apricops: the tendency for racists and white supremacists to go gaga over their idea of ancient Rome is so darkly hilarious because of how entirely wrong it is. It’s not a twisting of some kernels of truth, it’s not a misinterpretation, it’s just the exact opposite, and people in Western Europe has been doing it for so long. For centuries people in Britain and Germany would be like/have been like “ah yes, we are special and superior because we are the heirs of the superior Romans” while next to a giant pile of writings by respected Ancient Romans who went “god, Britain is a dump and Germany is full of idiot barbarians. I wish I lived somewhere cool and cultured like Syria or Tunisia.”

occultbookstores: Someone wrote once that Fascism is Roman bimbofication and that’s been living in my head rent-free.

Here’s some homework for you: https://piped.video/watch?v=sEjCNzGOe3Q

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
    291·
    1 year ago

    It goes back far further than that.

    What historians called the Empire of the Greeks and later the Byzantine Empire , inhabitants called the Roman Empire or republic. Because it was, but western Europeans didn’t want to admit that for numerous reasons.

    • MudMan@kbin.social
      182·
      1 year ago

      I mean… which Europeans and when? Because I studied Roman Law with a book written by a fascist, and it sure as hell had a TON of stuff about Iustinianus in there that you were supposed to learn, and that guy lived in full-on Istambul.

      If anything I see the distinction between a “Roman” and a “Byzantine” empire more in English texts these days. It’s not like the Brits and the American so-called “founding fathers” didn’t have a massive hard-on for that era and the idealized common law take on their legal system.

      I guess this counts as my “thinking of the Roman Empire” for the day. Time to reset that counter to 0 days.