ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the term fascism retains its value for understanding contemporary political life in Europe. Drawing rigid distinctions between fascism and populism ends by downplaying the dangers of the situation, in which Europeans seem to be sliding away from democracy without realizing it, and sometimes, as in the case of Geert Wilders or Marine Le Pen, with the express aim of defending ‘European values.’ Critics of the applicability of the ‘fascism’ concept to contemporary Western Europe are right that the current situation is different from that of the interwar period. There are several reasons why fascism and populism should be considered incompatible. The most obvious is that populists contest elections and claim to represent ‘true’ democracy, whereas fascism is anti-democratic. The concept of antifascism may be regarded as too simplistic a tool for making sense of the complexities of divided postwar Europe, which encompassed decolonization, European integration, Atlanticism and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, anti-communism, and the new consumerism.
