Jul 10, 2019
The
term "Western civilization" has long been a staple of the American
Right, but with the recent resurgence of white nationalism, it is
having something of a comeback. Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly are
hosting a two-week Mediterranean "cruise thru history" to "explore
the roots of Western civilization." The Intellectual Dark Web's
Jordan Peterson tells us “The West is Right,” while
The Daily Caller and Fox
News
are busy “celebrating the West."
Neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach hails “Youth for Western Civilization."
Both the traditional and so-called alt-right ground their worldviews in a fictional moral arc of
"The West” that bares little resemblance to reality.
Learning from the past and applying those lessons to
the present is a good thing. But in pop political discourse, the
Classics have been misused and abused to promote an origin story
that never was - a white Greco-Roman world birthing our noble,
so-called “Judeo-Christian” American empire to gloss over a history
of exploitation, imperialism, slavery and conquest.
On
this episode, we’ll explore the right-wing obsession with the
ancient world, it’s influence on neoconservative empire-building
and alt-right white nationalism alike, and how our common cultural
understanding of the ancient world has been perpetually
white-washed to promote a clash of civilizations narrative and
racist pseudo-science.
We
are joined by Dr. Sarah E. Bond, Associate Professor at the
University of Iowa, and Dr. Cord Whitaker, Associate Professor at
Wellesley College.