In Austria, they raise their arms in stiff salutes and roar approval of calls to kick out the foreigners. In Italy, they don black shirts, crop their hair and chant the name of their former dictator at football matches. In Germany, they rally outside mosques or foreigners' hostels to protest against what they describe as the “immigrant invasion” of Europe. More than 60 years after their grisly deaths, the names and symbols of Hitler and Mussolini are still being paraded on the streets. Is fascism making a return?

The test will come tomorrow when Austria goes to the polls. Heinz-Christian Strache, a protégé of Jörg Haider who overthrew him as leader of the far-right Freedom Party with even more hardline policies against foreigners and the European Union, is poised to win at least 20 per cent of the vote. Playing to the extremist sentiment still pervading a large proportion of the population, Mr Strache has replaced the demonisation of Jews last heard in Austria two generations ago with denunciations of a new threat: Muslims. “Homeland instead of Islam”, the slogans say. “Vienna must not become Istanbul”.

Islam and its symbols have also become the focus for the far Right in Germany and the Netherlands. Hundreds gathered in Cologne on Saturday in a rally to halt construction of one of Europe's biggest mosques. Far-right leaders from Belgium, Italy and Austria arrived to join calls to protect Western values and Christian traditions - calls that are being echoed by more and more mainstream politicians to curry popular support.

It is in Italy, however, that nostalgia for fascism has been most overt and where the echoes of the past have been most ominous. Mussolini's tomb has become a shrine for neo-Fascists, who chant his name at rallies and campaign to rehabilitate his ideology and architectural legacy. The Duce's granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, is a politician on the Right who makes much of her name and her determination to halt attempts by Alleanza Nationale, the post-fascist party now forming part of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition, to distance itself from its undemocratic past.

And like their forebears, today's young blackshirts are out on the streets, brawling. They have been in the thick of violent clashes at Gypsy encampments and attacks on Romanians and other migrants. Like the new right-wing mayor of Rome, they have led calls for the expulsion of all illegal migrants and even proposed the fingerprinting of all Gypsy children.

It is not only in the former Axis countries that right-wing sentiment is growing. Switzerland, France and Belgium have seen the emergence of populist parties that denounce liberalism and tolerance and are not averse to violent tactics to intimidate their opponents. What unites them is not so much anti-Semitism - though that revolting sentiment is nowadays growing in most European countries - but opposition to immigration, especially from Africa and the Muslim world.

Blaming minorities is the symptom of a society under stress. In Britain, so far, the far Right has made few political gains. And at a time when economic turmoil is almost certain to exacerbate social tensions, politicians of all groups are being forced to focus on the ugly agenda of the extremists. History teaches lessons. And those of the 1930s are still crucial.