This paper examines the contribution that Martin Thrupp made to educational policy and teachers' practice in the light of the present threat to democracy presented by the authoritarian right. Martin's work on school composition is extended to an analysis of the prospects and practice for a education for democratic citizenship. It focuses on the challenge to an education for democratic citizenship at the level of pedagogy, the individual school and the wider context of the threat posed to democracy by the authoritarian right and those from more mainstream parties that adopt elements of its programme. It argues that teaching the history of fascism and colonialism are key to such an education and that in contrast to shallow pedagogies (Balarin and Rodriguez in Global Soc Chall J 3:49, 2024) pedagogy should engage students in controversial issues. It reports on key examples of the ways that this can be undertaken in the work of Kidman and O'Malley in Memory Stud 13(4):537-550, (2018), Kidman and O'Malley in Fragments from a contested past: Remembrance, Denial and New Zealand history BWB texts, (2022) and MacDonald and Kidman in Critical Studies in Education 63(1):31-46, (2021). It concludes with some of the principles necessary for an education for democratic citizenship.