How the far right hijacked the ancient world
Accompanies Katherine Harloe’s BBC Radio 4 documentary Detoxifying the Classics
In August 2017, TV news reports were filled with images of far-right, white nationalist protesters marching through Charlottesville, Virginia. This was the so-called “Unite the Right Rally”, called to oppose the taking down of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee. Crowds of white supremacists marched through the streets, carrying torches and chanting “White lives matter” and “You will not replace us”. The next day they attacked counter-protesters. One murdered an anti-fascist demonstrator, Heather Heyer, by running her over in his car.
In January 2021, history seemed to repeat itself as a political demonstration with white nationalist elements in the United States again turned violent. This time, a crowd of Donald Trump supporters, arguably encouraged by the outgoing president himself, attempted to storm the Federal United States Capitol to disrupt the counting of Electoral College votes to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 US presidential election. The Congress session was suspended when rioters entered the building; politicians were locked down in offices for hours. Five people died and more than 100 were injured. It is alleged that some among the crowd aimed to assassinate the US vice-president, Mike Pence.
One parallel between these two spectacles of political violence may have eluded non-specialists. Alongside other white supremacist flags and symbols, many among the far-right demonstrators in both episodes chose to advertise their allegiance to racist and ethnonationalist values by brandishing classical insignia. A poster the organisers of “Unite the Right” produced to advertise their rally included SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), an abbreviation associated with the Roman
