We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
They might be obsessed with them but they make really shitty ones that are factually inaccurate most of the time.
But just because somebody enjoys history is not a warning sign or red flag. You have to study history to learn political trends and how the world operates.
Why do you think those losers always side with the Legion in Fallout New Vegas?
Because fascism was literally based on imitating a deliberately misunderstood Roman Empire?
The deliberate misunderstanding of the Roman Empire necessitates a pre-existing worldview through which to misunderstand it.
Me, a Romaboo, walking into Edward Sallow's tent with a .50 cal rifle with explosive rounds hidden in my prison-pocket:
I WAS READY TO SERVE THE CHIEF ROMABOO OF THE WASTES UNTIL I SAW WHAT HE WAS MAKING
HE SHAMES THE MEMORY OF THE RES PVBLICA
staning Rome has always been a fash tradition.
tbf, it was just a general Western tradition until the fash made it weird.
i think you're right, it was modern fascism (Mussolini), which used Roman imagery in other to return to glory.
I guess by always, I meant a bit less than a century
Fascists are obsessed with power and heirarchy in general, the more idealized the better for their purposes. When it's not Rome it's the Knights Templar, the Tsardoms, Making America Great Again, whatever.
Rome is a common trend though, in large part because it's instantly recognizable and imminently influential on practically every western culture.
This is an interesting prompt. I am fascinated by ancient Rome, both the memes and serious history, and I know for sure that I'm not a member of the alt-right (you might not believe me but that's irrelevant to my analysis of myself). So why do I find Rome so interesting?
Part of the reason is due to the fact that Rome was powerful. I suppose that I share this with the alt-right but I don't think that it is an inherently alt-right way of thinking. Ideologies, forms of government, and ways of organizing society must be able to compete in terms of raw power. Ancient Rome was, in these terms, exceptionally successful. It isn't sufficient for my modern-day values to be in accordance with my moral sense, which is very different from the moral sense of an ancient Roman. My values must also lead to, or at least be consistent with, a society that is able to exert more power (military, economic, and cultural) than other societies organized along different values. Looking at Rome is a way to see what that can look like.
With that said, the western world, organized largely in accord with liberal values which I share, has been not just the best place to live in all of human history but also the most powerful in this sense. I think the alt-right, to the extent that they prefer other values (like ancient Roman ones), are largely fools: the west in general and the USA in particular are far stronger than Rome ever was. This ties into the second part of the reason Rome is interesting: the Republic ended not at a time when it was under threat from external enemies (it was, in many ways, at its strongest when it was the most threatened) but rather at the height of its wealth and power - most of what we think of as the "Empire" was already conquered by then. Then the Empire declined and fell largely because of infighting (although the full explanation for the collapse is a lot more complicated and, frankly, beyond my level of historical expertise). Romans were each other's worst enemies. And when the Empire fell, it fell far. Things got a lot worse, not just for the Roman elite but for almost everyone, rich and poor. We're a lot higher up than they ever were so we have a lot further to fall, and yet a lot of people are willing to risk the integrity of our society due to a short-sighted view of history that fails to appreciate how good we do, in fact, have it. The alt-right is among these foolish people - I am lower-case-c conservative because I oppose making large, sudden changes, but the alt-right is not conservative in this sense.
Then the final part of the reason is that Rome is both alien and familiar - Roman ideas and aesthetics were deliberately preserved and spread, so that they are familiar to me in the modern day. Other ancient empires like China are also a source of useful lessons, and I'm sure they're fascinating to people who know enough to appreciate them, but to me they are far more alien and so I don't. If I were a professional historian, that wouldn't be an excuse, but I'm not so I prefer to read and think about Rome.
It’s the aesthetization of politics, it serves as a recruitment tool for fascist ideology. They present art and symbols (memes) designed to evoke appealing emotions or ideas. Through repetition, the emotions and ideas associated with these symbols become fused with the individual’s identity. The fascist ideology, introduced and linked to these symbols, is more readily accepted because the individual already holds a positive association with the original symbols. It’s basically classic conditioning to transform people into fascists.
Always was curious what the deal with the alarming amount of Roman and military memes that pop up.
That shit is just such a bizarre fetish of some people.
Always was curious what the deal with the alarming amount of Roman and military memes that pop up.
I mean, on here, it's... it's probably mostly me.
... I post a lot.
Whole groups of men dressed in skirts that only want to spend time with other men in skirts?
I think that male-supremacism/mysoginy is the common-principle, underlying Roman Empire cult & the alt-right.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2445637#abstract
_ /\ _
Romans saw sex mainly through a lens of power and domination. They were okay with a man of higher standing penetrating a man of lower social status but if it happened the other way around, the high status man would suffer loss of his masculine honor. With a similar mindset, older men would mentor adolescent men and it was acceptable to engage in sexual acts with them (pederasty).
Its interesting because its not entirely homophobic but still a disturbing way to see the world.
The Kama Sutra was written at around this time and acknowledges same sex marriages as legitimate however, additionally, Vātsyāyana writes positively about sex workers (advising men how to engage with them respectfully) and heavily emphasizes female pleasure (with specific emphasis on female agency and consent), going as far to say it is crucial to living a fulfilling and meaningful life for both partners.
When the text was transmitted to the West they took out all that "political" stuff and focussed on sex positions.
Romans saw sex mainly through a lens of power and domination. They were okay with a man of higher standing penetrating a man of lower social status but if it happened the other way around, the high status man would suffer loss of his masculine honor. With a similar mindset, older men would mentor adolescent men and it was acceptable to engage in sexual acts with them (pederasty).
Can't speak as to the Kama Sutra, but this is partly correct and partly incorrect. For Romans, sex was definitely seen through a lens of power and domination, but it was never okay for a Roman citizen in good standing to be penetrated by anyone, higher status or lower. In theory, at least; in practice there is considerable deviation from this 'ideal'. The idea of mentoring adolescent men whilst in a sexual relationship was a Greek practice.
This is not to say that the Romans did not engage in pederasty - unfortunately, they certainly did in some scenarios. But there was no mentor element involved. Even at the height of Roman same-sex practices, the prevailing relationship standards were of a dominant and submissive male (often younger, and either provincial, an infamis, foreign, or enslaved), a 'in-the-closet' style affair, or of a husband and a male 'wife', which, at least to observers, partly conformed to sexual gender roles even if it (disturbingly, to traditional Romans) preserved the notion of citizenship and masculinity of the 'wife'.
Notably, the ultraconservative Roman dictator Sulla retired to a nice Mediterranean island with his lifelong boytoy, the actor (actors were considered infames, along with prostitutes and gladiators) Metrobius; the Emperor Titus was noted to have a number of male 'favorites' who were actors whose association lasted long enough that he had to give them up when he became Emperor after his father's ~10 years of rule - suggesting that, at the very least, they were probably not all teens by the time Titus gave up bussy for the dignitas of the Res Publica. Interestingly, the short-lived (and himself somewhat older) Emperor Galba, a bit of a curmudgeon, was noted to have a preference for 'hard-bodied' men in early middle-age. The only recorded Roman daddy appreciator.
Some of the material is lost, some is simply unrecorded, and some we have only glimpses into, but on the whole, Roman sexuality is an incredibly multifaceted and alien subject.
Very interesting stuff about the Kama Sutra. I should probably read up on sexuality in pre-modern India sometime, but I have so many goddamn books to read and so little focus to do it with. XD