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Clearly, a lot of these right-wing movements, from the AFD in Germany to Marine Le Pen’s movement in France, have actual fascist roots.

Outrage is a precious political currency and France's far right has spent this week attempting, furiously and predictably, to capitalise on the perceived injustice of a court's decision to block its totemic leader, Marine Le Pen, from standing in the 2027 presidential election.

"Be outraged," said one of Le Pen's key deputies, on French television, in case anyone was in doubt as to what their reaction should be.

Le Pen and her allies have boldly declared that France's institutions, and democracy itself, have been "executed", are "dead", or "violated".

And Marine Le Pen has been widely portrayed, with something close to certainty, as France's president-in-waiting, as the nation's most popular politician, cruelly robbed of her near-inevitable procession towards the Élysée Palace.