levels of racially motivated violence, the landscape of postwar European politics has never truly been “far-right free.” Far from being ephemeral, the far right in postwar Europe has proved to be remarkably […]

After decades of condemning parliamentary politics, Salafis have created political parties for the first time in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, even as Salafis in Morocco and Gaza attempt to do the same. Salafi political parties are not unprecedented in the Arab world — Bahrain and Kuwait have had Salafi political blocs for many years, and there was a Salafi-dominated party briefly in Algeria in the early 1990s that successfully contested parliamentary elections until the Algerian government cancelled the poll results. But the phenomenon is unusual. Before the Arab Spring, the majority of Salafis, or Sunni Muslim puritans, condemned parliaments […]

Protests have erupted in Northern Ireland in response to a vote by the Belfast City Council to fly the United Kingdom’s flag, with its trademark Union Jack symbol, above City Hall only on designated days, rather than every day of the year as has been the tradition for the past century. But what began as peaceful protests soon became violent riots that authorities have attributed to extremists exploiting the situation for their own purposes. “A small number of committed people can always create problems for a peaceful democratic majority,” Neil Jarman, director of the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast, […]