
On the Auschwitz anniversary, Europe cannot ignore its far-right problem
On January 27, 1945, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated. An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 and 1.1 million of them were murdered.
As Europeans mark the 80th anniversary of this dark chapter of history, their leaders are releasing statements about the “civilisational rupture” the Holocaust represented and the need to “resist this hatred”. Yet, many of these declarations do not seem to take stock of the political reality in Europe, in which the successors of the fascist and Nazi forces behind the Holocaust are now gaining popularity and even taking power.
Of course, far-right parties and figures have repeatedly paid their respects to Holocaust victims and pledged to combat anti-Semitism, but that does not mean they have relinquished their Nazi and fascist past. Rather, they have undertaken a strategic realignment which – with the help of the political mainstream – allows them to retain and propagate the same dangerous ideas of white supremacy and hatred.
So how did we get here?
For decades, Europe’s far right openly embraced anti-Semitism. Figures like Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front in France, and Jörg Haider, founder of the Freedom Party in Austria, disrupted the political consensus of post-war Europe by embracing Holocaust denial rhetoric.
This article was written by Bridge Initiative Senior Researcher Farid Hafez and originally published by Al-Jazeera on January 27, 2025