this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
361 points (95.7% liked)

Curated Tumblr

4983 readers
935 users here now

For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.

The best transcribed post each week will be pinned and receive a random bitmap of a trophy superimposed with the author's username and a personalized message. Here are some OCR tools to assist you in your endeavors:

Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
361
Roman bimbofication (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

apricops: the tendency for racists and white supremacists to go gaga over their idea of ancient Rome is so darkly hilarious because of how entirely wrong it is. It's not a twisting of some kernels of truth, it's not a misinterpretation, it's just the exact opposite, and people in Western Europe has been doing it for so long. For centuries people in Britain and Germany would be like/have been like "ah yes, we are special and superior because we are the heirs of the superior Romans" while next to a giant pile of writings by respected Ancient Romans who went "god, Britain is a dump and Germany is full of idiot barbarians. I wish I lived somewhere cool and cultured like Syria or Tunisia."

occultbookstores: Someone wrote once that Fascism is Roman bimbofication and that's been living in my head rent-free.

Here's some homework for you: https://piped.video/watch?v=sEjCNzGOe3Q

all 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It goes back far further than that.

What historians called the Empire of the Greeks and later the Byzantine Empire , inhabitants called the Roman Empire or republic. Because it was, but western Europeans didn't want to admit that for numerous reasons.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I mean... which Europeans and when? Because I studied Roman Law with a book written by a fascist, and it sure as hell had a TON of stuff about Iustinianus in there that you were supposed to learn, and that guy lived in full-on Istambul.

If anything I see the distinction between a "Roman" and a "Byzantine" empire more in English texts these days. It's not like the Brits and the American so-called "founding fathers" didn't have a massive hard-on for that era and the idealized common law take on their legal system.

I guess this counts as my "thinking of the Roman Empire" for the day. Time to reset that counter to 0 days.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not Constantinople?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We are treading on very dangerous ground right now.

Because if I say "Now it's Istambul, not Constantinople" this thread is doomed.

Wait...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Why’d they change it?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

People just liked it better that way

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm an idiot. Can somebody please explain "Roman Bimbofication"? Is it like only looking at the sexiest parts of the roman empire?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Its ignoring that the Romans brutally conquered and colonized western Europe, oddly in pretty much the exact same manner that western Europe did roughly 1500-1800 years later to much of the world.

Aka: Go in with violence, kill off and enslave upwards of a quarter to a third of the population, then trick the rest into giving you their lands with promises of fairness and copious alcohol.

Also, Roman culture damn near worshiped the Greeks.

They literally used the "noble savage" trope to describe the people of western Europe.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

We went overboard on the kill off.and enslave in the Americas. 90% of the population of both continents straight up died.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes. There is evidence to suggest that while they(Europeans) definitely took advantage of the deaths, most of the deaths were accidental from disease. Not all of the disease was maybe quite so accidental though.

E.G. one recorded instance in the 7 years war where British/American forces delivered blankets as a gift to nearby natives, some of the blankets were from the infirmary where there was smallpox. However, the notes and letters we have don't inform us as to whether that was an intentional move on the part of the fort commander, or a logistical error that resulted in the gift being tainted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That incident may not have been intentional The ones we took out west on the other hand.....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah but that was an accident, we gave the poor bastards the plague. Whereas most/all of the killing done in other places was, well, by hand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Little bit of column A, and a little bit of we have guns....

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago

It is looking for only the dumb pretty parts of Rome and forgetting the rest.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don’t feel like the British align themselves with the Romans either. Just one of many invaders. Has anyone got an example of the British considering themselves ’heirs’ to Rome?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When Boris Johnson wanted to appear "smart" he'd trot out a little Latin, and the Right Wing types would just swallow the whole turd and ask for more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Unfortunately this is true. Arguably it says more about the class system in this country than historical allegiances, but yeah, good point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

No, but I've seen plenty o' people calling themself special compared to people equally wait to us. Having a brit call themself better than a Lithuanian or polish because they're a different kind of white just boggles my mind

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I don't think German people see themselves as Romans.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You should talk to the holy roman empire of german nations then

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

Also: Speak to all people on the west-side of the river rhine.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Maybe not nowadays, but you know how much the third reich tried to symbolically align themselves with the Roman Empire, right? To wit:

On the other hand, additional elements of Roman culture were manipulated by Nazi officials in order to claim a racial affinity with classical Rome, associated in turn with a strong autocratic political system and a militaristic society, which would then be represented as productive of a flourishing civilisation.

Emphasis mine. It’s deeper than that, but there was absolutely a conscious internal propaganda effort in Nazi Germany to represent their “new world order” as aligned with the Roman Empire in a racial, societal, and aesthetic sense.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I don't know about modern Germans, but the nazis definitely appropriated and identified with classical Roman and Greek culture (here's one well-regarded book exploring this).

Given that the original post is about fascism and racial supremacy, I assume any German fascists/supremacists it's referring to share some ideology with the nazis in this regard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah, being a supposed “heir to the Romans” wouldn’t make anyone “superior” in the slightest. Romans had quite a few flaws themselves.

Besides, I could argue that the metaphorical blood of Roman influence is splattered evenly across the walls of the world, meaning all remaining humans would be heirs to Rome, by that logic.