Discredited ideologies rarely disappear all at once. They usually shed their language before they surrender their instincts.

After World War II, fascist successor movements in Italy would later recast themselves as national conservatives. In the 1970s, Western communist parties adopted “Eurocommunism,” distancing themselves from Moscow while retaining ambitions for radical socialist transformation. More recently, France’s National Front became National Rally, exchanging a notorious label for a respectable one while preserving much of its nationalist core.