The National Front in France, Vlaams Blok in Belgium, Republikaner in Germany, the "Liberals" in Austria, the Northern League and MSI in Italy, to name but a few, consistently appear in the news across the European Union. Populism, it seems, is in vogue across Europe. Populism, this virulent expression of a refusal to open up, and accept difference, of looking inward, carries along, in a backdrop of real socio-economic humiliation and frustration, a mish-mash of nostalgia and myths which are as irrational as they are obscure. With its ramifications, it plunges Europe once more into a range of current issues which the democratic side of Europe believed all but eradicated since 1945. A sobering genealogy is once more upon us.