The move from Jean-Marie Le Pen to his daughter Marine Le Pen, for instance, is clearly a move of significance. A true devotee of racist nationalist politics would find it harder to join today’s Front National than they would have done the party of Marine’s father. There are of course serious questions all around the edges. Still, these parties have problems with people trying to get involved who hold to Holocaust denial and similarly extreme views. This is in part – as with the EDL in England and Pegida in Germany – a result of the entire media and political class telling people that this is what such parties stand for and effectively sending any true extremists to join them. It is also true that these parties include people with rancid political views. But so too, it must be noted, do mainstream parties of the political left and right. It is not possible to regard parties that often poll ahead of other mainstream parties as being wholly Nazi, fascist or racist, since it should be obvious to any politician with experience of the public in any of these countries that they are not largely Nazi, fascist or racist.

In other words, it will be necessary to broaden the political consensus and to accept thoughtful and clearly non-fascist parties once described as ‘far right’ at the political table. Not only would it be unwise to continue to marginalise people who have spent years warning about events just as those warnings are coming true, it would also be unwise to continue a situation which would mean that any truly fascist parties emerging in the years ahead (such as Jobbik in Hungary, Ataka in Bulgaria or Golden Dawn in Greece) can be identified accurately and without the accusation that this label had been used about almost everybody. Europeans have been deflating the language of anti-fascism ahead of a time when they might need it. Warnings of fascism should be used exceptionally carefully in Europe. In recent years they have been worn down and become so commonplace as to be rendered almost meaninglessness. Finally, it would be an unsustainable position for the political and media elites of Europe to continue to pretend that the views of the majority of the public are unacceptable whilst the pro-mass migration views of a comparatively small and extreme fringe are the only legitimate views for the mainstream in European politics.