Just had a classmate in Classics ask incredulously how Classics is connected to white supremacy, and I thought I'd share my reply:

Studying Greek and Roman history doesn't inherently link to white supremacy - but white supremacy links itself to Greek and Roman history as...
1/
of its mythology of the "white race" (despite the Graeco-Roman world being wildly diverse), exploiting its historic importance in Western Europe.

The concept of 'Classics' is even now associated with an artificial "shared European culture" and a "West/East" or...
2/
"Christendom/Non-Christendom" dichotomy, instead of the more Mediterranean-oriented Graeco-Roman identity of the past. It's ironic, of course, that what is described as the first piece of "Western literature" (the Iliad) was likely composed...
3/
in modern Turkey - now viewed as outside "Christendom", "the West", and "whiteness" by white supremacists.

This "West/East" dichotomy (where Classics purports to represent the learning of "the West") is especially important to modern fascism, both pan-European and...
4/
Eurosceptic, and relies on artificially connecting Greece and Rome to Northern Europe, while ignoring their connections to the Near East and Africa. You can see this in Hitler's use...
5/
of the "Roman salute", or in the use of the Greek Lambda symbol by the modern neo-Nazis, Generation Identity - who as white racist Northern Europeans connect themselves to the Spartans resisting the Persians.
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And that's not even getting into how Classics was used to justify colonialism.
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