This paper discusses the contemporary liberal democratic defence against the radical right in Europe. While the European radical right itself has been the object of an intensified scholarly focus in recent decades, in-depth discussions on the components of the response to such movements have been less common. This paper illustrates potential problems with much of the contemporary liberal democratic defence by highlighting its connections to debates among political thinkers in the first half of the 20th century, in particular in Germany. These thinkers identified the irrational, emotional laden and mythical aspects of politics as the main problem to be tackled. The paper highlights the unresolved tensions inherent in this response to political radicalism and by implication, the tensions in prevalent arguments regarding the basis for excluding the contemporary radical right from political decision making.
