CHAPTER 19

522
 RELIGION AND THE RADICAL RIGHT

MICHAEL MINKENBERG
IN today’s Western world, and especially in “secular Europe” (Berger,
Davie, and Fokas 2008), religion is on the rise again, mostly due to the in-
flux of new religions via migration, new political conflicts, and the grow-
ing (re)assertion of Christian heritage among domestic actors. In this way,
at least, religion offers itself as a central frame of xenophobic and radical
right mobilization: the German movement Patriotische Europäer gegen die
Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Pegida, Patriotic Europeans Against the
Islamization of the West) claims to fight for the protection of the “occi-
dent” against alleged Islamization; in Switzerland, the radical right
Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP, Swiss People’s Party) initiates refer-
enda against the building of minarets, among other things; in the United
States, movements such as the Tea Party (and parts of the Republican
Party) want to preserve what they call the “Judeo-Christian” identity of
their country; and in Eastern Europe, organized religion in the shape of the
ultra-Catholic Radio Maryja in Poland keeps railing at liberalism in its var-
ious manifestations. Yet in the academic debate, religion remains conspic-
uously absent in concepts of the radical right; instead, it is usually treated
as a strategic ploy or superficial issue—with the notable exception of a few
electoral studies (Arzheimer and Carter 2009; Immerzeel, Jaspers, and
Lubbers, 2013; for a general overview see Camus 2011).
The question arises, then, of the extent to which religion provides an
ideological component of the radical right, what kind of religion is at play,
and whether and how it can be used to explain the radical right’s suc-
cesses. These questions cannot be addressed without first clarifying how
religion is understood and in what ways a conceptual link between the rad-
ical right in democratic societies and the various dimensions of religion
can be established and, second, outlining the relevance of religion for the
radical right in historical perspective. Subsequently, the chapter discusses
the programmatic development and organizational profile of major radical
right actors as far as religion is concerned (“supply side”), adds a look at
the evidence for the relevance of religion on the “demand side,” and puts
the radical right trajectory into a larger context of societal and political
changes. This will be done with a focus on contemporary European and
non-European democracies with a Christian legacy, such as “the West”
(Taylor 2007); other regions shall be left for future treatment. An argument
can be advanced that particular religious beliefs may not be a core element

523
of the radical right, which in most Western countries is a largely secular
movement or party family; however, religion functions as a relevant con-
text factor and frame for political mobilization.

CONCEPTS OF THE RADICAL RIGHT: BRINGING RELIGION

BACK IN

Most popular definitions of the radical (or populist or extreme) right do

without religion. Instead, ethnicity, racism, and/or the opposition to immi-
gration constitute the definitional cores (see, e.g., Betz 1994; Carter 2005;
Ignazi 2003; Mény and Surel 2000, 2002; Norris 2005). In a more elabo-
rate definitional attempt, Cas Mudde lists nationalism as the key concept,
which he then specifies by distinguishing the dimensions of internal ho-
mogenization, external exclusiveness, and ethnic and/or state nationalism
before qualifying it with additional key features such as xenophobia, au-
thoritarianism, and an anti-democratic stand (see Mudde 2007, 16–24).
In a similar vein and following earlier writings (see Minkenberg 2000,
2008), here right-wing radicalism shall be defined against the backdrop of
modernization theory, with its emphasis on the fundamental processes of
functional differentiation at the societal level and growing autonomy at the
individual level (see Rucht 1994). It is seen as the radical effort to undo or
fight such social and cultural change and their carriers by radicalizing in-
clusionary and exclusionary criteria (see Minkenberg 1998, 29–47; also
Carter 2005, 14–20; Kitschelt 2007, 1179; Rydgren 2007). In line with an
earlier explanatory model, the modernization-theoretical assumption is that
the potential for radical right-wing movements exists in all industrial soci-
eties and can be understood as a “normal pathological” condition (Scheuch
and Klingemann 1967). In all modernizing countries there are people, at
the elite level and at the mass level, who react to the pressures of readjust-
ment with rigidity and closed-mindedness. Under normal conditions these
views are part of the mainstream, but in times of accelerated change they
are radicalized by right-wing movements or parties offering political
philosophies that promise an elimination of pressures by offering visions
of a simpler, better society: a return to a romanticized version of the nation
(see Minkenberg 2000). Whether they are seen as a “normal pathology” or
a “pathological normalcy” (Mudde 2010), the central point remains un-
changed: it is the overemphasis on, or radicalization of, images of social
homogeneity that characterizes radical right-wing thinking. Right-wing
radicalism is a political ideology, the core element of which lies in the

524
myth of a homogeneous nation, a romantic and populist ultra-nationalism
that is directed against the concept of liberal and pluralistic democracy and
its underlying principles of individualism and universalism.
This definition focuses explicitly on the idea of the nation as the ulti-
mate focal point, situated somewhere between the poles of demos and eth-
nos. The nationalistic myth consists of the construction of an idea of nation
and national belonging by radicalizing criteria of exclusion that can be eth-
nically based but also may be cultural, that is, religious, aiming at the con-
gruence between the state and the nation (Smith 2001, 34). Historically,
this notion of homogeneity resulted from the transformation of an emanci-
patory nationalism to an integral or official version (see Alter 1985; An-
derson 1983) and by the end of the nineteenth century culminated in a ro-
mantic ultra-nationalist myth of belonging; as such, it borders on or even
inhabits chiliastic (that is, quasi-religious) characteristics, especially when
moral qualities of the nation and the notion of a national rebirth were
added (see Griffin 1991, 32–33).
If at all, the literature on the contemporary radical right considers the re-
ligious factor only when identifying religious minorities as targets of radi-
cal right thinking and activities or in electoral analyses where it is usually
treated as one of many demographic variables (see Arzheimer 2008, 362;
Norris 2005, 183; but see Arzheimer and Carter 2009; Immerzeel, Jaspers,
and Lubbers 2013). In contrast, the nationalism scholarship abounds with
references to religious characteristics beyond the obvious cases of Poland,
Ireland, and the United States (see Haselby 2015; Marx 2003; Zubrzycki
2006). In fact, early research on national identity was closely linked to reli-
gion. German historian Friedrich Meinecke distinguished between state
nation and cultural nation, the latter being rooted in religion, the most im-
portant of the “cultural goods” (Meinecke 1908, 2–3), and Ernest Renan,
though defining the nation as an “everyday plebiscite,” added to this defin-
ition the requirement of a “soul,” that is, a spiritual dimension (Renan
1947 903).
Contemporary nationalism research continues to use these distinctions.
An important strand of scholarship dissociates religion from nationalism,
arguing, as does Benedict Anderson (1983), that secularization and the
modern national movements resulted in replacing religion by nationalism,
which in itself was then seen as a surrogate religion, or a “political reli-
gion” (Smith 2001, 35). Others go one step further and distinguish various
ingredients of nationalism, such as language, ethnicity, religion, kingship,
or the sense of belonging to a “historical nation” (Hobsbawm 1990, 67,

