Can inclusion in government break the appeal of far right parties? This question is critical given the global rise of far right parties which makes government formation increasingly difficult. Commentators and pundits alike increasingly argue that the appeal of the far right could be broken by including far right parties in government. The idea is that taking over government responsibility, dealing with the constraints of day-to-day politics and making policy compromises would make it difficult for far right parties to maintain their popular appeal. We argue instead that including far right parties in government is a dangerous strategy as it further normalizes and legitimizes these parties, reinforcing far-right attitudes and behaviors. We test our argument using a newly compiled novel dataset covering 478 cabinets in 27 European countries from 1980 to 2023. We identify the causal effect of far right participation in government on subsequent electoral performance, political attitudes and hate crimes relying on a difference-in-differences design. Our results have important implications for the current debate on how to deal with the increasing electoral success of far right parties and for democratic resilience more generally.