As in many other countries, the news of the terrorist attacks in Paris (Charlie Hebdo) as well as the ones later in November shaped the public debate on the place of Islam in Europe. In addition to this, the Austrian government issued a new law regarding Islam, which regulates the relation between the Austrian Republic and the legally recognised Islamic Councils. The law has been criticised as discriminatory by many scholars of religious law, NGOs, as well as churches and religious communities. The ongoing terrorist attacks of Daesh as well as the subsequent refugees fleeing from Syria and Iraq to Europe have had deep political implications on Austrian politics. The public climate is becoming more aggressive towards Muslims. The recorded number of harassments on the streets and violations against Muslims is increasing, which may have only to do with a heightened consciousness on the side of Muslims who seem to have become more active in talking about these discriminations since autumn 2014, after which the debate on Daesh has become omnipresent. While a number of NGOs and activists speak out against these developments, right-wing parties, which spread stereotypes of Muslims, are getting stronger. The FPÖ has used offensive Islamophobic campaigning in three regional elections. While media reports more and more about Islamophobic incidents, a biased coverage of Islam and Muslims can be observed, especially in a great number of fabricated tabloid press stories. Authoritative Muslim public figures, which play the role of native informants, often support and thus legitimise this discourse.

Between 2000-2007, ten people were killed in Germany by unknown perpetrators. Four days after the explosion, the missing woman – later revealed as Beate Zschäpe – turned herself in. As the German authorities started to put the pieces together, they recognized that they had discovered the underground cell of at least three wanted neo-Nazis that had gone clandestine in the late 1990s. All in all, the NSU caused the most severe crisis of the German internal security system after the Second World War – a process called by the Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range Germany's 'September 11' in March 2012 (FAZ 2012). By now a total of ten assassinations, three bomb attacks and fourteen bank robberies between 1998 and 2011 were attributed to the NSU and the trial in Munich against the last surviving member – Beate Zschäpe – and the four most important supporters is already the most extensive terror trail in post-Second World War Germany. Instead, according to people who were at the meeting, he spoke extensively about the danger posed by far-right extremists and so-called Reichsbürger, a fringe group that rejects modern Germany and instead adheres to the old German Reich. This represented 'one of the biggest challenges' for Germany's security apparatus. It is quite unfortunate that nowadays we are obliged to talk about far-right domestic terror acts against politicians in Germany who are defending human values. It is time to stop sweeping the serious threats emerging in Western Europe under the rug and face the real problem. It is a fact that certain sections of the Western European societies are moving steadily to far-right quarters feeding from white supremacist and racist ideas.

Anti-Islamic Pegida groups received significant attention earlier this year with their demonstrations attracting thousands of participants in Dresden and other German cities. Lars Erik Berntzen and Manes Weisskircher write on the way that Pegida has spread into other western European countries. They note that while Pegida groups in other countries have drawn far fewer participants than their German equivalent, commentators should be careful not to write off their protests as insignificant. They argue that the Pegida demonstrations and online activity of recent months are indicative of the growing potential of far-right political players in contemporary western European politics.

The Charlie Hebdo shootings of January 2015 represent a critical juncture that changed the Europea n public debate, at both the EU and national level. The controversies that followed the attacks had d eep effects on mainstream institutional actors, social movements and subaltern publics across Europ e. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks contentious issues related to the role o f religion in secular societies, civil rights and freedom of speech, accommodation of cultural diversit y and securitization of migration are once again in the middle of public sphere debates in Europe. The conference aims at analysing the effects of these attacks on the content and quality of public de bates across Western European societies, paying special attention to dynamics of deliberation and p olarization across public spheres, and to the interplay between mass media and social movements in the construction of public discourse. This event will bring together scholars reflecting on the consequences of critical junctures from mul tiple perspectives. It will also offer a space to present the preliminary findings of the ongoing projec t led by Donatella della Porta at SNS, as part of the ERC Advanced Scholars' Grant Mobilizing for Democracy, which will provide qualitative and quantitative insights from individual case studies in France, Germany, Italy, UK and Denmark. Scuola Normale Superiore Centre on Social Movement Studies European Research Council

It has become received wisdom that the pandemic has “exposed” the political incompetence of far-right parties in government and that far-right parties in opposition have become its (first) “victims.” This is largely based on the generalization of one or two individual cases—most notably US president Donald Trump—who is the exception rather than the rule. This article provides a comparative analysis of far-right responses to the COVID-19 pandemic within the European Union. Based on theoretical insights from previous research, we expect the responses to reflect the main ideology and the internal heterogeneity of the contemporary far right as well as to show the increasing mainstreaming of its positions. We analyze four different, but related, aspects: (1) the narratives about COVID-19 from far-right parties; (2) the proposed solutions of far-right parties; (3) the electoral consequences of the pandemic for far-right parties; and (4) the success of far-right parties in dealing with the...