525
73). While Eric Hobsbawm dismisses religion as a necessary requirement
for the emergence of nationalism (as he does with language, ethnicity, and
kingship), he discovers, like Smith, quasi-religious traits, or the role of
“holy icons” in it. A more conceptual effort to link up religion with nation-
alism has been suggested by Willfried Spohn (2003a, 2003b). In a world-
wide review, he shows that even in Europe, where the form of secular na-
tionalism dominates, nationalism includes Christian components, and he
concludes that the contemporary rise of religious and ethnic nationalism
can be explained as a reaction to the previous authoritarian imposition of
the Western European model of state secularism within predominantly re-
ligious and multiethnic societies. A similarly systematic account of the re-
lationship shows that religion, far from being replaced by an allegedly sec-
ular nationalism, is more often than not intertwined with nationalism, can
constitute a distinct version of nationalism, and can be seen as a cause of
nationalism (Brubaker 2012, 2013; see also Jaffrelot 2009).
But what is understood by religion varies greatly in these writings. Gen-
erally religion, like secularization, is a multidimensional concept and en-
tails at least the two dimensions of belief (in the supernatural) and its insti-
tutionalization (see Bruce 2003, 9–10; also Bruce 1996, 7). With Max
Weber (1980) and Roland Robertson (1987), the world’s large religions
can be distinguished principally along these two dimensions of institution-
alization and belief, the latter as a this-worldly or otherworldly orientation
toward the world. The particular mix of a this-worldly orientation and a
highly organized or formal structure, as in Christianity, makes an orga-
nized religion a potent political actor—and can contribute to tensions when
its fundamental orientations differ from those of the polity in which it op-
erates. On the level of the individual, Max Weber’s distinction between re-
ligion as beliefs and as practice is relevant for political behavior; in this
vein, religion typically enters political studies as either denominational af-
filiation or church attendance, with different effects on politics (see also
Driskell, Embry, and Lyon 2008). Seen in this multidimensional light, sec-
ularization does not necessarily mean the disappearance of religion. Un-
derstood as the ongoing differentiation of religious and nonreligious values
and institutions, it represents a variant of theories of rationalization and
modernization that postulates a continuing functional differentiation of
modern societies (Weber 1920; also Bruce 2002; Norris and Inglehart
2011). But this modernization process reflects separate “moments of secu-
larization” (Casanova 1994): “institutional differentiation,” in particular
the separation of state and church; “decline,” or the loosening of ties be-
tween the individual and the values and institutions of religion; and “priva-

526
tization,” the (forced or voluntary) retreat of religion from the public
sphere (see also Taylor 2007, 1–3). Against this backdrop, religion as a po-
litically relevant factor can be minimally distinguished in three respects:
religion as worldview or identity (in terms of confessional or denomina-
tional content); religion as religiosity, that is, as attachment to religious
values and authorities; and religion as (institutional) actors, such as
churches and religious communities as well as their political allies (see
Fox 2013). In all these dimensions, religion can be relevant for the radical
right as part of the agenda, as lending legitimacy, and as a political support
mechanism.

RELIGION AND THE RADICAL RIGHT IN HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVE

Historically, the radical right as a fundamentally anti-liberal or anti-demo-

cratic force is closely connected to the counterrevolutionary tradition of
Catholicism (see Camus 2011). With the onset of the Enlightenment and
liberalization and democratization of European societies, the most vocifer-
ous opponents could be found in religious quarters that were deeply entan-
gled with the ancien régime. Even in the United States, illiberal state
churches persisted into the early nineteenth century, and the Protestant
hegemony corresponded with and in some regions even transformed into
the longtime dominance of anti-Catholicism, biological racism, and anti-
Semitism (see Bennett 1988; Lipset and Raab 1978). Today, all major
Christian churches and denominations embrace democracy and human
rights as inviolable, but this process was far from linear and unidimen-
sional.
In the Protestant countries of the European north and northwest, in
which the church was also the national or state church—as in the Protes-
tant majority countries outside Europe (the United States, Canada, Aus-
tralia, New Zealand) where the Protestant churches underwent disestab-
lishment in the course of the nineteenth century—a convergence between
Protestantism and liberal ideas occurred in the context of a progressing
secularization triggered by the Protestant emphasis on individualism, egal-
itarianism, and acceptance of diversity (see Bruce 2002, 4; Bruce 2003;
also Maddox 1996; Kallscheuer 2006). But within the world of Protestant
Christianity, different paths of democratic development unfolded (see
Berger, Davie, and Fokas 2007: 36–37; also Martin 2005). Where Re-
formed Protestantism, in particular Calvinism, dominated, an early evolu-

527
tion of parliamentary rule and republicanism could be observed (see An-
derson 2009, 21–27; also Gorski 2011, 44–55). With a delay, Lutheran
Scandinavia followed the liberal (but not republican) path, helped by “the
internal variety within the state church and the laicist attitude of the de-
vout” (Martin 1978, 68; see also Gustafsson 2003, 51–52).
The exceptional case is Protestant Brandenburg-Prussia, which during
the seventeenth century developed into an absolutist state with illiberal
elites that, together with the Lutheran state church, prohibited democrati-
zation until the late nineteenth century. A major cause for this develop-
ment can be seen in the protracted conflict between a Calvinist state elite,
in particular the Hohenzollern rulers, and the Lutheran estates, church, and
population, all of whom were “disciplined” into submission to the state
from above (see Gorski 2011, 55–71). The Lutheran emphasis on authority
in the German lands also resulted in a split of German Protestantism in the
nineteenth century and well into the twentieth over the issues of liberalism
and democracy, with a majority supporting the authoritarian regime of the
Second Empire and distrusting democracy in the Weimar Republic. Nu-
merous studies show that while Catholics, deeply encapsulated in their
Catholic milieus, were reluctant to support the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers’
Party), Protestants were more willing to open up toward the Nazi Party and
regime (see Childers 1983; Falter 1991; Lipset 1963). While during the
1930s a split emerged between the pro-fascist Protestant majority and an
anti-fascist minority, it took until 1985 for the Lutheran churches in West
Germany to issue an official document endorsing democracy and human
rights (see Graf 2009; Huber 1990, 2007).
In Catholic societies during nation-building, on the other hand, Protes-
tantism and liberalism were seen as an attack on the Church and its power,
and a conflictual if not antagonistic relationship between Catholicism and
liberalism prevailed. Nation-building by mostly liberal elites put Catholi-
cism on the defensive, and often the question of loyalty was invoked;
democracy emerged as a “nightmare” (Anderson 2009, 31). In the French
Third Republic, in unified Italy, and in the German Empire, these tensions
culminated in an aggressive anti-clerical politics; as a result, Catholic mi-
lieus developed as an organized opposition to the nation-state and the na-
tion-builders (see Grzymała-Busse 2015).
This is not to deny liberal and pro-democratic tendencies among nine-
teenth-century European Catholicism (e.g., the French priest Robert de
Lamennais or the south German bishop Ketteler; see Uertz 2005, 17; also

