Hooked on Classics: The Far Right’s Appropriation of Ancient Greece and Rome

Classical antiquity is often portrayed as the exclusive foundation of ‘Western Civilisation’, creating a narrative that draws a direct line from ancient Greece and Rome to modern Western countries. These civilisations have long served as sources of inspiration for the far right, who manipulate and weaponise history to portray a false image of the ancient world as exclusively white. This chapter will focus on understanding how and why the far right utilise Greco-Roman symbolism in their propaganda. Attention will be placed on the ways in which the classical Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens, and the Roman Empire have been utilised to provide support for racialised, xenophobic, and Islamophobic narratives. Consideration will also be given to the paradigm of whiteness in the sculpture used in their imagery, designed to manipulate and legitimise ideas about cultural and racial superiority. By considering how audiences view the classical world, and how race is imagined through narratives of whiteness, this chapter will outline how the far right’s appropriation of antiquity as an archetype of prestige and power is used to develop a narrative that incorporates misogyny in a toxic blend with white supremacy, resulting in a form of racialised masculinity that assumes whiteness as a prerequisite for success and domination.