FranklyIGiveADarnTIL - the Alt-Right is obsessed with Roman Memes
BroBot9000Always 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.
I’d be cautious of any users participating in roman meme or military meme communities. It’s a big red flag.
Fuck, I guess I’m glad I didn’t follow the history memes to the new instance. I thought all the romaboo stiff was just nerds being silly.
Yeah the anime girl Roman memes are certainly the cherry on top the crazy cake. Some incredibly weird and hateful fetishes were in some of those.
I could not for the life of me figure out what those were kicking on about
PugJesus
EldritchIt is. There's very little right presence on the fediverse still. And I don't think pug would humor them if they tried.
On Lemmy at least I find the right are cowards who like to pretend to be liberals while they quietly dog whistle their takes.
It’s hard to tell how many there are, because they’re not comfortable being in the open.
No, I’ve seen them around. I don’t have evidence on their numbers, same as you.
It is not. I can be interested in history & military history without being alt right.
And as another user said, i doubt the romanmemes or historymemes communities here would tolerate it.
Dumb take.
Fascists also breath air and drink water. Those red flags, too? A lot of people find rome interesting. You can see this across history - look at US government buildings. It’s a roman aesthetic.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Aestheticization_of_politics
Tl;Dr Mussolini was obsessed with recreating a false, idealized past that in Italy’s case was the Roman Empire. An obsession with Rome is a warning sign of fascist ideology because that’s what actual fascism is obsessed with, as are basically all Western fascists because of Rome’s historical relevance to basically all of Europe and the Mediterranean.
It’s just not a sure sign, simply because it is a fascinating topic with plenty to dissect on any point of view.
If they’re also bitching and moaning about masculinity and heirarchy you’ve got a winner for sure though (a la your Jordan Peterson types)
Sure…the leader whose territory literally used to be Rome might also have the interest. Not remotely a telling sign, though.
Your ignorance is pretty goddamn laughable tbh
Says the dummy trying to paint with a broadbrush anyone interested in the Roman aesthetic as being an authoritarian.
Enjoy your bigotry.
Lol, illiterate as well I see
IninewCrowWhole groups of men dressed in skirts that only want to spend time with other men in skirts?
Have you not seen the ones with the Roman anime girls? Some really messed up shit. Lots of racism and sexism with a dash of kink.
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.
So can you explain what’s with the anime girl roman memes with all the sexism and racism?
I also don’t get the fetish that the people over in non credible defence have either. War, guns and killing glorified and memed. So bizarre.
So can you explain what’s with the anime girl roman memes with all the sexism and racism?
As I said below
Mostly it’s just absurdist jokes and memes by a Filipino Romaboo with a terminal case of Horny.
Centurii-chan is internet-overdosed, that’s for damn sure, but unless “Being terminally horny” is sexism, I don’t think I see it. As for racism, there are certainly some edgy jokes, and Centurii-chan doesn’t always take racism as seriously as they should, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything that’s degrading towards PoC. Which, itself, would be a little weird, considering the artist is, themselves, most likely a PoC.
I also don’t get the fetish that the people over in non credible defence have either. War, guns and killing glorified and memed. So bizarre.
Many people in NCD, or at least the original (especially pre-Ukraine War) NCD, were vets or involved in the defense industry at some point in their lives. Some were bitter, some were cheerfully detached, but in both cases, humor over the absurdity of the military and fascination with military engineering were uniting features. Many of them were… bizarrely knowledgeable on military engineering and specs, both modern and historical. An attraction to those with a certain hyperfixation, one might say.
Military engineering is impressive and militaries the world-round are likewise full of fascinating absurdities - interests I share with that original demographic, even though I have never been a part of the defense industry or in the military.
Centurii-chan is internet-overdosed, that’s for damn sure, but unless “Being terminally horny” is sexism, I don’t think I see it. As for racism, there are certainly some edgy jokes, and Centurii-chan doesn’t always take racism as seriously as they should, but I don’t think l’ve seen anything that’s degrading towards PoC.
Will have to heavily disagree with that one. Either someone is stealing the characters and making more hateful content because I have certainly seen ones that are absolutely disgusting. Genital mutilation, cannibalism, rape, racism, all put onto this perverse kink pedestal. Historically accurate or not it’s fucking nasty creating that kind of content.
Military engineering is impressive and militaries the world-round are likewise full of fascinating absurdities - interests I share with that original demographic, even though I have never been a part of the defense industry or in the military.
You know what other kind of engineering is impressive? Every other kind that doesn’t involve the military industrial complex and tools designed to kill the most people possible. Sowing machines, bridges, submarines, aqueducts, anything that doesn’t actively make the world a worse place.
Hyper fixation or not some things are messed up to be so obsessed over.
Genital mutilation, cannibalism, rape, racism, all put onto this perverse kink pedestal.
Definitely not the Centurii-chan I’ve seen, and I follow their art. The worst of their’s I’ve seen are some jokes about colonization that could be seen as in bad taste, and a joke about people using slurs when playing multiplayer games.
Hyper fixation or not some things are messed up to be so obsessed over.
Uh, okay.
staning Rome has always been a fash tradition.
i think you’re right, it was modern fascism (Mussolini), which used Roman imagery in other to return to glory.