528
Maddox 1996, 196ff.). But only in Belgium did Catholic clergy and laity,
by joining the liberals in their struggle for independence from the Nether-
lands, adopt liberal ideas, not without safeguarding substantial privileges
for the Catholic Church (see Gould 1999, 25–44; Kalyvas 1996, 187–192).
Overall, while in many countries Catholic parties emerged that more or
less accommodated themselves with the liberal political order, Catholic
churches and lay organizations continued their anti-liberal politics and in a
number of cases allied themselves with racist or proto-fascist movements,
such as the Action Française or the Falange in Spain (see Birnbaum 1993,
89–117; Meyer Resende 2015, 19; Winock 1993).
The uneven development of democracy along confessional lines and the
“unholy alliance” between right-wing throne and Catholic altar manifest
themselves in the particular paths taken in interwar Europe of the twentieth
century (see Bruce 2003; also Whyte 1981, 76–82). With few exceptions,
including the Weimar Republic in Germany and the liberal regime in Bel-
gium, it was the Protestant countries in which democracy survived the
crises of the 1920s and 1930s and the rise of fascism and communism,
whereas fascist movements and elites were particularly successful in
Catholic Europe. Steve Bruce ascribes to the Catholic Church an anti-de-
mocratic politics in countries with a Catholic monopoly: either they coop-
erated openly with right-wing authoritarian regimes and groups, as in Italy,
Spain, or France (especially after the establishment of the Vichy regime)
or they took a more passive role, as in Germany. His explanation points
less at the doctrinal aspects of Catholicism than the structural aspects:
“Catholicism, Orthodoxy and, to a lesser extent, Lutheranism, with their
insistence on the primacy of the institution of the church, are much more
likely to see the state of the political embodiment of ‘the people’ as a com-
munity, rather than as the expression of the preferences of individuals”
(Bruce 2003, 110; see also Warren 1941). Table 19.1 provides an overview
of democratic and right-wing authoritarian regimes in the interwar period,
listing only those non-democratic regimes that emerged independently
from or before German occupation, such as the Dollfuß regime in Austria
or Marshall Pétain’s regime in France. German puppet regimes such as
Tiso’s in Slovakia are not included.
The pattern in Table 19.1 corresponds to recent comparative research
about the breakdown of democracy in interwar Europe, which emphasizes
political and cultural causes instead of economic ones (see Berg-Schlosser
and Mitchell 2002). With the exception of Belgium, there was not a single
Catholic country that did not undergo a regime change and establishment

529
of a fascist or right-wing dictatorship. Moreover, in many Catholic coun-
tries that turned to the right, the Catholic community experienced a split
between pro- and anti-fascist forces (see Whyte 1981, 79–81).
Only twenty years after World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust,
the Catholic Church reached reconciliation with liberalism and, in the Sec-
ond Vatican Council (1962–1965), accepted human rights, pluralism, and
democracy (see Casanova 1994, 71; Anderson 2009, 38–40). However,
this does not mean that all of Christianity has come to terms with democ-
racy, tolerance, and pluralism in the postwar era. First, as a reaction to
Vatican II, illiberal Catholic forces split from the church and formed their
own, politically right-wing organizations that claimed to preserve the “true
teachings” of the church. Most prominent in Western Europe is a group
around ex-bishop Marcel Lefebvre (died 1991), the Fraternité St. Pie X,
with a strong base in France (see Camus and Monzat 1992, 148–229).
Similar right-wing Catholic groups exist in Eastern Europe, for example
Radio Maryja in Poland, which recycles the ultra-Catholic, anti-democra-
tic, and anti-Semitic ideas of Polish interwar politician Roman Dmowski
(see Pankowski 2010, 95–98). Second, in an almost parallel movement,
fundamentalist Protestant groups in Western democracies, in particular the
United States but also in Nordic Europe, politically invisible for a long
time, reacted to the modernization shifts of the 1960s and 1970s and the
ongoing liberalization of Western societies with a pronounced shift to the
right (see Minkenberg 1990). In fact, religious fundamentalism, whether
Protestant or Catholic or any other denomination, has been defined as an
anti-liberal and anti-modern religious force with immediate political con-
sequences (see Fox 2013, 109–121; also Almond, Appleby, and Sivan
2003; Marty and Appleby 1991; Bruce 2000). Clearly, not every religious
fundamentalism should be considered an expression of right-wing radical-
ism, but if it allies itself with the national idea, Christian fundamentalism
in Western democracies is the quintessential radical right force in religious
terms (see Fox 2013, 116–120). Finally, research after World War II has
shown persistent links between authoritarian personality traits and (racial)
prejudice, with religiously rigid orientations playing a key role (see Allport
and Ross 1967; Altemeyer 2003; Doebler 2015).
Table 19.1 The Protestant-Catholic Divide, Church-State Relation-
ships, and Political Regimes in Interwar Europe
Right-Wing Authoritarian Regime
(start of non-democratic regime; atti-

530
 Democracy tude of major church toward regime)
Catholic
Belgium Austria (1934; supportive)
Countries
[Czechoslova- France (1940; supportive)
kia]*
Hungary (1920s; supportive)
[Ireland]** Italy (1922; supportive)
Poland (1938; supportive)
Portugal (1933; initially supportive)
Spain (1939; supportive)

Protestant or Denmark (oc- Germany (1933; passive)

Mixed Protes- cupied by
tant Countries Germany, Baltic states (“benign despotism” in
the 1930s)
1940)
Finland (occu-
pied by Ger-
many, 1944)
Netherlands
(occupied by
Germany,
1940)
Sweden
Switzerland
United King-
dom

* Czechoslovakia had a numerical majority of Catholics in the interwar

period but mixed religious traditions; moreover, in the first decade of its
existence the country experienced a cross-partisan wave of anti-Catholi-
cism, led by the first president, Tomas Masaryk.
** Ireland underwent a transition to full independence from the UK
after World War I, which by 1937 resulted in a democratic constitution
with substantial privileges for the Catholic Church, thus adding a dose
of illiberalism to the regime, congruent with a political culture in which

531
 “a dogmatic overemphasis on Catholic rules, duties, and obligations”
persisted (Dillon 2002, 55).
Sources: Anderson 2009, 49–54; Bruce 2003, 97–111; Whyte 1981, 79–
81.

