9/11 at 25: How the ‘War on Terror’ helped mainstream Europe’s far right

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the political order built in their aftermath continues to shape Europe. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) helped far right parties in Europe gain political prominence they had long been denied. Islamophobic narratives that shaped global policy after 2001 legitimised an anti-Muslim racism that had already been building within Europe’s far right for years.Before September 11, far right parties in Europe had been largely marginalised within the continent’s multi-party systems. Even where some won significant electoral support, many remained politically stigmatised or excluded from power, and were better known for anti-Semitism and open nostalgia for their fascist origins than as credible contenders for government.But the ground was already shifting before the towers fell. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the far right’s long-standing racism began to sharpen its focus on Islam specifically. Parties such as the French Front National (now the Rassemblement National) and the Austrian Freedom Party discovered Islam as their new “enemy within”: Arabs and Black communities in France became, in far-right rhetoric, simply “Muslims.” So did...