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Europe’s citizens are turning the tables on their ruling elites as austerity bites. In election after election, they send their governments packing and turn instead to fringe parties, some of which evoke the ghosts of Europe’s authoritarian and racist past.

Yet there are good reasons to believe this is not the 1930s, redux. Something else is going on in Europe that is quite profound: The shape of European democracy is changing. It is fragmenting and opening new channels for protest and political action that make it less likely some new Hitler or Mussolini will suddenly ride a wave of support to power.