Abusing Antiquity? by Helen Roche

Abusing Antiquity? by Helen Roche

The first ever collection of essays to explore the contemporary far right’s fascination with the classical past, Abusing Antiquity? sheds new light on the ways in which ancient Greece and Rome are being used to legitimize political agendas in the present. Through analyses from contemporary Europe and the United States, the volume examines how historical figures, images, events and texts connected with the classical world have been mobilized by the far right to promote extremist views related to race, gender and immigration.

From the rise of mid-20th-century fascism to the modern day, the individual chapters examine evidence ranging from memes and online media to literature, music and visual and material culture. The volume addresses questions of best practice, methodology and ethics, while providing historical context for the far right’s use of classics, and interrogating how the structures within classical studies itself can provide support for far-right ideologies. Rather than situating classical antiquity as simplistically ‘abused’ by modern extremist movements, this volume traces Classics’ implication and its appropriations in the recent rise of the far-right, thus contributing to more effective methods of countering extremism.

Helen Roche is Professor of Modern European Cultural History at the University of Durham, UK. Her key publications include The Third Reich’s Elite Schools (2021), Sparta’s German Children (2013) and she is co-editor of Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (2018).

Denise Eileen McCoskey is Professor of Classics and affiliate in Black World Studies at Miami University, USA. She is the author of Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2012) and editor of A Cultural History of Race in Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2022).