"After 1945, as liberal Europeans worked together to create a new, and peaceful, supranational

[pampango]

European entity, European rightists gathered in Rome and Malmö to develop their own version."

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/the-future-of-europes-radical-right/

For years, commentators and citizens overlooked a worrying trend in European politics: growing right-wing extremism, including staunch nativism. Until its defeat in last week's election, Denmark's ruling center-right coalition was allied with the forceful extreme-right Danish People's Party. In government, they had imposed tough immigration legislation and border controls that ran the country afoul of the other Schengen states.

Even after the right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, attacked government quarters and a children's camp this summer in Norway, the problem was still misunderstood. ... Even after Breivik announced that he acted to save Europe from Islam and multiculturalism, and belonged to a pan-European unit committed to doing so, many journalists were skeptical. ... In fact, Breivik represented an extreme form of pan-European rightism that has existed for decades. It harks back to the Nazis' quest to create a Euro-Fascist political order.

After 1945, as liberal Europeans worked together to create a new, and peaceful, supranational European entity, European rightists gathered in Rome and Malmö to develop their own version. ... If Europe was to be reborn, they believed, it should be fascistic, corporatist, and organic. In sum, this would have not been a liberal, free-market, and class-based Europe, led by the countries that had won the war and backed by the United States. This order would guarantee the proper functioning of the European continent (and its common market). It would also have been white-only.

The fascist version of the union lost out to the liberal one, of course, but rightest pan-European ideology never fully vanished. ... Today's European right wing identifies Europe as a white bastion of civilization. For it, globalization, immigration, and Islam anywhere in Europe threaten the whole of it. Globalization destroys tradition, African immigrants assault European borders, and Muslims promote terrorism and hate. In sum, they are all enemies because they challenge the "pure" identity and culture of the old continent.

Those who believe that the contemporary extreme right is novel and comparatively unproblematic are wrong. And those who call the phenomenon populism are incorrect, too. The use of such a generic label indirectly, and perhaps unintended, legitimizes a manifestly undemocratic and racist ideology.

Europe is now struggling with the integration of immigrants and the survival of its common currency. The EU was founded on the basis of promoting fraternity among its populations after the brutality of World War II - integrating previously warring countries within a boundless and peaceful ideal. A European culture cannot exclude "others"; this would contradict the EU's very goal. The hope is that the continent will be ready to look, again, at itself and its inner values, and tackle this "pan-European" rightism once more.
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The history of the "populist" far-right in Europe since WWII is very revealing. It's not populist and it's not new.

[izquierdista]

1. Progress IS being made

Compare the 66 years since 1945 with the 66 years prior. Lots less shooting going on. But allow any of the nationalist/racist/religion based groups a toehold, and they will quickly take it back to the good ol' days of pogroms and Kristallnacht -- with Muslims as the target this time.

[Boojatta]

2. When did the nations of the world agree to stop being nationalists?

With the words "will quickly take it back to", you are predicting the future. Why look back 66 years when you can look at more recent history? Many of the targets of violence are Jewish, as in past days, but many of the attackers are Muslim. We can debate why this is so, but such a debate presupposes that it is so.