Is Fascism Returning to Europe?

02 Jul 1947, Rome, Italy — Eva Duarte de Peron (1919-1952), also called Evita, was an actress before her 1945 marriage to populist Argentine dictator Juan Peron. — Image by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

by Federico Finchelstein and Fabián Bosoer

Authoritarian populism, long associated with Latin American regimes, is generally considered a thing of the past in Europe. But this view is misleading. While countries like Argentina and Venezuela have slowly begun to move away from the Kirchners’ brand of Peronist politics and Hugo Chávez’s cult of personality, a dangerous right-wing brand of populism is returning to Europe. Indeed, the rise of movements like Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, and the violence and assassinations that have accompanied it, are far more worrying than the residual authoritarianism that pervades Latin American politics.

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