Reading with Volker Weiss - "Das Deutsche Demokratische Reich - Wie die extreme Rechte Geschichte und Demokratie zerstört"

In his highly topical book, Volker Weiß offers a thorough, historically grounded analysis of the AfD and the far right. He sharply reveals how the far right is driven by the goal of overcoming Western liberalism and establishing an alternative reading of history. Drawing on new and striking details alongside an analysis of right-wing counter-narratives, the author dissects the new-right scene.

The far right speaks of a spiritual civil war raging in Germany - one it is simultaneously stoking. At stake is nothing less than interpretive control over history and the present, and the project of pulling Germany out of the Western world. The contradictory, romanticised, and often shrill historical constructions of the far right all point toward one goal: a "Deutsches Demokratisches Reich" - a synthesis of the authoritarian systems of Germany's past. With this book, Volker Weiß builds on his bestseller "Die autoritäre Revolte", analysing new methods of cultural warfare above all in the fields of history and geopolitics. Timed ahead of the upcoming Bundestag elections, the historian maps the current trajectory of new right-wing thinking. Key currents and actors are examined throughout, and the author repeatedly broadens the lens to comparable activities of right-wing milieus in Russia and the United States. A sharp and unflinching account of the strategic rewriting of history and the deliberate dismantling of democratic values by the far right.