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Really? !roughromanmemes@piefed.social seems to be mostly made of history nerds posting mostly stuff like this.
I'm definitely progressive in the vast majority of my political leanings and still enjoy memes about historical happenings from a modern perspective
Just a few more because these are pretty great
Salad Man did so much for us 😭
So many innovative salads that will never be 😭
OF THIS I AM ASSURED
More seriously, there is a strange attachment of fascists to the Roman Empire. A big part of this is that, before the 1930s, nearly everyone with an education in the West was, in effect, either a Graecoboo or a Romaboo. When the fascists came about, first in the 1920s, and then in the 30s, they leaned hard into the Roman aesthetic, both because of its expansionist implications and the symbolism that retained great influence in the pre-existing societies they sought to manipulate. This... both discredited a lot of Roman symbolism amongst non-fascists, and gave fascists a lasting taste for the symbolism, since it was used in the only period the fucks had real power over a significant portion of the world.
However, RoughRomanMemes, both the original on R*ddit (sadly could not convince the other mods to check out the Fediverse at the time of the original exodus, though I also wasn't super-close with them) and the one on here ran by me, are ardently anti-fascist.
Rome was (largely) doing the best it could with the limited material and philosophical resources it had - we love that! Show me those proto-rights, that early rise in living standards, that conception of universal humanity! I'm here to share a shit-sponge with my fellow plebs and talk about the grain dole!
Fascists are universally doing the worst they can with all the material and philosophical resources of human history at their goddamn fingertips - fuck them.
See the “Roman salute”. Not actually Roman, but instead invented for a film about Romans. Italian fascists liked it and adopted it. Then the Nazis liked it and adopted it from the Italian fascists.
It doesn’t matter that it’s not actually Roman, it’s still something that the fascists can do in order to pretend to be Roman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii
TIL
Invented for a painting, but your point stands.
Really?
No. The link is to a ~6 year old advertisement. The author interviewed was using weird American culture war bullshit from 2019 to try to get you to buy their book.
Nuts to that. History belongs to all of us, and anyone can poke fun at the Romans if they want to.
Mythologized history to serve their racist worldview:
Right, ancient Greece and Rome were actually quite diverse and the concept of “whiteness” didn’t have much meaning thousands of years ago. Race, as we know it, is a fairly recent category. But the far-right relies on this construct of Western civilization, which for them means white civilization and culture. So they craft a narrative that begins with Greece and Rome and then continues into the medieval period up through the emergence of modern Europe.
What's funny is Rome and Greece (and probably every other ancient culture) mythologized their origin history, too, due to lack of history records from that far back, or just by plain human nature. Nothing new under the sun.
Edit: I meant the more human-centric origin myths, e.g. like the Romans believing they were totally the decendants of Aeneas and the Trojans fleeing Troy's destruction.
That explains why they hate my reaction to seeing a cybertruck. I hold my thumb out horizontally, until I know I have their attention. I then rotate it to a thumbs down. The sheer amount of road rage, at having had ancient roman iconography used against them, warms the cold dead cockles of my heart.
Paging @PugJesus
I think he's piefed.social if you want to summon him and probably would get a kick out of this.
I wish I knew how to do that. I abandoned reddit just so many others as soon as they started their API nonsense, so I'm really just here for the memes. And yes, he would enjoy it greatly.
Same here, I miss it sometimes, but Voyager has a nice system for tagging folks. Looks like the sintax is [@ UserName @ host.instance (https://host.instance/u/user )] . Remove spaces
@PugJesus@piefed.social PJ sorry for the somewhat out of context, but Argues here wanted you to see the overall thread.
Seen and summoned 🙏
Brilliant, thanks! I apologize for my incompetent manner. I use Connect only because as I fled reddit, it was probably the first Google result lol.
This is likely one of those cases of X is Y but not all Y are X. Roman history memes can be amusing for anyone.
Being obsessed with Roman and/or WWII history is a red flag, but not a conclusive indicator (unless the obsession with WWII involves praising Nazis).
#NotAllRomanMemes
Unfortunately this makes sense - the original Italian and German fascists were also obsessed with it.
They might be obsessed with them but they make really shitty ones that are factually inaccurate most of the time.
But just because somebody enjoys history is not a warning sign or red flag. You have to study history to learn political trends and how the world operates.
