ABSTRACT
The ideology of the extreme right in Western Europe is rooted in Catholic fundamentalism and counter-revolutionary ideas while at the same time the extreme right, like all other political families, has had to adjust to an increasingly secular society. The old link between religion and the extreme right has thus been broken and in fact this was already the case when fascism overtook Europe: in its essence, fascism was secular, sometimes even anti-religious. Although Catholic fundamentalists still retain strong positions within the apparatus of several extreme-right parties (the French Front National; the Italian Forza Nuova; the various Spanish Falangist groups), the vote for the extreme right is generally weak among regular churchgoers and strong among non-believers. In several countries, the vote for the extreme right is stronger among Protestant voters than among Catholics, since the Christian-Democratic parties there are acting as a bulwark against the Catholics’ vote for extremist parties. Presently, it also seems that Paganism is becoming the dominant religious creed within the extreme right. In a multicultural Europe, non-Christian forms of religious fundamentalism such as Islamism also exist and display similarities with extreme-right ideology, but this is not sufficient to categorize Islamism as a form of fascism. Some Islamist groups seek alliances with the extreme right on the basis of their common dislike for Israel and the West, globalization and individual freedom of thought.
