Greco-Roman Antiquity and White Supremacy

This study examines ethno-regionalist conceptions of identity and the reception of Greater Greece in popular history books produced by publishers based in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy.

While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fantasized that the name “Ku-Klux” stems from the sound a revolver makes when cocked, the truth is more banal and, for present-day classicists, more disturbing. The Klan took its name from the Greek word for a circle, relying on a common tendency of secret societies of the time to lurk behind a veil of Classical learning.

In a world supposedly jeopardized by alienation and decay of morals, white supremacists tend to turn towards earlier times as templates of virtue. While the academic discourse focuses on advocating diversity and challenges its own dynamics, hierarchies and narratives, these ideological movements perceive plurality as threatening. Opposed to progressive gender perceptions, they focus on conservative binary gender roles.

As stated by J. Butler (Butler 1990), gender is nowadays seen not only as a social construct but something that is “performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practises of gender coherence” (Butler 1990, 34). Gender identity is therefore created through collectively agreed upon, repeated actions where any divergence will be penalised by the community.

The aim of this paper is to determine one specific aspect of the alt-right communities in their dealings with the classical tradition, that of globalisation and anti-globalisation.