On January 27, 1945, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated. An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 and 1.1 million of them were murdered.

As Europeans mark the 80th anniversary of this dark chapter of history, their leaders are releasing statements about the “civilisational rupture” the Holocaust represented and the need to “resist this hatred”. Yet, many of these declarations do not seem to take stock of the political reality in Europe, in which the successors of the fascist and Nazi forces behind the Holocaust are now gaining popularity and even taking power.

Of course, far-right parties and figures have repeatedly paid their respects to Holocaust victims and pledged to combat anti-Semitism, but that does not mean they have relinquished their Nazi and fascist past. Rather, they have undertaken a strategic realignment which – with the help of the political mainstream – allows them to retain and propagate the same dangerous ideas of white supremacy and hatred.

So how did we get here?

For decades, Europe’s far right openly embraced anti-Semitism. Figures like Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front in France, and Jörg Haider, founder of the Freedom Party in Austria, disrupted the political consensus of post-war Europe by embracing Holocaust denial rhetoric.

They were vocal in expressing their hatred but they remained on the margins of political life.

However, over the past few decades, and especially with the start of the US-led “war on terror”, the far right gradually shifted its rhetoric towards open Islamophobia. Far-right leaders, like Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, portrayed themselves as defenders of Western civilisation against a new “enemy”: the Muslims.

They adopted Christianity – and, symbolically, Judaism – as cultural markers to rally the majority who embrace the “values” of the “Judeo-Christian world” against their contemporary “other”. They played on people’s fears related to globalisation and immigration by using Islamophobic imagery, claiming Muslim communities are a threat and immigration from the East – an invasion.

This rhetoric not only reflects the framing of the Muslim world that the “war on terror” imposed but also fits into the narrative that Israel embraced in justifying its continuing oppression and occupation of the Palestinians. It is not surprising then that the far right finally embraced Israel. While in the past, they questioned Israel’s right to exist, they now question a Palestinian state’s right to exist, referring to Palestine as Judea and Samaria.

In 2010, after a trip by far-right leaders from Austria, Belgium, Germany and Sweden, their parties signed the so-called Jerusalem Declaration, which expressed the commitment of these forces to Israel’s “right to self-defence” from “Islamic forces”.

This strategy of swapping anti-Semitic rhetoric and beliefs for Islamophobic ones, while embracing the violence of Israel, has proved to be quite successful. As a result, today, at the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, the far right is the strongest it has been since World War II.

The political landscape of 2022-24 reflects this success. In 2022, Giorgia Meloni and her post-fascist Brothers of Italy won the Italian snap elections; she became the country’s first far-right female prime minister. In the 2023 Dutch elections, Wilders’ far-right party came out first and after months-long negotiations, formed a coalition government.

In 2024, Portugal, which had long lacked strong far-right representation, saw the Chega party grow its parliamentary seats from 12 to 50. In France, the National Rally came in third in terms of parliamentary seats but won the popular vote. In the UK, Reform UK became the third largest party with 14 percent of the vote; it is currently polling at 25 percent, one percentage point behind the ruling Labour. In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) claimed victory in elections in the state of Thuringia. In Austria, the Freedom Party won the national elections with 29 percent of the vote and is set to lead the government.

At the European level, the far right was able to form the third-largest group in the European Parliament called the “Patriots for Europe”, following the elections in 2024. They adopted the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”.

While the far right’s rise is a victory for its own movements, it also reflects the failures of Europe’s political establishment. Centre-right parties have largely embraced anti-immigration and Islamophobic politics, legitimising these positions rather than challenging them. Meanwhile, centre-left parties have struggled to address these issues effectively, leaving them vulnerable to the so-called culture wars. The mainstream’s failures in government have led to growing socioeconomic discontent, especially among the working class, which the far right has also managed to take advantage of.

In a number of countries, the far right was excluded from government for years and served as a uniting factor for centrist parties in coalition negotiations. But that is no longer the case, as the growing number of coalitions that include the far right across Europe demonstrate. The time of this so-called cordon sanitaire is largely over.

This normalisation of the far right has emboldened it more and more to the point that its members are no longer shy about sharing publicly their extremist ideas. In Austria, the Freedom Party openly talked about “remigration” as part of its election campaign last year, while a member of the AfD called for a “Srebrenica 2.0 in Germany” among her peers.

These calls represent an updated form of the same anti-Semitic and racist ideologies that led to the horrors of the Holocaust. The defence of whiteness has simply switched its “enemy” from Jewish to Muslim people. The white supremacy and replacement theory remain the same and are at the core of today’s far-right ideology.

The dramatic rise of the far right and its normalisation of racism and genocidal intent cast a long shadow over the European mainstream’s insistence that the Holocaust was a “civilisational rupture”, that it was unique and exceptional.

The ideologies and forces that led to the Holocaust have historically produced imperial genocidal violence outside of Europe. And they are still very much present in European politics. That means the threat of such genocidal violence continues. That is made quite apparent in the staunch support for the genocide in Gaza by some European countries and the denial that it is taking place.

In this context, the solemn statements released today to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz ring hollow. Eighty years after the end of the Holocaust, the resurgence of the far right is a chilling reminder of the fragility of European commitment to “never again”.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.