For generations, Americans have surrounded themselves with the symbols of ancient Greece and Rome: marble columns, laurel wreaths, Roman eagles, and the fasces. These icons, carved into our government buildings and featured on our currency, were intended to embody democracy, civic virtue, and republican ideals.
But in recent years, far-right movements in the U.S. and abroad have hijacked these classical images, repackaging them into symbols of exclusion, militarism, and authoritarian nostalgia.
As a student of both Classical Civilizations and Public Policy, I’ve seen this trend firsthand. Online spaces and political rallies now bristle with distorted classical references: Spartan helmets on protest gear, Roman eagles on alt-right banners, and phrases like molon labe (“come and take them”) lifted from ancient Greek battles but weaponized for modern culture wars.
This isn’t accidental. Extremist groups deliberately lean on classical symbolism to project legitimacy and historical grandeur. Their goal is to link their movement with notions of strength, order, and Western identity – often coded with racial and cultural exclusion.
The far right’s fascination with the ancient world has deep roots. In the 1920s and ’30s, Benito Mussolini drew heavily on Roman imagery to build Italian Fascism, adopting the fasces (a bundle of rods and an axe once carried by Roman magistrates) as the regime’s primary emblem. Nazi Germany followed suit, celebrating classical sculpture and architecture as models of supposed Aryan purity, while denouncing modern art as “degenerate.”
Today’s extremists borrow these same visual cues. The January 6 Capitol riot showcased Spartan and Roman symbols among the flags and homemade shields. In Charlottesville, at the 2017 Unite the Right rally, white nationalists marched with fasces emblems and the Roman acronym SPQR, the historic motto of the Roman Republic. White nationalist groups like Identity Evropa and Vanguard America continue to embed Roman eagles and Greek statuary into their propaganda materials.
The strategy is clear: these symbols evoke a sense of timeless authority and noble struggle. They suggest a connection to ancient civilizations that are popularly, but often simplistically, viewed as the cradle of democracy and Western greatness.
And that brings us to an uncomfortable truth: this hijacking is made easier by the way mainstream American culture has mythologized the classical world for decades.
For many Americans, Greece and Rome have long been portrayed in a sanitized narrative: Athens as the pure birthplace of democracy, and Rome as a republic of virtuous citizens. Our civic buildings mimic the Parthenon and Pantheon. Our textbooks focus on Athenian voting rights and Roman legal codes, often skipping over the less flattering realities: slavery, imperialism, patriarchy, and political collapse.
By flattening classical history into a story of unbroken democratic virtue, we’ve created a blind spot. Extremist groups exploit this by framing themselves as heirs to an imagined tradition of Western strength and purity.
Take the Spartan obsession, for example. In reality, Sparta was a militarized society that depended on the mass enslavement of the helot population and engaged in routine violence to maintain social order. However, modern far-right groups latch onto a Hollywood-inspired version of Sparta: all heroism, all warrior ethos, with no historical context.
The same goes for Roman imagery. The fasces, which in the U.S. have long symbolized unity and civic authority, are now appearing on hate group banners to signal authoritarian power. Even the Latin motto SPQR, originally an emblem of citizen governance, has been stripped of context and repurposed for modern nationalist signaling.
So, how do we respond?
First, educators have a critical role. As a classics student, I’ve learned that understanding Greece and Rome means wrestling with contradictions: innovation and oppression, civic ideals and systemic injustice. Middle and high school teachers, as well as university professors, should present the classical world in its full complexity—not as a golden age to be uncritically admired. Students should leave a unit on Athens knowing not only about democracy, but also about who was excluded from it.
Second, policymakers and civic leaders must be mindful of how they use classical symbols today. While classical architecture and symbolism remain fixtures in public life, their deployment must be accompanied by an awareness of how extremists are attempting to reframe their meaning. Civic leaders should refrain from using these images in ways that inadvertently echo extremist aesthetics, particularly in campaign materials or public art.
Third, online platforms and moderators play a crucial role. Just as we flag hate symbols and dog whistles in other contexts, there should be an awareness of how classical imagery is being used in far-right propaganda. This doesn’t mean banning every Roman eagle, but it does mean being alert when such symbols appear alongside calls to violence or exclusion.
Finally, the general public needs to approach classical imagery with more historical literacy. The solution isn’t to erase Greece and Rome from our civic identity, but to study them with clear eyes. When we understand their full history, including their flaws, failures, and complexities, we rob extremists of the ability to manipulate these symbols unchallenged.
The classical world was never monolithic, and neither is our democracy. Both are complicated, diverse, and constantly evolving. If we want democratic symbols to remain tools for inclusion rather than division, we need to reclaim them from those who would distort the past to undermine the present.
Bennett Gillespie is a student at Duke University and a council member of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. He is also an intern with the Fulcrum.
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Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.