For anyone paying attention, the radical right is on the march. Recent years have been more favourable to their fortunes than at any time since the end of World War Two. True, much of this is driven by demographic change in western Europe and the US, and elsewhere; by appalling acts of terrorism that rightly offend everyone’s sensibility; and by socio-economic shocks exemplified by the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ in Europe, and before that, the ‘great recession’ and accompanying austerity politics.
Yet none of these phenomena are new. What is different this time around?