IDEOLOGY AND ORGANIZATION: MERGING RELIGION AND

NATIONALISM

After World War II, Western democracies underwent several waves of

radical right-wing mobilization, usually in terms of a “national opposition”
directed at the democratic political order and centered on a crucial issue of
democratization (see von Beyme 1988). In this sense, historian Wolfgang
Wippermann rightly pointed out that “with the collapse of fascist regimes
in Italy and Germany . . . the era of fascism has ended—but not the history
of fascism” (Wippermann 1983, 183; my translation). In contrast to the
earlier waves (1950s, 1960s, and 1970s), the third wave of a renewed radi-
cal right since the 1980s brought religion back on its agenda (see Minken-
berg 2000).
This renewal of the radical right and the return of religion must be seen
in the context of far-reaching social and cultural change in Western soci-
eties, variously labeled as “post-industrialism,” “value change,” “the third
modernity,” and so on (e.g., Beck 1986; Inglehart 1990). What these con-
cepts refer to is a heightened concern with cultural orientations and iden-
tity politics, a new surge of individualization and pluralization, and a
deemphasis of authority, both religious and rational-legal in the Weberian
sense, all of which opened the gates for religious messages even in the
context of a secularizing world in at least the first two of Casanova’s di-
mensions (see above). The “silent revolution” of post-materialist value
change, new social movements, and a left-libertarian discourse, with the
Greens among the early advocates of multiculturalism, was then followed
by a “silent counter-revolution” of right-wing authoritarian and ethnocul-
tural parties and movements (see Ignazi 1992, 2003; Minkenberg 1990,
1993).
On the level of discourse, new radical right groups emerged that sought
to shape public debate and the minds of people rather than voting behavior
and which harbored a strong religious message. These groups—think
tanks, intellectual circles, political entrepreneurs—are summarized as the
“New Right” in the literature (see Bar-On 2007; Minkenberg 1998;

532
Taguieff 1994). In Europe the most prominent groups were the French
nouvelle droite groups Club de l’Horloge and especially GRECE, led by
philosopher Alain de Benoist, and its European offshoots. They were in-
spired by the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution and the “political the-
ology” of anti-liberal intellectual Carl Schmitt (2010). This New Right
builds a bridge, or hinge, between established and traditional conservatism
and the organizations of the new radical right. It is characterized by its ef-
fort to create a counterdiscourse to the “ideas of 1968”—the proclamation
of an ethnocentrist cultural war with the goal of filling terms of public de-
bate with a right-wing meaning of a homogeneous nation, a strong state,
and discrimination against all things “foreign.” The most important ideo-
logical renewal consists of the New Right’s concept of “ethnopluralism,”
which demarcates New Right thinking from old-fashioned ideas of biolog-
ical racism and white superiority. In direct appropriation of the left’s con-
cept of the right to be different, the New Right emphasizes the incompati-
bility of cultures and ethnicities and advocates the right of the Europeans
to be different, to preserve the cultural (Christian) identity of the nation,
and to resist cultural mixing—a countermodel to concepts of multicultural-
ism (see Camus 2011).
Later, smaller far right groups and movements without electoral ambi-
tions and a more particular agenda emerged, introducing religious narra-
tives and mobilizing against Islam in an increasingly aggressive fashion.
To these belong Aarhus Against the Mosque in Denmark in the 1990s; the
successful mobilization for the banning of minarets in Mosques in Switzer-
land in 2009; and since 2014, the East German Pegida movement (see
Minkenberg 2008, 48–50; Rucht et al. 2015). From the nouvelle droite to
Pegida, the ethnopluralist argument has turned religion into a master frame
that is meant to provide a direct link between these groups and the political
mainstream, thereby bypassing all parties and partisan discourse.
Likewise in the United States, the ideological renewal on the far right
consists of leaving behind institutional racism and discrimination and tra-
ditional concepts of biological racism. After 1968, it was the fundamental-
ist Christian Right movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which, although not
radical right in toto, advocated an anti-liberal and ultra-nationalist reinter-
pretation of American civil religion and contributed “a combination of the
Bible and Edmund Burke” (Lowi 1996, 5) to U.S. politics (see Casanova
1994; Grzymała-Busse 2015; Minkenberg 1998). In the 1990s, the ethno-
centrist America First movement joined the Christian Right, and its leader,
Pat Buchanan, proclaimed at the Republican Party convention in 1992:

533
“There is a religious war going on in this country for the soul of America.
It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold
War itself” (quoted in Lowi 1995, 211). Both these movements strove to
preserve the “European core” of the United States, and both stood for an
updated version of a particular American tradition that fuses racism and re-
ligion (see Barkun 1994; Durham 2000; Swain 2002). More recently, the
Tea Party has added its own brand of welfare chauvinism and anti-parlia-
mentary zeal to the Republican Party’s programmatic development, often
framing its issues in religious terms by proclaiming, in ahistorical fashion,
that the United States was founded as a Christian nation (see Lepore 2011,
126–129). Considering that Christian Right activists and social conserva-
tives make up a large portion of Tea Party activists, the movement has
consolidated the cultural conservative current within the Republican Party
(see Skocpol and Williamson 2012). Against this background, it should not
come as a surprise that in 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump and
his anti-Muslim and xenophobic message resonated widely in large parts
of the Republican rank and file, as it did among White supremacists,
thereby connecting the racist right with the religious conservatism and the
Republican mainstream (see Mahler 2016; Piggott 2016). Donald Trump’s
taking over the Presidency in January 2017 changed little in this regard.
In contrast to the United States, the European new radical right con-
sisted mainly of political parties rather than movements, but initially they
all cultivated a heavily ethnocentrist platform with little room for religion.
This is especially true for those parties that began their career as economi-
cally oriented or anti-tax parties, such as the Progress Parties in Scandi-
navia or the Lega Nord in Italy. These parties have largely ignored the sub-
ject of religion in their platforms; in some countries such as Austria, anti-
clerical traditions get in the way of mobilizing voters on religious issues.
However, the recent shift of radical right parties toward emphasizing a re-
ligious divide by attacking Islam and claiming the role of defenders of the
Christian or Judeo-Christian heritage in their respective countries, or Eu-
rope in general (Immerzeel, Jaspers, and Lubbers 2013, 946), does not
need to be interpreted merely as a strategic ploy to gain political advan-
tages (Arzheimer and Carter 2009, 989).
A number of these groups and parties already had long-standing links to
ultra-conservative or fundamentalist currents of Christianity. For example,
Le Pen’s Front National cultivated an alliance with the anti-liberal Lefeb-
vrists, some of whom held prominent posts in the party, and party leaders
such as Bruno Mégret emphasized the Catholic roots of French identity

