References to “Weimar” have played an increasingly important role in trying to make sense of the present, and also to mobilize various constituencies. Related to the diagnosis of contemporary political movements as fascist or neo-fascist, there is the question of whether some of the lessons drawn in the postwar period from the failures of Weimar – especially the ones that inspired the creation of the legal toolkit generally known as “militant democracy” – should be central to attempts to defend democracy today. This chapter engages both issues and argues that the toolkit of militant democracy remains valuable in many ways – but that its instruments are often not well suited to dealing with today’s challenges to democracy.

Ahmed engages recent works that have sought to harness the lessons of Weimar to offer guidance to ailing democracies around the globe. Utilizing a Weberian evaluation of ideal types, it examines the model of democracy and democratic defense employed within these accounts. The chapter demonstrates that what they offer as a general or universal model of democracy defense, comes to reflect in its construction a very particular model that emerged in the postwar context of Cold War competition. This model, Ahmed argues, misconstrues the terrain of political conflict and misses opportunities to open up space for a revisioning of democracy that would serve as the basis of a more robust democratic defense.