Fake history

Book review of The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination

Thanks to the internet, conspiracy theories have graduated from the lunatic fringe into mainstream politics. That is bad news for democracies. In the attack on the US Capitol we have a potent example of the damage that can be done when a populist position actively propagates a conspiracy theory.

But the overlap of alternative facts (or fake news) and politics is not a US monopoly. From Hungary, Poland and Russia to Turkey and India, the list of regimes that leverage conspiracy theories to curtail democratic freedoms is a grim reminder of the fragility of democratic institutions. That makes The Hitler Conspiracies