Whose antiquity?

Proponents of White nationalist views have been gaining political power in the United States and advancing, to a shocking degree, their goal of a homogeneous nation run predominantly by White Christian men. The aggressive and dehumanizing mass deportation campaign undertaken by the Trump administration has been one particularly visible manifestation of this reality. But where do White nationalists source their ideas? What exactly are these ideas, and how widespread are they? In The White Pedestal, classics scholar Curtis Dozier shows that White nationalists draw significantly from a perhaps unexpected source: Greco-Roman history.

I grew up associating ancient Greece and Rome with epic heroism and regarding ancient Greece as the bright font of the Western intellectual tradition. I came to think of the Athenians, in particular, as emblematic of philosophical and political innovation. In this, I’m far from alone. As Dozier points out, “the idea that the ancient Greco-Roman world is important, admirable, and foundational is omnipresent in American culture.” Importantly, this isn’t just about what tweedy types think. Greek and Roman history loom large in popular culture as well. Christopher Nolan’s rendition of The Odyssey is sure to be one of the highest-grossing movies of 2026.

But esteem for the ancient Greeks and Romans is also markedly prevalent among White nationalists, who turn to these revered ancients in making their case for the privileging of White people. When he first started to notice this, Dozier supposed that those who use Greco-Roman history to support racist views must be misrepresenting the history, and he wanted to set the record straight. However, the more he studied, the more he realized that White nationalist accounts of these ancients often parallel mainstream scholarly interpretations, that the ideas White nationalists draw from the classics have long been prevalent outside of White nationalist circles, and—most uncomfortably—that he had in fact absorbed some of these ideas himself.