Doing Justice to the Classics
Thanks especially to the work of Sarah Bond and Myke Cole, the general public is increasingly familiar with white supremacists’ fetishization of Classical Sparta as a supposedly racially pure, hyper-masculine, hyper-militarized model for the totalitarian ethnostate they seek to bring about. Sparta is the ancient touchstone for hate groups that Pharos documents most frequently. What […]
Since 2017, Pharos has documented many examples of hate groups appropriating ancient Greece and Rome in support of their politics. Our articles may give the impression that it is only outsiders to the discipline of Classics who enlist that history in support of hate. But today we turn to a Classics professor who actively promoted […]
Richard Spencer is one of the most prominent white supremacists in the United States, whose various media platforms have published numerous articles that invoke Greco-Roman antiquity in support of racism and anti-Semitism. But Spencer himself has also made ancient Rome a model for his hateful vision: in a speech at the 2013 American Renaissance conference […]
In May 2019, Pennsylvania state representative Stephanie Borowicz drew criticism for posing for a photograph with a member of the militia group “American Guard” at a rally. Such reports of elected officials having ties to white supremacy or granting influence to members of hate groups seem to be increasingly common. When the report of Rep. […]
“Culture Wars” is a store on the custom apparel website TeePublic.com that advertises itself as “designs in support of European culture and civilization.” Like another online apparel store that Pharos has documented, “Culture Wars” offers many shirts with classical images and themes that promote both coded and explicit racism, homophobia, and misogyny. But whereas the […]
As has been widely reported, the alleged shooter in the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand subscribed to a racist conspiracy theory that national and world governments are trying to eliminate white people by encouraging immigration of non-white people, intermarriage between white people and non-white people, abortion, and, in the more paranoid versions of the theory, […]
The Occidental Quarterly is a white supremacist publication designed to look and feel like a peer-reviewed journal in order to give itself credibility as a platform for racists and anti-Semites. Its articles are available only to paid subscribers (except for those also published on its sister platform, The Occidental Observer, which Pharos has also documented) but the titles of […]
Guillaume Durocher has contributed articles that invoke classical antiquity to several white supremacist sites that Pharos has documented, including American Renaissance and Counter-Currents. He has also written more than one hundred pieces for The Occidental Observer, a site focused on “themes of white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West.” One of these, entitled “Biopolitics, Racialism, and Nationalism […]
Radix Journal is a website founded by Richard Spencer, editor of Altright.com and president of the white supremacist think tank “National Policy Institute,” both of which Pharos has documented. In January 2019 Radix Journal published an article about the Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival that is popularly but probably erroneously believed to be the origin of Christmas. The […]
Augustus Sol Invictus is a white supremacist and former U.S. Senate candidate. As Pharos has documented, he admires Greco-Roman antiquity so much that he legally changed his name to one that invokes ancient Roman imperial and religious associations. Although the SPLC notes that Invictus has “faded from the scene” since he was the headline speaker at the […]