534
(see above, and Camus 2011; Minkenberg 1998. Likewise, despite the
anti-clerical tradition in Austria, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ,
Freedom Party of Austria) and Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ, Al-
liance for the Future of Austria), just like the Swiss SVP and the Italian
Lega Nord, have increasingly attacked Islam as incompatible not only with
their countries’ democratic order but also with their Christian identity (see
Betz 2005, 159–164; Skenderovic 2009, 187). The British National Party
(BNP) has discovered Islam as the country’s enemy, as has the Dansk
Folkeparti (DF, Danish People’s Party) (see Goodwin 2011, 177–178; Ry-
dgren 2004; Widfeldt 2015, 146–149, 171). Moreover, in Denmark,
Protestant fundamentalists sided with the DF (see Minkenberg 2008, 48–
50)—not to mention the Lijst Pim Fortuyn or Geert Wilders’s Partij voor
de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, which were cen-
tered on an strongly Islamophobic platform from their beginning (Art
2011, 179–187; Mudde 2007, 84). Recently, the German radical right en-
hanced this trend. While the Republikaner in the early 1990s still focused
more on xenophobia than Islam, the more radical Nationaldemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (NPD, National Democratic Party) echoes its British
counterparts in embracing anti-Semitism as well as Islamophobia. The new
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany), first orga-
nized as a fiercely anti-EU and anti-euro party in 2013, has moved further
to the right and increasingly mobilized against immigrants, refugees, and
Islam. Its various sub-organizations include a Protestant-pietist group,
Christians in the AfD, similar to the Lefebvrists in the Front National
(Häusler and Roeser 2015, 135–136). This brief summary of the West Eu-
ropean radical right illustrates the travel of the concept of ethnopluralism
from the intellectual New Right of the 1970s into the party platforms of
nearly all contemporary radical right parties in the West (see Art 2011,
130–131; Mudde 2007, 84–86). Today, a religiously colored ethnoplural-
ism serves as a master frame to mobilize support and appear more main-
stream.
Where mainstreaming is not an issue, radical right groups remain out-
right racist and/or put more emphasis on anti-Semitism instead of Islamo-
phobia, with the obvious results of finding political allies in anti-Semitic
circles in the Muslim world (see Camus 2011, 272–274). It may be true
that “the Extreme Right has little interest in Islam or Judaism as such: for
it, supporting or opposing one or the other is merely a way of taking sides
in the two major battles its adherents believe will shape the future of Eu-
rope” (274). Nonetheless, if these battles continue—and the prospects of
further immigration of Muslims and non-Christians make this an almost

535
certain development—the radical right in its various shades will become
wedded to religion in ways unprecedented in postwar Europe.
In contrast to Western Europe, the East European radical right has stood
for a merger of religion and ultra-nationalist platforms since it appeared on
the political scene in the 1990s. Most notably, the Polish radical right pro-
fesses an ultra-Catholicism that recycles the anti-liberal, anti-Semitic, and
anti-Western doctrines of interwar ideologue Roman Dmowski, who popu-
larized the phrase “Polak Katolik,” which declared Catholicism as a pre-
requisite for being Polish (see Porter-Szücs 2011, ch. 9; Zubricki 2006.
These anti-modern ideas find particular resonance with listeners of Radio
Maryja, in street marches organized by the All-Polish Youth, and in parties
such as the now defunct League of Polish Families or the current Prawo i
Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) party (see Kasprowicz 2015;
Pankowski 2010; Pytlas 2015, 86–106). The Slovenská Národná Strana
(SNS, Slovak National Party) stands for a particularly strong fusion of na-
tional identity and Catholicism, which in the first phase of national inde-
pendence in World War II bordered on clerical fascism. These traditions
are carried on by today’s SNS, which, similar to the Polish radical right,
merges Catholicism and nationalism; moreover, the previous leader, Jan
Slota, even tried to rehabilitate the fascist priest Jozef Tiso and his regime
under the aegis of Nazi Germany (see Pirro 2015, 89–91; Václavík 2015).
In Hungary during the 1990s, the Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja (MIEP,
Hungarian Justice and Life Party) and Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége
(Fidesz, Alliance of Young Democrats) took over Catholic voters when the
Hungarian Christian Democratic party declined in the wake of internal ri-
valries (see Kovács 2001, 258). Today, Jobbik Magyarországért Mozga-
lom (Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary) echoes other radical
right parties in the region by emphasizing that Hungarian national identity
and Christianity are “inseparable concepts” (see Pirro 2015, 71–73). Simi-
larly in Bulgaria, Ataka (National Union Attack), which was formed as an
anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim party, propagates a Bulgarian nation unified
by the Orthodox Christian creed (see Avramov 2015, 300–301; Pirro 2015,
61). And in Romania, where radical right parties have declined since 2000,
the Orthodox Church of Romania has taken over the role of an anti-liberal
safeguard of the Orthodox identity of the country (see Andreescu 2015).
As a summary of the programmatic survey, Table 19.2 illustrates how
and to what extent the radical right disseminates a religious agenda, either
in terms of affirming a religious identity of the nation they claim to defend
(typically Christian or more specifically Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox)

536
or by attacking “others” on religious grounds. This reasoning leads to three
major types: a largely non-religious radical right, a fundamentally religious
radical right, and a radical right that added religion to its repertoire in the
course of its existence.
Table 19.2 The Radical Right and Their Religious Agenda in Se-
lected Countries Since the 1990s
Party Movement
No explicit religious refer- NPD/DVU, Re- ANS/FAP, NPD
ence/agenda from the beginning publikaner (D) (D)

NA/NNP/NVU, Dansk Front (DK)

CD (NL)
FANE (F)
MSI/AN (pre- ANS/JSN (NL)
1995) (I)
NOP, ONR, PWN-
MSFT (I) PSN (PL)
BNP (GB)
MG, MÖM (H)
PRM (RO) NSS, SNJ (SR)
VR (RO)
Aryan Nation (US)

Explicit religious refer- AfD (D) Tea Party (US)

ence/agenda as an addition to
ethnocentrist platform Vlaams
Blok/Belang
(B)
Front National
(F)
DF (DK)
Lega Nord (I)
FPÖ, BZÖ (A)
SVP (CH)

Explicit religious refer- Lijst Pim For- Identitarian Move-

ence/agenda as core of platform

537
from the beginning tuyn, PVV ment (various
(NL) countries)Pegida
KPN-SN, (D)
ZChN, LPR CCS (F)
(PL)
New Era (DK)
[PiS (PL)] Aarhus Against the
SNS (SR) Mosque (DK)
MIÉP, KDNP, Radio Maryja, All-
Jobbik (H) Polish Youth (PL)
[Fidesz (H)] MS (SR)
Ataka (BG) [ROC (RO)]
Constitution Christian Identity
Party (US) (US)
[Christian Right
(US)]

Sources: Country chapters in Bertelsmann Stiftung 2009, updated.

Notes: Parties with sustained electoral relevance and/or government par-
ticipation are in bold.
Groups in square brackets are not strictly part of the radical right family
but contain strong radical right tendencies.
Countries:
(A) Austria
(B) Belgium
(BG) Bulgaria
(F) France
(D) Germany
(GB) Great Britain
(H) Hungary
(I) Italy
(NL) Netherlands
(PL) Poland
(RO) Romania
(SR) Slovak Republic

