Slinking Into Power

How the New Right is Instrumentalizing History to Gain Interpretational Sovereignty over Our Future

• The New Right’s culture war
• A European perspective from renowned experts
• Contributions from Andreas Audretsch, Claudia Gatzka, Paul Jürgensen, Jürgen Kocka, Markus Linden, Stephan Ozsváth, Hedwig Richter

The New Right is striving for power within Europe. One of its strongest strategies: the instrumentalizing of history to secure its perspective in the minds of people. Myths about nations, their heroes and their struggles for independence are being leveraged to make nationalism and ethnocentric thinking socially acceptable again. What this indicates is that we need to battle for the past so that the liberal basis of our society can have a future.

In Germany, the Alternative for Germany party evokes over a millenia of glorious German culture. Matteo Salvini in Italy is stylizing himself in the tradition of his country’s freedom fighters. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wants to lead his nation back to its “historical greatness.” And even in the midst of the Corona crisis, the New Right is promoting the concept of a nationalistic renaissance as a solution. The populist illusion of “pure” homogenous societies is supposed to emerge as the future’s political consensus. This book analyzes the New Right’s strategies across Europe and also functions as a call to politicians and scholars, teachers and civil servants, to stand up to the misuse of the historical narrative.