How the far right became a Europe-wide movement

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni from the far-right party Fratelli d'Italia is connected via video to a conference in Madrid organised by the Spanish far-right party Vox in September 2025. EPA/J.J. Guillen

After the fascist and Nazi regimes were defeated in 1945, European post-war historiography largely overlooked right-wing extremism. New research now shows how extremists rebuilt cross-border networks in Europe and the part Switzerland played.

Gonzague de Reynold was an extraordinary figure. He even tried to convince the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to infuse his fascism with a stronger Catholic orientation.

A right-wing Catholic, de Reynold believed that democracy without Christianity would “inevitably become the most inhuman” form of government. According to a biography, he was a “blind admirer” of the Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and hoped that Europe would become “Portugalised.”

Between democracy and autocracy

At the same time, de Reynold helped shape Switzerland’s Geistige Landesverteidigung, or spiritual national defence, in the 1930s. He also worked at the forerunner of UNESCO and advised members of the Swiss government.

Gonzague de Reynold (1880-1970) was a writer and historian. In this photo from March 1940, he is walking through the park of their castle in Cressier with his wife Marie-Louise de Reynold. Photopress-Archiv / Str

Today, many Swiss have forgotten de Reynold, though some still refer to him, including conservatives. But far-right fight clubsExternal link in western Switzerland quote him, and blogs in France celebrate himExternal link as a Swiss “counter-revolutionary.”

After the Second World War, de Reynold maintained his dual role as a “bridge-builder between political milieus,” as historian Damir Skenderovic puts it. He remained a respected figure until his death in 1970.

Skenderovic views de Reynold as an ambivalent character – an example of how, in postwar Switzerland, it was still possible to move between authoritarianism and democracy without suffering reputational damage. In other European democracies, such balancing acts were far more difficult right after 1945, Skenderovic says.

Neglected history of the right after 1945

Skenderovic has been studying reactionary and far right forces for 30 years – initially one of only a few to do so. “Historians have paid very little attention to right-wing extremism after 1945, and not just in Switzerland,” he says.

In Germany, historians only began to confront this in 2018, when they passed a resolution at the German Historians’ Congress warning of the threat to democracy from right-wing populist movements such as the Alternativ für Deutschland, or Alternative for Germany. “They asked themselves: where is contemporary history? Did we miss something?” says Skenderovic.

Political scientists and sociologists, by contrast, have been researching right-wing extremism for decades.

Right-wing movements identify as European

Today, as right-wing politicians publicise their international friendships and more than one far-right group sits in the European Parliament, it is vital to understand how nationalists have connected across borders.

“It is important to recognise that today’s right-wing activists and movements also identify positively as European,” writes the Italian political scientist Manuela Caiani. She notes that western European far-right parties have sought to coordinate “since the mid-1980s” and have become increasingly successful in doing so.

Her scholarly article begins with a quote from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni campaigning for Spain’s far-right Vox partyExternal link: “Your victory can give all of Europe momentum.”

Historians, Skenderovic says, still have some catching up to do. “For a long time, 1945 was seen primarily as a historical turning point – and scholars focused on other things.” Much remains unexplored, such as how older generations of right-wing extremists passed their ideas on to younger ones.

Like de Reynold before him, Skenderovic is a professor at the University of Fribourg. This autumn, he hosted a contemporary history conference on the “Extreme Right Transnational”. Historians from across Europe compared their research and traced connections between post-1945 right-wing biographies.

The role of neutral countries in right-wing extremism

Neutral countries such as Switzerland and Sweden played a key role. As the historian Valérie Dubslaff explained in her lecture, it was easier in these countries to “continue one’s Nazi involvement” after 1945.

An early example of this was the 1951 Malmö conference, which gave the European far-right an opportunity to re-organise and led to the founding of the “European Social Movement” – a kind of “neo-nationalist International”.

Among its members was the Swiss activist Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, whose publication Courrier du continent reached audiences across Europe.

Though small, this far-right international group was fascinating in structure: even before the existence of the European Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s predecessor, these extremists had already set up a “European Commission” and a miniature congress. Their network promoted a pan-European, anti-communist vision and presented a federation of Europe as an alternative to NATO.

Amaudruz and others soon broke away to form even more radical splinter groups. Their alliances quickly faded but their international connections remain historically notable. For instance, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president at the time and an advocate of pan-Arab unity, received the German European Social Movement activist Karl-Heinz Priester, a Nazi.

Holocaust denial and Swiss legal loopholes

Switzerland also provided a legal refuge for Holocaust deniers such as Amaudruz. Until the anti-racism law came into force in 1995, denying the Shoah was not a criminal offence. Books denying the Nazi murder of six million Jews were often distributed internationally from Switzerland. Amaudruz’s pamphlets was among them.

Holocaust denier and right-wing extremist Gaston-Armand Amaudruz (1920-2018) after a trial against him at the turn of the millennium. After around 50 years of spreading anti-Semitic slogans and denying the Holocaust in his journalism, he was sentenced to one year in prison. KEYSTONE/Laurent Gillieron

From the 1950s to the 1990s, European Holocaust deniers reached only a few hundred or thousand readers, and their transnational networks remained marginal.

Yet, Skenderovic argues, they are crucial pieces of the puzzle for understanding how fascist and far-right ideologies could take root again after 1945.

Other pieces include exile and diaspora networks, as historian Manuel Miraneau showed in Fribourg with the example of the Romanian businessman Iosif Drăgan, who became wealthy in postwar Italy. In Skenderovic’s view, the role of diaspora in connecting the far right after the war requires far more research.

Anti-feminism as a unifying theme

Recently, many younger historians have turned their attention to post-1945 right-wing extremism. For a long time, Skenderovic notes, mostly men studied the field, “which created a certain research bias.”

Today, many women scholars are examining the transnational continuities of anti-feminism and anti-abortion activism within right-wing movements. Gradually, research is revealing how central these issues are for international far-right alliances, Skenderovic says.

Nationalists differ on many points, yet when they unite internationally, themes such as patriarchal gender roles, opposition to non-European migration, and an exclusive concept of identity bring them together.

“The far right and nationalists have managed to build solidarity across national borders by promoting the idea of Europe as a cultural West – unlike open racists such as Amaudruz,” Skenderovic says. Research into how such ideas have influenced European integration since the 1950s is only now beginning.

Far-right ideas in European unification?

“To what extent did certain far-right ideas also flow into European integration?” Skenderovic asks. “Over the past decade, studies have shown that for some early European integrationists in the 1950s, colonialism still played a role. They imagined a united Europe regaining its colonial power in Africa.”

Even Fribourg’s Catholic conservative de Reynold thought in transnational terms, promoting the idea of a “Europe of fatherlands” in Switzerland. His ideal, historian Aram Mattioli writes, was the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Empire.

In 2025, some on the far right still look to the same models.

Edited by David Eugster

Translated from German by Catherine Hickley/ds