538
(US) United States
Parties and Movement Organizations:
AfD Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany)
AN Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance)
ANS Aktionsfront Nationale Sozialisten (Action Front of National
Socialists)
BNP British National Party
BZÖ Bündnis Zukunft Österreiches (Alliance for the Future of Aus-
tria)
CCS Comités Chrétienité-Solidarité (Committees Christianity-Soli-
darity)
CD Centrumdemocraten (Center Democrats)
DF Dansk Folkepartiet (Danish People’s Party)
DVU Deutsche Volksunion (Germam People’s Union)
FANE Fédération Action National-Européen (Federation of National-
European Action)
FAP Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Free German Workers
Party)
Fidesz Fidesz: Hungarian Civic Union Alliance
FNE Faisceaux nationalistes européennes ((European National Fas-
cists)
FPÖ Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria)
GUD Groupe Union Defense (Union Defense Group)
HZDS Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko (Movement for a Democra-
tic Slovakia)
JSN   Jeudg Storm Nederland, Stormfront (Netherlands Youth
Storm)
KPN- Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej (Confederation for an Inde-
SN pendent Poland)
KDNP Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt (Christian Democratic Party)
LPR Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families)
MG Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard)
MIÉP Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja (Hungarian Justice and Life
Party)
MÖM Magyar Önvédelmi Mozgalom (Hungarian Self-Defense Move-
ment)
MS Matica Slovenska (a cultural association for language and cul-
ture)

539
 MSI Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement)
MS-FT Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore (Social Movement—Tri-
colore Flame)
NA Nationale Alliantie (National Alliance)
NNP Nieuwe Nationale Partij (New National Party)
NPD Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (National Democra-
tic Party of Germany)
NSS Nové Slobodne Slovensko (New Free Slovakia)
NVU Nederlandse Volksunie (Dutch People’s Union)
ONR Obóz Narodowo-Radikalny (National-Radical Camp)
NOP Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (Polish National Rebirth)
PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice)
PWN- Polska Wspólnota Narodowa: Polskie Stronnictwo Narodowe
PSN (Polish National Union)
PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party of Freedom)
PRM Partidul Romania Mare (Party for Greater Romania)
ROC Romanian Orthodox Church
SNJ Slovenská Národná Jednota (Slovak National Union)
SNS Slovenská Národná Strana (Slovak National Party)
VR Vatra Romaneasca (Romanian Cradle)
ZChN Zjednoczenie Chrześcijańsko Narodowe (Christian National
Union)

SUPPORT PATTERNS FOR THE RADICAL RIGHT: THE

CHANGING RELIGIOUS CLEAVAGE

It has been almost a truism in political sociology that practicing Christians,

in particular Catholics, are unlikely voters for radical right parties. The
“master case” in the literature is Catholics in Weimar Germany, who were
not easily seduced by the NSDAP, due to their attachment to the Zentrum
party and the integration into a Catholic milieu tied to the church (Lipset
1963; Falter 1991; and above). Comparative studies in postwar Europe
showed repeatedly that practicing Christian voters tended to lean toward
the right but not the radical right (see Norris and Inglehart 2011, 204–207).
The stability of the religious cleavage in Europe even in the context of
widespread secularization (see Minkenberg 2010) may lead to the expecta-
tion that religious voters will remain unavailable to the radical right (see
Arzheimer and Carter 2009, 988). A number of studies support this as-

540
sumption on a country-level basis. For Belgium, Jaak Billiet (1995) found
that practicing Catholics in Flanders were less xenophobic than the aver-
age Flemish voter and hence less likely to vote for the Vlaams Blok (VB,
Flemish Bloc; now Vlaams Belang. And in France, Nonna Mayer (1999,
109–112) demonstrated that devout Catholics were underrepresented in the
Front National’s electorate and that the Catholic Church, if it spoke out
against the party, could depress the Catholic vote for the FN; only the
small group of fundamentalist Catholics attached to the Fraternité St. Pie X
(see above) voted disproportionately for the party.
Recent data from 2014 and 2015 by and large confirm these findings.
Tables 19.3 and 19.4 summarize the religious support patterns in selected
European countries. While Catholics are overrepresented in the electorates
of the Austrian FPÖ and the French FN, these particular people attend
church more infrequently or very rarely compared to those with strong ties
to the church. This tends to be also true for the Danish except that those
who never go to church are underrepresented among DF voters. Bi-confes-
sional Germany exhibits an interesting confessional difference: while
Catholics are underrepresented among AfD voters, Protestants and those
with no affiliation (centered in the new Länder in the east) are overrepre-
sented, as are those who never go to church. Apparently, the ties of
Catholics to the church as well as to the Christian Democrats may still
work against this AfD vote, while Protestants are more easily attracted.
The same holds true for the Calvinist minority in Hungary, which casts
their vote disproportionately for Jobbik, while the populist right in both
Hungary and Poland (Fidesz, PiS) enjoy more support from devout Chris-
tians. These findings are contrasted by many studies showing that class is a
rather reliable predictor of radical right voting, at least in Western Europe,
and that in particular members of the working class vote disproportionately
for the radical right across many West European countries (see Betz 1994;
Oesch 2008; Rydgren 2013)—a finding that can be interpreted as another
facet of the overall decline of the social class cleavage.
Table 19.3 Religious Denomination and the Radical Right Vote
(percent of respondents)
France Austria Denmark Germany

AFD
DF
vot-
FN FPÖ vot-
ers (all)
voters (all) voters (all) ers (all)

541
Roman 98 (89) 98 (91) 2 (2) 22 (42)
Catholic
Protestant 2 (3) 2 (3) 94 (93) 61 (52)
Other/None 0 (8) 0 (6) 4 (5) 17 (6)
N 55 (578) 97 (796) 86 (668) 18 (1203)

Poland Hungary
PiS voters (all) Fidesz voters Jobbik voters (all)
Roman Catholic 100 (99) 78 63 (69)
Protestant 0 (n.d.) 22 30 (24)
Other/None 0 (1) 0 7 (4)
N 258 (707) 253 64 (470)
Source: European Social Survey (7th wave, between September 2014
and January 2015), author’s calculations. Recall question: “Which party
did you vote for in the last national elections?”
Table 19.4 Religiosity (Frequency of Churchgoing) and the Radical
Right Vote (percent of respondents)
France Austria Denmark Germany
FN DF ADF
vot- FPÖ vot- vot-
ers (all) voters (all) ers (all) ers (all)
Several 2 (2) 0 (2) 0 (1) 1 (1)
times a
week
Weekly 3 (6) 8 (12) 2 (2) 4 (6)
Monthly 3 (6) 11 (16) 9 (9) 2 (11)
Rarely 35 (37) 53 (48) 62 (54) 23 (42)
Never 57 (49) 28 (22) 27 (34) 70 (40)
N 126 (1059) 153 (1093) 143 (1178) 69 (2082)

