neo-Nazism

The upsurge in racial and political intolerance in Eastern and Western Europe from the late 20th century. In Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy, the growth of extreme right-wing political groupings, coupled with racial violence, particularly in Germany, revived memories of the Nazi period in Hitler's Germany. Ironically, the liberalization of politics in the post-Cold War world unleashed anti-liberal forces hitherto kept in check by authoritarian regimes. The most significant parties in Western Europe described by the media as neo-Nazi were the National Front in France, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and the National Alliance in Italy (although, by 1998, the National Alliance claimed to be a mainstream conservative party).

In 1992 five nights of rioting and attacks on a shelter for asylum seekers in Rostock, Germany, was followed by riots in 15 other towns and the bombing of a memorial to commemorate the Holocaust in Berlin. Arson attacks against Turkish immigrants followed in 1992 and 1993. In Germany in 2000, Chancellor Schroeder's government began a crackdown on the far right, as the German North Rhine-Westphalia district approved plans calling for a nationwide register of neo-Nazis. The government outlawed Blood and Honour, a skinhead group founded in the UK in the 1980s. Neo-Nazism remains a major obstacle to postwar reconciliation however.