That explains why they hate my reaction to seeing a cybertruck. I hold my thumb out horizontally, until I know I have their attention. I then rotate it to a thumbs down. The sheer amount of road rage, at having had ancient roman iconography used against them, warms the cold dead cockles of my heart.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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If only we could throw those criminals against basic decency and aesthetics to the lions, like the good old days!
Or at least enter the Cybertruck in a demolition derby so it can serve some purpose.
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Are orgies and homo sex in style again?
No just human trafficking
Their kindred love of lead poisoning
Mythologized history to serve their racist worldview:
Right, ancient Greece and Rome were actually quite diverse and the concept of “whiteness” didn’t have much meaning thousands of years ago. Race, as we know it, is a fairly recent category. But the far-right relies on this construct of Western civilization, which for them means white civilization and culture. So they craft a narrative that begins with Greece and Rome and then continues into the medieval period up through the emergence of modern Europe.
What's funny is Rome and Greece (and probably every other ancient culture) mythologized their origin history, too, due to lack of history records from that far back, or just by plain human nature. Nothing new under the sun.
Edit: I meant the more human-centric origin myths, e.g. like the Romans believing they were totally the decendants of Aeneas and the Trojans fleeing Troy's destruction.
No. No. They were really decended from gods and raised by wolves. /S
Honestly the best explanations for Greek and thus Roman myth is a mix of patrical worship (story from dad, become from grandpa, from great grandpa, from ancestor, from the ancient, from myth, mixed with ruling caste families becomes our mythos).
That mixed with stories about concepts war, beauty, death, getting personified for story sake but then with enough personality now the afterlife is married and has a dog because his wife is on business trips all the time.
I meant the more human-centric origin myths, e.g. like the Romans believing they were totally the decendants of Aeneas and the Trojans fleeing Troy's destruction.
No. No. They were really decended from gods and raised by wolves. /S
Funny thing is, one of the key parts of Roman legend was also that their city was founded by a bunch of literal criminals and exiles that no one else wanted, and this was a theme that they constantly returned to - both positively (as in referring to the wisdom of Romulus in accepting outsiders of merit, whatever their reputation) and negatively (as in referring to Rome as the 'cesspit of Romulus', a place of base realities instead of high-minded ideals).
Really? !roughromanmemes@piefed.social seems to be mostly made of history nerds posting mostly stuff like this.
I'm definitely progressive in the vast majority of my political leanings and still enjoy memes about historical happenings from a modern perspective
I made and posted one about Cincinnatus a while back, giga chad perfect roman simply isn't interested in seizing ultimate power. He'll rather end your ass and go back to his farming
OF THIS I AM ASSURED
More seriously, there is a strange attachment of fascists to the Roman Empire. A big part of this is that, before the 1930s, nearly everyone with an education in the West was, in effect, either a Graecoboo or a Romaboo. When the fascists came about, first in the 1920s, and then in the 30s, they leaned hard into the Roman aesthetic, both because of its expansionist implications and the symbolism that retained great influence in the pre-existing societies they sought to manipulate. This... both discredited a lot of Roman symbolism amongst non-fascists, and gave fascists a lasting taste for the symbolism, since it was used in the only period the fucks had real power over a significant portion of the world.
However, RoughRomanMemes, both the original on R*ddit (sadly could not convince the other mods to check out the Fediverse at the time of the original exodus, though I also wasn't super-close with them) and the one on here ran by me, are ardently anti-fascist.
Rome was (largely) doing the best it could with the limited material and philosophical resources it had - we love that! Show me those proto-rights, that early rise in living standards, that conception of universal humanity! I'm here to share a shit-sponge with my fellow plebs and talk about the grain dole!
Fascists are universally doing the worst they can with all the material and philosophical resources of human history at their goddamn fingertips - fuck them.
See the “Roman salute”. Not actually Roman, but instead invented for a film about Romans. Italian fascists liked it and adopted it. Then the Nazis liked it and adopted it from the Italian fascists.
It doesn’t matter that it’s not actually Roman, it’s still something that the fascists can do in order to pretend to be Roman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_the_Horatii
TIL
Invented for a painting, but your point stands.
Yes, thank you. Not invented for a film, but the film is where the fascists took it from.
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Unfortunately this makes sense - the original Italian and German fascists were also obsessed with it.
Fascism weaponizes history by creating a narrative about past greatness that was lost because [ENEMY] took it away from them.
So for Italians, the Roman Empire was their past greatness for fascists (and where they got the name fascist from). For Germany, it makes less sense, but in their version of history ,the Holy Roman Empire was the "First Reich" so there's somewhat a connection there.
For American fascists it makes less sense. While some Americans can trace their ethnicity to Italy (and therefore the Roman Empire) it doesn't seem to be an Italian American thing. Probably it's just due to Romans being ridiculously misogynistic and liking the aesthetics of it.
I thought almost everyone had a mild obsession with Romans
I prefer to romanticize the three kingdoms period of China.
Turns out the mild obsession was really with tits.
I mean, they're kinda neat but I don't consider them all that important to modern day life.
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Reminds me of the biblical scenes from A Clockwork Orange. Some people think history is neat and the Romans had alot of history. Some people wish they could conquer Gaul and own sex slaves.
This is likely one of those cases of X is Y but not all Y are X. Roman history memes can be amusing for anyone.
Being obsessed with Roman and/or WWII history is a red flag, but not a conclusive indicator (unless the obsession with WWII involves praising Nazis).
#NotAllRomanMemes
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