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The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate
How white nationalist thought leaders use ancient Greece and Rome to claim historical precedent for their violent and oppressive politics
It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.
Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.
It is difficult to ignore the resurgence of white nationalist movements in the United States, many of which employ symbols and slogans from Greco-Roman antiquity. A long-established neo-Nazi website incorporates an image of the Parthenon into its logo, and rioters wore Spartan helmets in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These juxtapositions may appear incongruous to people who associate the ancient world with enlightened political ideals and sophisticated philosophical inquiry. But, as Curtis Dozier points out in this thought-provoking book, it’s hard to imagine a historical period better suited to rhetorical use by white nationalists. Indeed, some of the most widely admired voices from ancient literature and philosophy endorsed ideas that modern white supremacists promote, and the social and political realities of the ancient world provide models for political systems that white supremacists would like to establish today.
Part introduction to contemporary white nationalist thought, part exploration of ancient racism and xenophobia, and part intellectual history of the political entanglements of academic study of the past, this book reveals that contemporary white nationalist intellectuals know much more about history than many people assume—and they deploy this knowledge with disturbing success.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published January 6, 2026
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January 11, 2026
Reviews of this book will probably call it “timely”. It certainly isn’t a fun read, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Dozier is one of many public intellectuals who is concerned with how the far-right use ancient Greece and Rome to support their beliefs, and while one could write a book (and some have) about how they do so for homophobia and misogyny, Dozier restricts himself to white nationalism, although obviously touches on other prejudices when they intersect.
Dozier mostly focuses on America, but also discusses white nationalist movements in places like Finland and Greece. He covers material ranging from Tweets to organized conferences, which is an appreciated expansion from his website Pharos, which sometimes made it look like obscure blog posts were causing the downfall of civic virtue. He raises important questions and makes the startling point that the basic idea behind white nationalist appropriations of antiquity– the idea that antiquity is admirable and foundational to the modern world– is deeply ingrained into Western culture, and so employing it in a hate movement makes it looks more natural and comfortable. That white nationalists seek legitimization by employing the classical world is well known and hopefully everyone who is not a white nationalist thinks this is bad. Dozier’s second thesis is a bit spicier– that ancient Greeks and Romans (particularly the former, it seems) actually did hold views similar to white nationalists, even if they would not recognize race as a biological reality. Moreover, he accuses historians, both past and present, of being too ready to rush to the ancient world’s defense, giving white nationalists ammunition whether they mean to or not. Thus, he positions the book in the ongoing intellectual crisis that the classics are having.
Dozier anticipates that people might object to his views by saying that the vices of the ancient Greeks and Romans were the vices of almost every premodern society, and counterargues that ancient Greece and Rome have a unique history of being used to justify racism and inequality in the West. The point that white nationalists often fetishize primary sources as opposed to just ignoring them is well supported, valid, and perhaps needed to be said, but I still feel the need to push back against it just a little bit. Dozier’s point is not really as revolutionary as he thinks– Paul Cartledge, who he chastises a few times, wrote the first edition of his famous work showing how elite Greek men constructed themselves as superior to others in the 80s; in the 90s, Amy Richlin accused scholars of neutering Juvenal’s misogyny by arguing the sixth satire was actually a joke. If some modern scholars are a bit too rosy about Greek views of Jewish people, it may have less to do with willful ignorance or defensiveness than the desire to find new research topics and move beyond older scholarship. In fact, it's possible that some readers of this book will come away with a more positive view of the reality of antiquity, since they will find out that the Spartans didn't actually throw disabled infants off of cliffs. Dozier can actually be accused of doing the same things he calls other historians out for doing when he, for example, oversimplifies the causes of Caesar’s Civil War to make it look like Caesar was solely responsible, in reaction to far-right Trump supporters urging Trump to “cross the Rubicon”. Focusing on antiquity is only part of the picture, as white nationalists are known to also love Vikings and the Crusades. As for Greece and Rome’s unique role in justifying oppression, a useful comparison can be found in Egyptology, which is undergoing a similar crisis to the classics. Around the same time that Nazis were spouting nonsense about Aryan continuity with Dorians and Spartans, the ideology of Pharonism arose in Egypt, purporting that there existed a direct national continuity between ancient and modern Egypt, which was sometimes used to justify authoritarianism. Just as white nationalism is on the rise in recent years, the 2020s have seen the return of Pharonist ideology. Even looking just at the West, some past white supremacist praised ancient Egypt by arguing that they were actually white.
