Liberal democracy in Europe is undergoing a strange metamorphosis. What began as a political system for open deliberation has grown into a system of enforced consensus. Under pressure from cultural fragmentation and populist backlash, centrist regimes in countries like France and Germany now police moral boundaries in ways that resemble religious institutions.
The Situation
Across Europe, legal and political institutions are increasingly acting as guardians of a civic orthodoxy. France’s 2021 'Principles of the Republic' law requires public associations to pledge loyalty to Republican values. And in May 2025, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classified the AfD—the country’s first-largest party—as ‘extremist’, opening it to deep surveillance and potential bans. In both cases, state power is mobilised not just against violence or sedition, but against perceived ideological deviance.
The shift is visible in education too. In 2013 and 2015, France introduced a secular morality curriculum aimed at instilling Republican values in schoolchildren. Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education similarly supports over 700 NGOs with tens of millions of euros annually, creating a state-backed ecosystem where promoting 'pluralism and tolerance' yields not only ideological influence but also significant institutional and financial rewards for aligned organisations.
Media regulation follows suit. Under Germany’s NetzDG law, platforms must delete ‘clearly illegal’ speech, and the EU’s Digital Services Act reinforces this approach, demanding removal of content deemed harmful to civic cohesion. Regulations tend to be followed by outright censorship, as shown by the fact that France’s ARCOM media regulatory agency has repeatedly fined the news channel CNews for airing inflammatory speech, citing violation of pluralism norms.
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?