This article theorizes the European-level political response to the radical right by suggesting a focus on the conceptions of politics, society and of the European Union itself that inform this response. Analyses of the ways in which the political mainstream relates to such movements remain under-theorized and often fall back on understandings of political action in narrow instrumental terms. Instead, this article proposes an approach to this response which emphasizes the process through which shared understanding of the European political project surface. It engages with these issues by turning to ideas that emerged in relation to the rise of European fascism in the 1930s on how to mount an effective defence of democracy. The underlying social analysis that fed into such strategies, the article argues, serves as a useful framework for analysis of the contemporary European response to the radical right.