LONDON -- Sixty years after the Holocaust, is anti-Semitism spreading in Europe? The question is being asked increasingly in a number of countries, notably Britain, which fought the Nazis through World War II, and France, which lived for four years under a collaborationist regime that persecuted Jews and helped to deport 70,000 to concentration camps.
Certainly, the extreme right is enjoying something of a revival in Western Europe, fueled by feelings against immigrants. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant, reactionary National Front, has come back from near-oblivion to score 9 percent support in opinion polls as a candidate in this spring's presidential election. In Italy, a post-Fascist party is part of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling coalition.
A far-rightwing party sits in the Austrian government, and extremists have done well in local elections in Belgium. In Germany, legislation that would have countered neo-Nazi groups has been struck down on constitutional grounds by the courts. Even in enlightened Scandinavia, anti-immigrant politicians have made inroads.