I guess by always, I meant a bit less than a century
Fascists are obsessed with power and heirarchy in general, the more idealized the better for their purposes. When it’s not Rome it’s the Knights Templar, the Tsardoms, Making America Great Again, whatever.
Rome is a common trend though, in large part because it’s instantly recognizable and imminently influential on practically every western culture.
Really? [email protected] 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
So many innovative salads that will never be 😭
NotyouCaesar salad is just another thing that the white man stole from a person of color. Now everyone thinks it was Julius that made the salad instead of some rando from Mexico. What fools we have become.
It’s a meme based on widespread misconception. Chill out bro.
e0qdkReally?
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.
Said the guy pretending all Roman memes are about “poking fun at them” lol
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.
You have my xylospongium.
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.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii
Invented for a painting, but your point stands.
Well, it’s lemmy.
I made and posted one about Cincinnatus a while back, giga chad perfect roman simply isn’t interested in seizing ultimate power. He’ll rather end your ass and go back to his farming
ForesterThey might be obsessed with them but they make really shitty ones that are factually inaccurate most of the time
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.
TonavaThey 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.
Not only on that though, they were great at adopting what was working the best in those subjugated nations, and whatever trade bought to them; not only practical things, but cultural and religious things as well. Just subjugating people doesn’t do much unless you use whatever they have and actually somehow include them in your empire instead - you just can’t hold an empire of that size together by simply trying to genocide all the different people.
Even slavery back then wasn’t necessarily a forever thing, it was more of a circumstance. People regularly freed their well-served slaves, and those freed slaves could attain citizenship and all that. This doesn’t make slavery good mind you, it’s just that it was unlike the slavery in USA which deemed you and your future children all slaves forever, which is the type of slavery people these days think of when talking about the subject.
Now notice how much all this goes against what nazis and magas seem to want; adapting other cultures and their inventions, allowing citizenship to people from different places, freeing slaves and including them too into your nation… These racist, white-supremacist idiots know jackshit about history and understand nothing about why Rome was able to stay in power for so long.
What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens, but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered? Our founder Romulus, on the other hand, was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow-citizens several nations on the very same day. Strangers have reigned over us. That freedmen’s sons should be intrusted with public offices is not, as many wrongly think, a sudden innovation, but was a common practice in the old commonwealth. But, it will be said, we have fought with the Senones. I suppose then that the Volsci and Aequi never stood in array against us. Our city was taken by the Gauls. Well, we also gave hostages to the Etruscans, and passed under the yoke of the Samnites. On the whole, if you review all our wars, never has one been finished in a shorter time than that with the Gauls. Thenceforth they have preserved an unbroken and loyal peace. United as they now are with us by manners, education, and intermarriage, let them bring us their gold and their wealth rather than enjoy it in isolation. Everything, Senators, which we now hold to be of the highest antiquity, was once new. Plebeian magistrates came after patrician; Latin magistrates after plebeian; magistrates of other Italian peoples after Latin. This practice too will establish itself, and what we are this day justifying by precedents, will be itself a precedent.
The Roman Emperor Claudius, who was also a scholar of history (his writings are sadly lost)
Paging @PugJesus
Oh is he alt-right?
No. He’s a history nerd regularly posting history nerd shit for our own enjoyment.
He just loves Roman history, WW2 history, the space fascist future of 40k, and criticizing the past sins of socialism more than the rise of fascism while completely ignoring all sins of capitalism.
It’s fine I’m sure. Just a turbolib. He believes in democracy. Probably.
He just loves Roman history,
True.
WW2 history,
What? WW2 history is one of the less common things I post or talk about. About the only place it comes up is in historical photos, and even then that’s mostly because it’s a well-photographed war.
the space fascist future of 40k,
… I didn’t realize being a 40k fan who thinks space dystopia is a space dystopia was all that exceptional.
and criticizing the past sins of socialism more than the rise of fascism while completely ignoring all sins of capitalism.
I guess all my constant criticisms of capitalism and the rise of fascism are being ignored in this analysis?
It’s fine I’m sure. Just a turbolib. He believes in democracy. Probably.
Turbolib is when you advocate for harm reduction, and the more harm reduction you advocate for in a society where even the vast majority of the proletariat are hostile towards the idea of socialism, the more turbolib you are?
Forgive me for thinking that national changes need the consensus of the people, a task we as leftists must work towards; I’m sure your holsum vanguard party will perform a successful coup any day now.
He just loves Roman history
As I said, a history nerd.
WW2 history
Uh…what ? So still a nerd but for some reason we’re making a leap between ancient history and WW2 and skipping over all the medieval history content he’s posting. Sure, I guess.
the space fascist future of 40k
So a massive nerd. Painting tiny figurines under a magnifying glass and battling other nerds with measuring tape is top tier nerd shit not pining for fascism shit, although these people exist and are extra visible when they reveal themselves I’ve yet to meet one IRL in 26 years interacting with 40K nerds.
and criticizing the past sins of socialism more than the rise of fascism while completely ignoring all sins of capitalism. It’s fine I’m sure. Just a turbolib. He believes in democracy. Probably.
So he never said or done anything warranting to insult the guy of being far right, but you imply he might be guilty of thought crime for not showing enough leftist credentials to satisfy your own personal standards. And somehow this whole gratuitous character assassination is ok because you made it quippy at the end ? Yikes.
Fucking lol, stay gullible.