Comment on The Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline
lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 months agoThe alt right obsesses over the Roman empire, but ignores the republic, as if Julius Caesar and Octavius as the origin of everything. As such I’m not surprised that they don’t learn about what caused the fall of the republic. (A century or so of oppressed masses and greedy elites did it.)
And, even when it comes to the empire, they’re busier cherry-picking examples that show that the grass was greener, the men were manlier, the women were chaster, and dogs barked quieter.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 months ago
True, and that’s important context if you’re trying to get a deeper understanding of how Julius Caesar came to have the power he held before his assassination.
But there’s enough of a problem you can see even if you just start at Julius, which is what I was concentrating on in my previous comment. The parallels to Trump are terrifyingly on the nose.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 months ago
True that.
Weirdly enough (or perhaps not surprisingly) I see the same here with Bolsonaro supporters; there’s a disproportionally high amount of them among classicists, even if humanities as a whole leans heavily to the left.