Introduction

International cooperation among populist radical right parties has thus far received little academic attention. Some scholars have studied the internationalization of the extreme right, notably neo-Nazi and racist groups (e.g. Kaplan & Weinberg 1999), and there have been a few publications on the cooperation among populist radical right parties in the European Parliament (e.g. Stöss 2001; Veen 1997). However, overall this topic has been the domain of antifascists and freelance journalists, and there has been virtually no systematic empirical challenge to their often grotesque misrepresentations of a “brown network” based largely on bizarre conspiracy theories (e.g. Svoray & Taylor 1994).

As far as European cooperation between more or less relevant populist radical right parties is concerned, opinions differ quite substantially. Some scholars believe that “[t]he attempts at cross-linking [Vernetzungsbemühungen] of the extreme right in Europe have increased in the last years, and particularly the development of an extreme right Europe ideology is presently taking concrete shape – despite all national specifics and differences” (Salzborn & Schiedel 2003: 1209). Others are more cautious, arguing that it does not seem correct “to speak of one European right-wing extremism in the sense of a political actor.