Poland Hungary

542
 PiS vot- Fidesz vot- Jobbik vot-
ers (all) ers ers (all)
Several times a 14 (9) 0 0 (0)
week
Weekly 62 (46) 10 4 (7)
Monthly 12 (18) 12 4 (9)
Rarely 11 (22) 48 45 (48)
Never 1 (5) 30 47 (36)
N 260 (772) 415 158 (853)
Source: European Social Survey (7th wave, between September 2014
and January 2015), author’s calculations. Recall question: “Which party
did you vote for in the last national elections?”
If the link between cleavage change and class voting is favorable for the
radical right, then the robustness of the religious cleavage should be ex-
pected to work against a connection between religiosity and radical right
voting. Recent studies, however, suggest that this might be a premature
conclusion. A cross-country analysis of West European voters shows that,
holding other variables constant, “religious people are neither more nor
less likely to adopt negative attitudes towards immigrants than their agnos-
tic compatriots” (Arzheimer and Carter 2009, 999). However, the authors
add that this does not mean the political irrelevance of religion, because it
is the attachment to Christian Democratic or conservative parties that
keeps these voters from opting for the radical right (Arzheimer and Carter
2009; also Knutsen 2004, 82–83). This finding is supported by another
more recent analysis (Immerzeel, Jaspers, and Lubbers 2013, 959) but here
the authors point out that the practice dimension of religion needs to be
separated from the belief dimension: in a number of countries, orthodox
believers are more anti-immigrant than other believers and hence a likely
electorate for radical right parties (960). In other words, where high reli-
giosity combines with orthodox or fundamentalist beliefs that are dissoci-
ated from the established churches, such as with Calvinism in Holland and
Hungary or the Lefebvrists in France, support for radical right positions or
parties is more likely (see also Minkenberg 2009).
These and other studies point at the importance of the attachment of reli-
gious voters to Christian Democratic parties and, if no such party exists,
conservative parties that are traditionally supported by the more religious

543
segments of the electorate. Therefore, the role and relevance of the reli-
gious cleavage in Western democracies deserve particular attention. Far
from declining like the class cleavage, the religious cleavage exhibits a ro-
bustness that is all the more striking if the general secularization trend—in
terms of detachment from conventional religious institutions and beliefs—
is taken into account (see above). However, there is evidence of significant
shifts within the religious field: the gradual replacement of the confes-
sional divide by the divide between secular and religious voters as well as
a considerable variation between countries (see Minkenberg 2010). For ex-
ample, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart 2011, 206–207) show that in
many Western democracies (and many more non-Western countries as
well) the correlation between (subjective) religiosity, that is, the signifi-
cance of God for the individual, and a general political orientation to the
right or left remains strong. But the patterns diverge: the relationship be-
tween church religiosity and voting behavior is strongest in countries
where Protestant or Catholic/Christian Democratic parties or movements
have been established and which have experienced a particular shift in sec-
ularization as disenchantment. Here, religious issues are especially salient
in party competition (see also Huber and Inglehart 1995). The new kind of
polarization between the religiously devout and the religiously detached
cannot by itself be interpreted as a “return of religion,” but it provides new
opportunities for religion as a political frame in identity issues (instead of
“secular frames” such as class interests or ethnic identity) that radical right
actors can use. Moreover, the pluralization of the religious makeup of
Western democracies contributes to the growing adoption of a religious
frame in radical right discourse. Postwar developments in Europe as well
as the entire history of immigration countries such as the United States or
Australia have led to ever increasing levels of cultural and religious diver-
sity. For example, a survey of new religious communities in Europe be-
tween 1960 and 2000 has yielded two thousand entries (Davie 2000, 116).
Against the background of the transformation of the religious cleavage
and a growing religious diversity, religion, as conceptualized in terms of
the (historically inherited) confessional makeup of society and the (re-
cently relevant) presence of Islam, should be added to other explanatory
factors on the demand side (see. e.g., Mudde’s list of factors, which ex-
cludes religion; Mudde 2007, ch. 9). In an earlier attempt by the author to
identify key context factors for successful radical right mobilization, reli-
gion was included among various cultural variables, such as the dominant
understanding of national identity, whether in ethnic, cultural, or political
terms; the share of foreign-born population; and the level of resistance to

544
multiculturalism. Structural factors were configured with regard to the de-
gree of polarization or convergence between the major parties; the level of
voting along a value-based, New Politics cleavage; the state’s and major
parties’ response to the radical right; and the type of electoral system (see
Minkenberg 2003, 2008). Table 19.5 presents an overview of these factors.
The data in Table 19.5 suggest a significant role of religion at the turn of
the century (prior to 9/11 and the heated debate about Islam). In line with
the historical record stated by Bruce and others (see Table 19.1), four of
the five cases in which radical right-wing parties scored high in the 1990s
were Catholic countries; seen from another angle, there were no Catholic
countries where the radical right parties score low average results (with de-
mocratic “latecomers” Spain and Portugal being exceptions here). By the
end of the 1990s, Protestant Denmark and Norway had joined the group.
In Table 19.6, the countries have been grouped according to the domi-
nant religious tradition and level of secularization, the latter of which per
se does not seem to favor radical right parties. Instead, one could argue
that the combination of two cultural factors in particular feeds the reso-
nance and mobilization of the radical right parties: a traditional Catholic or
Protestant homogeneity or even monopoly, and a particularly strong pres-
ence of Islam that challenges this homogeneity, on the other. This, how-
ever, does not apply to movement mobilization, as Catholic countries ex-
hibit comparatively weak radical right movements or, as far as comparable
data are available, racist violence; these seem higher in Protestant coun-
tries (see Table 19.5 and Minkenberg 2008). From this observation, an in-
ference can be made that the current radical right is strong where it couples
its ultra-nationalist or racist message with Islamophobia, especially in
countries with a long tradition of Christian mono-confessionalism. Wide-
spread Islamophobia and the rejection of multiculturalism in large parts of
Western European publics (see EUMC 2003, 2006) provide an opening for
the radical right to look more “mainstream” and less extremist, in contrast
to earlier racist discourses such as anti-Semitism or biological racism. In
the following, this link shall be examined in a more dynamic way.
If accelerated social and cultural change (in light of the modernization-
theoretical approach outlined above) provides opportunities for the radical
right, then the changes in the religio-cultural map of Western democracies
might feed the rise of these parties and movements more than a single con-
fessional difference. In fact, the pluralization and increasing heterogeneity
of the religious map lead to a growing number and intensity of conflicts at
the intersection of politics and religion in many Western democracies (see

545
Bramadat and Koenig 2009.
As shown earlier in a comparative overview of the religious composi-
tion of Western societies (Minkenberg 2007, tab. 2, 898–899), already in
2000 Islam was the third- or even second-largest religious community in
fourteen out of nineteen democracies. The countries where Islam was sec-
ond are among those that were traditionally very homogeneous in denomi-
national terms, two Lutheran cases in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway)
and five Catholic cases (Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain; see also
Pew 2010). In the group of Protestant immigrant countries (Australia,
Canada, and the United States) plus Finland, it is the Orthodox Church that
takes third or second place.
Table 19.5 Party Strength and Movement Strength of the Radical
Right and Context Factors in Western Europe (c. 2000)
Culture Structure Actor
Move-
Party ment
1a 1b 1c 1d 1e 2a 2b 2c 2d Strength Strength
Austria 0.5 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 HIGH LOW
France 0.5 1 0 1 1 0 0 0.5 0 HIGH LOW
Italy 0.5 0 0.5 1 1 0 1 1 1 HIGH LOW
Den- 1 0 0.5 0 1 0.5 1 1 1 HIGH MEDIUM
mark
Norway 1 0 n.d. 0 1 0.5 0.5 1 1 HIGH MEDIUM
Switzer- 0 1 n.d. 0 0.5 0.5 1 1 HIGH MEDIUM
land
Belgium 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 HIGH- MEDIUM
MED.
Nether- 0 1 0 0 0 0.5 1 1 1 LOW MEDIUM
lands
Ger- 0.5 1 1 0.5 0 1 1 0 1 LOW MEDIUM
many
(West)
Ger- 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 LOW HIGH
many

