Reply #8: We already see those types of statements in far-right parties across Europe [View All]

[RZM]

Including those in countries that were on the Allied side and endured German occupation. Though I'm no expert on the Hungarian far right today, I imagine anti-Semitic rhetoric is alive and well in those circles.

The legacies of the interwar years and Second World War have never been fully expiated in any European country and probably won't be anytime soon. The issue of the illegitimate Soviet occupations of the Eastern bloc nations further complicates matters, since as you point out it contributed to a victim status -- though of course, this rings true -- they WERE victims. As Americans, we have no personal sense of what years of foreign occupation does to a national psyche, a serious handicap that's contributed to some of our own foreign policy disasters. Though the far right is still alive in European countries, at least it's marginal in most places, which is better than things used to be. When the far right temporarily does well in elections (as they did in Austria in the 1990s under the late Jorg Haider) it's usually a fleeting thing they achieve by attaching themselves to broader concerns about immigration.