The ideals underpinning all this seems to be a new kind of ‘militant democracy’, embodying the idea that democratic regimes must arm themselves to actively prevent their own destruction. In effect, European states are drawing new red lines around acceptable discourse, branding dissenters not as opponents, but as democratic heretics. And democracy means now to agree with a positive canon of core values.

The Political Meaning

The enforcement of civic orthodoxy has clear political consequences. What once looked like procedural liberalism—fair rules, open speech, equal competition—increasingly tilts toward dogma. Political actors who challenge mainstream values, particularly on issues like immigration, national identity, or religious expression, are no longer just argued against. They are disqualified, surveilled, debanked or outrightly banned. The result is not a more tolerant society, but a more brittle one—in which freedom of speech is collapsing as The Economist brilliantly explained in an article on Germany. Justice is then employed as the perfect seal. The French judicial system rightly bars Marine Le Pen from running for office over misuse of EU funds… but they did it shortly after she polls as the presidential front-runner. So does Germany’s classification of the AfD as 'extremist' while it polls above 25%, positioning itself as the first party in the country. This looks more like a strategy of containment: there are limits to what citizens can vote for.

Ironically, this strategy may reinforce the very movements it seeks to suppress. By framing populist actors as dangerous outsiders, centrist governments risk validating their anti-establishment narrative. This trend also radicalises the left. With conservatives accused of authoritarianism, the left can now position itself as the last bastion of moral clarity pushing for social and speech control ever further, in the name of anti-fascism. This reveals another recurring pattern: the centre pressures conservative forces, while leaving space for the left, that remains unchallenged. While doing so, ‘moderately’ progressive elites adopt and weaponise themes and messaging which the right had mainstreamed—such as security and immigration—shifting the Overton window without crediting the rightful sources.

The results are anything but neutral. As the centre delegitimises the right, it enables another distortion to take place. The left, emboldened by institutional support, however implicit, often pivots away from its traditional base—those concerned with jobs, housing, and the cost of living—towards sheerly symbolic causes and cultural policing. Meanwhile, the centre keeps attempting to enforce cohesion by selectively adopting ideas from both sides. What emerges is not only a cultural rift but an engineered vacuum. In this vacuum, democracy begins to harden into civic conscription.

Where This Leads

In fact, Europe’s liberal democracies may be drifting into a paradox: the more they try to suppress political extremes in the name of harmony, the more extreme their own posture becomes. The vocabulary of tolerance is now used to justify intolerance. Surveillance, party bans, media sanctions—tools once reserved for defending the republic from armed threats—are being deployed against parties that operate within the electoral framework such as the French RN or the German Afd.

If democratic institutions are seen to rig the game, opposition parties gain credibility as the true defenders of 'the people.' Voters may not sympathise with the banned or sanctioned figures in themselves, but they may well resent condescension. Thus, the more the center moralises, the more it galvanises electoral peripheries.

And so secular theocracy, built to defend democracy, may end up undermining its own treasure. Liberal values enforced as a creed will not inoculate Europe against extremism; they may have already become its own grave.

Statement

In seeking to protect themselves from perceived threats, Europe’s liberal regimes risk turning into the high priests of a secular orthodoxy. Every ban, sanction, or blacklist may achieve tactical containment, but cumulatively they signal a democracy growing less open and more dogmatic. When dissent is framed as heresy, and civic virtue is enforced by decree, the democratic spirit of contest gives way to ritualised consensus. If belief overrides debate and moral purity eclipses pluralism, the question becomes unavoidable: is this still democracy or dogma by another name?