546
(East)
United 1 0.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 LOW HIGH
King-
dom
Sweden 1 1 0 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 1 LOW HIGH

Context Factor 1:
Culture
1a Nation type: ethno-cultural nation 1, political nation 0
1b Share of foreign-born population: 1 high, 0 low
1c Level of resistance to multicultural society: 1 above
EU level, 0 below EU level
1d Predominant religious tradition: Catholic 1, Protes-
tant 0
1e Islam Second-largest religion 1, other 0
Context Factor 2:
Structure
2a Cleavages: convergence 1, polarization 0
2b Cleavages: strong New Politics voting, 1 weak 0
2c Political opportunity structures: state and parties’ lati-
tude 1, exclusion/repression 0
2d Political opportunity structures: PR electoral system
1, majority 0
Sources: See Minkenberg 2008.
Table 19.6 Confessional Makeup, Secularization, and the Radical
Right in Western Democracies (post-2000)
Weak RR Presence Strong RR Presence
Catholic
Ireland Belgium*
Portugal France*
Spain* Italy*
Austria*

Mixed Protestant Switzerland

Germany
Netherlands

547
 Canada

Protestant Great Britain Denmark*

Sweden Norway*
Australia Finland
United States

Notes
Strong RR presence: countries with a radical right party that has re-
ceived at least 4 percent of the vote in every national election in the past
twenty years.
Countries with high levels of secularization (measured by low church-
going rates) are underlined (for details of classification, see Minkenberg
2009 and Norris and Inglehart 2004).
Countries in which Islam is the second-largest religious community are
marked by an asterisk.
Moreover, from around 1980 until around 2000, religious diversity in-
creased in all Western democracies except for Sweden and the United
States. These processes of pluralization and the growing presence of (non-
Christian) immigrants do not only challenge the established institutional
and political arrangements in the religio-political field (see Bramadat and
Koenig 2009) but also provide opportunities for radical right parties. This
dynamic is depicted in Table 19.7 which measures religious diversity as
the degree of religious fragmentation.
One group of countries exhibits low levels of diversity and a low degree
of pluralization (Ireland, Portugal); here the monopoly of Catholicism by
and large persists, and the pressure for change is limited. In these coun-
tries, no radical right party has emerged. The situation changes in the next
group, with low levels of diversity but a medium degree of pluralization
(Belgium along with the Nordic countries except Sweden. These countries
also start with a denominationally homogeneous society, but in all of them
except Finland, Islam now occupies second place among the large reli-
gious communities. Here, with the exception of Finland, a radical right
party has become a permanent fixture in the party systems.
Table 19.7 Religious Diversity, Pluralization, and the Radical Right
in Western Democracies

548
 Weak Plural- Strong Plural-
ization (d < Moderate Pluraliza- ization (d >
0.10) tion (d = 0.10–0.20) 0.20)

Low level of di- Ireland Belgium France

versity
Portugal Denmark Italy
(< 0.20)
(Sweden: d = Finland Austria
negative)
Norway Spain

Moderate di-
versity
(0.20–0.50)

High level of Switzerland Germany

diversity (>
0.50) Australia Great Britain
Canada Netherlands
New Zealand
(USA: d =
negative)

Countries in bold have a strong radical right-wing party in their party

system (at least 4 percent of the vote in every national election in the
past twenty years.
Religious diversity is measured by 1 – H (where H is the value of the
Herfindahl index, defined as the probability that two randomly drawn
persons belong to different religious denominations).
Notes
Base of categorization: Diversity value of 1980 (0 completely homoge-
neous, 1.00 completely diverse).
d = Difference in diversity value between 1980 and 2000 (trend).
In countries in italics, Islam is the second-largest religious community.
Source: See Minkenberg 2007, 898–899.
This scenario grows more acute in the third group, where starting from a

549
low level of diversity a strong degree of pluralization occurs. Again, in
these countries, which are all predominantly Catholic (France, Italy, Aus-
tria, and Spain), Islam takes second place, and, except for Spain, the radi-
cal right has established itself firmly in the party system.
The remainder of the countries fall into the category of already elevated
levels of diversity. This category comprises the non-European democracies
and those European countries that constitute the heartland of the Protestant
Reformation, which early on institutionalized religious diversity. These are
the countries where the (initially) dominant Protestant church never had a
clear monopoly; among them, Switzerland stands out with its strong radi-
cal right party, which had consolidated before the later waves of immigra-
tion (for the peculiarities of the radical right in Alpine countries, see Betz
2005). In all countries with a strong radical right, these parties belong to
the middle category in Table 19.2 above: they started their career with a
strong ethnocentrist message and have meanwhile added a substantial dose
of religion to their agenda, mostly as self-declared defenders of the Christ-
ian identity and legacy of their country or Europe against the alleged Is-
lamization.

CONCLUSIONS

Religion and the radical right in liberal democracies interact at various lev-
els. These are the levels at which religion acquires a political quality: the
levels of beliefs and doctrine (ideology), the organizational and institu-
tional levels, the levels of legitimization and mobilization (see Fox 2013,
56–108). While there is nothing new in this connection, at least in modern
European history, what is new is the “return of religion” in an age of secu-
larization even among political actors who were long interpreted as provid-
ing a substitute for the waning powers of religion: an extreme “faith” in
the nation as the key to meaning and problem-solving in the context of an
increasingly complex world.
As this chapter suggests, this return of religion to the West European
radical right agenda since the 1990s is mainly due to outside forces and a
societal dynamism, in particular the process of religious pluralization,
rather than the beliefs of the activists or the tradition of the parties con-
cerned. It is a strategic adjustment, not the soul of the radical right, which
remains its anti-plural ultra-nationalism. However, because of the enduring
success of dyeing the radical right agenda with religion, in particular Is-
lamophobia, religion may become a core component of the radical right

550
ideology—as it has been in Eastern Europe since the radical right’s incep-
tion after the collapse of the Soviet empire. Here, secularization as a politi-
cally imposed process in the Communist era does not need processes of
pluralization or a growing presence of Islam to ignite religious fervor: the
extreme anti-communist impulse of the radical right leads directly to the
historical connection between religion and nation-building in the region.
Where liberal democracies have marginalized illiberal religions or reli-
gious legacies that, historically, had fed the radical right, religion has re-
turned to radical right mobilization, even in secularized societies, against
the perceived threat of rapid sociocultural change and its (alleged) agents
and protagonists. Overall, then, religion is to stay with the radical right,
even more so in light of the waning confessional divides and the transfor-
mation of the religious cleavage into the believers, whatever their denomi-
national background, and the non-believers.
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