Speaking of Egypt, the brief section about the Netflix Cleopatra documentary annoyed me enough to get its own paragraph. It’s undeniable that much of the backlash was simply racism, but there were also many others, including African-Americans, who took issue with the casting because they wished Netflix would just make a documentary about someone less overexposed who we know for sure was actually black. There were further complaints that portraying Cleopatra as a black woman as a way to make her inspiring to a marginalized population ignored the reality of who she really was, both as the queen of a regime that past scholarship (as Dozier points out) considered apartheid, but as a woman whose country would only become independent a millennia later after she killed herself when a European man defeated her. It’s also hard to believe that Netflix didn’t anticipate any backlash to the casting, especially seeing how the trailer emphasized how supposedly schools don’t want you to know that Cleopatra was black, so they deserve blame for essentially throwing that poor actress to the wolves to generate hype (which didn’t work, because the production got bad streaming numbers and even worse reviews). It may just be time to accept that Cleopatra, black or white, is not a good role model for the modern age.
Overall, this is an important work about a developing topic that will surely provoke much consideration and debate.
Dozier mostly focuses on America, but also discusses white nationalist movements in places like Finland and Greece. He covers material ranging from Tweets to organized conferences, which is an appreciated expansion from his website Pharos, which sometimes made it look like obscure blog posts were causing the downfall of civic virtue. He raises important questions and makes the startling point that the basic idea behind white nationalist appropriations of antiquity– the idea that antiquity is admirable and foundational to the modern world– is deeply ingrained into Western culture, and so employing it in a hate movement makes it looks more natural and comfortable. That white nationalists seek legitimization by employing the classical world is well known and hopefully everyone who is not a white nationalist thinks this is bad. Dozier’s second thesis is a bit spicier– that ancient Greeks and Romans (particularly the former, it seems) actually did hold views similar to white nationalists, even if they would not recognize race as a biological reality. Moreover, he accuses historians, both past and present, of being too ready to rush to the ancient world’s defense, giving white nationalists ammunition whether they mean to or not. Thus, he positions the book in the ongoing intellectual crisis that the classics are having.
Dozier anticipates that people might object to his views by saying that the vices of the ancient Greeks and Romans were the vices of almost every premodern society, and counterargues that ancient Greece and Rome have a unique history of being used to justify racism and inequality in the West. The point that white nationalists often fetishize primary sources as opposed to just ignoring them is well supported, valid, and perhaps needed to be said, but I still feel the need to push back against it just a little bit. Dozier’s point is not really as revolutionary as he thinks– Paul Cartledge, who he chastises a few times, wrote the first edition of his famous work showing how elite Greek men constructed themselves as superior to others in the 80s; in the 90s, Amy Richlin accused scholars of neutering Juvenal’s misogyny by arguing the sixth satire was actually a joke. If some modern scholars are a bit too rosy about Greek views of Jewish people, it may have less to do with willful ignorance or defensiveness than the desire to find new research topics and move beyond older scholarship. In fact, it's possible that some readers of this book will come away with a more positive view of the reality of antiquity, since they will find out that the Spartans didn't actually throw disabled infants off of cliffs. Dozier can actually be accused of doing the same things he calls other historians out for doing when he, for example, oversimplifies the causes of Caesar’s Civil War to make it look like Caesar was solely responsible, in reaction to far-right Trump supporters urging Trump to “cross the Rubicon”. Focusing on antiquity is only part of the picture, as white nationalists are known to also love Vikings and the Crusades. As for Greece and Rome’s unique role in justifying oppression, a useful comparison can be found in Egyptology, which is undergoing a similar crisis to the classics. Around the same time that Nazis were spouting nonsense about Aryan continuity with Dorians and Spartans, the ideology of Pharonism arose in Egypt, purporting that there existed a direct national continuity between ancient and modern Egypt, which was sometimes used to justify authoritarianism. Just as white nationalism is on the rise in recent years, the 2020s have seen the return of Pharonist ideology. Even looking just at the West, some past white supremacist praised ancient Egypt by arguing that they were actually white.
Speaking of Egypt, the brief section about the Netflix Cleopatra documentary annoyed me enough to get its own paragraph. It’s undeniable that much of the backlash was simply racism, but there were also many others, including African-Americans, who took issue with the casting because they wished Netflix would just make a documentary about someone less overexposed who we know for sure was actually black. There were further complaints that portraying Cleopatra as a black woman as a way to make her inspiring to a marginalized population ignored the reality of who she really was, both as the queen of a regime that past scholarship (as Dozier points out) considered apartheid, but as a woman whose country would only become independent a millennia later after she killed herself when a European man defeated her. It’s also hard to believe that Netflix didn’t anticipate any backlash to the casting, especially seeing how the trailer emphasized how supposedly schools don’t want you to know that Cleopatra was black, so they deserve blame for essentially throwing that poor actress to the wolves to generate hype (which didn’t work, because the production got bad streaming numbers and even worse reviews). It may just be time to accept that Cleopatra, black or white, is not a good role model for the modern age.
Overall, this is an important work about a developing topic that will surely provoke much consideration and debate.
February 9, 2026
I understand what the author is warning his reader. It is true that many of the Greek city- states were not ideal democracies. They all had some form of slavery. However, I feel that he takes a leap when he suggests that following the ideals and customs of our forefathers is not important. I never would condone someone be xenophobic on the other hand wanting good immigration policy does not deem one as such.
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