I enjoy Roman memes and in a lot of the history communities, I learn lots from others .... but the greatest thing I've ever learned from Roman history is that their legacy is a lesson to all of us of what NOT TO DO to run a civilization because if you did, it only leads to inequality, instability, that it is unsustainable and that it all eventually collapses. They were a great people but they were great because their excess was built on the subjugation of nations and enslaving entire people in order to get what they wanted. They could only succeed if they kept abusing everyone else and eventually themselves.
Their system grew and expanded when it benefited many people .... but it collapsed and failed when all that power concentrated itself into ever smaller groups of people.
Roman history is a warning .... it's not something we should try to repeat like we are now.
"Waow let's give more power to fewer people, nothing could possibly go wrong" - Rome nearly every time just before things go horribly wrong
staning Rome has always been a fash tradition.
tbf, it was just a general Western tradition until the fash made it weird.
Why do you think those losers always side with the Legion in Fallout New Vegas?
Me, a Romaboo, walking into Edward Sallow's tent with a .50 cal rifle with explosive rounds hidden in my prison-pocket:
I WAS READY TO SERVE THE CHIEF ROMABOO OF THE WASTES UNTIL I SAW WHAT HE WAS MAKING
HE SHAMES THE MEMORY OF THE RES PVBLICA
Always was curious what the deal with the alarming amount of Roman and military memes that pop up.
That shit is just such a bizarre fetish of some people.
Whole groups of men dressed in skirts that only want to spend time with other men in skirts?
Always was curious what the deal with the alarming amount of Roman and military memes that pop up.
I mean, on here, it's... it's probably mostly me.
... I post a lot.
And we thank you for it.
It’s the aesthetization of politics, it serves as a recruitment tool for fascist ideology. They present art and symbols (memes) designed to evoke appealing emotions or ideas. Through repetition, the emotions and ideas associated with these symbols become fused with the individual’s identity. The fascist ideology, introduced and linked to these symbols, is more readily accepted because the individual already holds a positive association with the original symbols. It’s basically classic conditioning to transform people into fascists.
Their kindred love of lead poisoning
This is an interesting prompt. I am fascinated by ancient Rome, both the memes and serious history, and I know for sure that I'm not a member of the alt-right (you might not believe me but that's irrelevant to my analysis of myself). So why do I find Rome so interesting?
Part of the reason is due to the fact that Rome was powerful. I suppose that I share this with the alt-right but I don't think that it is an inherently alt-right way of thinking. Ideologies, forms of government, and ways of organizing society must be able to compete in terms of raw power. Ancient Rome was, in these terms, exceptionally successful. It isn't sufficient for my modern-day values to be in accordance with my moral sense, which is very different from the moral sense of an ancient Roman. My values must also lead to, or at least be consistent with, a society that is able to exert more power (military, economic, and cultural) than other societies organized along different values. Looking at Rome is a way to see what that can look like.
With that said, the western world, organized largely in accord with liberal values which I share, has been not just the best place to live in all of human history but also the most powerful in this sense. I think the alt-right, to the extent that they prefer other values (like ancient Roman ones), are largely fools: the west in general and the USA in particular are far stronger than Rome ever was. This ties into the second part of the reason Rome is interesting: the Republic ended not at a time when it was under threat from external enemies (it was, in many ways, at its strongest when it was the most threatened) but rather at the height of its wealth and power - most of what we think of as the "Empire" was already conquered by then. Then the Empire declined and fell largely because of infighting (although the full explanation for the collapse is a lot more complicated and, frankly, beyond my level of historical expertise). Romans were each other's worst enemies. And when the Empire fell, it fell far. Things got a lot worse, not just for the Roman elite but for almost everyone, rich and poor. We're a lot higher up than they ever were so we have a lot further to fall, and yet a lot of people are willing to risk the integrity of our society due to a short-sighted view of history that fails to appreciate how good we do, in fact, have it. The alt-right is among these foolish people - I am lower-case-c conservative because I oppose making large, sudden changes, but the alt-right is not conservative in this sense.
Then the final part of the reason is that Rome is both alien and familiar - Roman ideas and aesthetics were deliberately preserved and spread, so that they are familiar to me in the modern day. Other ancient empires like China are also a source of useful lessons, and I'm sure they're fascinating to people who know enough to appreciate them, but to me they are far more alien and so I don't. If I were a professional historian, that wouldn't be an excuse, but I'm not so I prefer to read and think about Rome.
