New interview about my book "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" from @theozymandiasp1.bsky.social

My Vassar colleague!

This short thread articulates well some of what I tried to think through in "The White Pedestal," both as a Classical scholar and as a white man in America.

Not to mention the Coors Foundation's support for the Heritage Foundation going back to 1972! www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/p...

Sign a petition to tell publishers to stop blocking @archive.org from preserving content. They say they're worried abt AI training, maybe it's a real problem, but it's 2026, there has to be a solution thats better than lumping this important preservationist project into the same category as scrapers

Thank you for this thread abt The White Pedestal & reflections on the UK context. @denisemccoskey.bsky.social and @drhelenroche.bsky.social have edited a volume with a more global focus: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/abusing-antiquity-9781350563728/. But most countries could use a book-length treatment!

Five years ago, we set out to make a series of open-access editions of Latin texts written by women. Today we published volume 5, a collection of letters written by fifteen women in ancient Rome, from Cornelia (120s BCE) to Gudeliva (530s CE). pixeliapublishing.org/series/exper...

I'm offering a 3-session online course for @92ndstreety.bsky.social in June on white nationalism and GrecoRoman antiquity. The far right knows more about ancient history than you expect, but there are traditions of classicism that challenge their narratives. Join me! roundtable.org/live-courses...

Open house at the Poughkeepsie Cistern. Heard a guy play the Bari Sax and make extensive use of the 15 second reverb. Amazing! www.poughkeepsiecistern.com/openhouse

Quote from one of our seniors at today's thesis symposium: "I owe it all to them [viz her fellow seniors] and to @logeiongklat.bsky.social"

There's a hater review of "The White Pedestal" criticizing me for including "hierarchy is natural" among the 6 white nationalist ideas that Greco-Roman antiquity is used to legitimize. This thread tells you why it's there and why some are so invested in pretending like it's different from the others

Also why I have zero interest in seeing this movie

"In most versions of The Odyssey, Ithaca ... only plays a major part toward the end of the epic, but this trailer seems to tease it will have as much import as O’s journey." Um "most versions" ≠ "the actual Odyssey" which begins with a multi-book Ithaca section www.inverse.com/entertainmen...

I read this with avid interest but I don't find any evidence given that Trump has compared himself to classical figures: it's implied but all that is said is that he thinks of himself in the same terms that Hegel thought about Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. Am I missing something?

I am grateful to be getting so much interest in "The White Pedestal" but I got a special kick out of trying out Ford Maddox Ford's "Page 99 Test" on it. {warning clickbait incoming} I couldn't believe what I found! page99test.blogspot.com/2026/04/curt...

I love this but also I understand if anyone wants to spend their sun coffee time with a happier book!

So honored to have"The White Pedestal" reviewed and offered in a drawing from @workingclassicists.bsky.social! If you don't win but still want the book use promo code WHPED for 30% off from @yalebooks.bsky.social yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

I didn't expect this to happen but I'm happy to announce that "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" is now available as an audiobook! rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/97...

Thanks to @samuelhayimbrody.bsky.social for reposting this. Took a look at the Palantir founder's book and, what do you know, first search term I tried turned up a chapter complaining about how kids aren't taught the right things about ancient Greece and Rome anymore

Powerful people in the past justified inequality & violence by claiming to imitate ancient Greece and/or Rome. Those decisions still shape our world. We need Classical scholars because we can expose this history to help imagine a future where better decisions are made. #talkabouthumanities

This week @acls1919.bsky.social is asking scholars working in the humanities and social sciences to talk about why we need these fields. Content suggestions and tips here: www.acls.org/TalkAboutHum...

I don't know if "we're all wrong" as the title has it but I do think this really interesting excerpt from @rosavcampbell.bsky.social's new book shows why power needs misogyny so much, because men who actually love women might actually support women

Rishi Sunak wrote something a couple weeks ago about learning from Rome to save the west. With American bombs falling in Iran and our prez planning a triumphal arch, it provoked me more than such bad takes usually do. Thanks to @salon.com for the opportunity to comment www.salon.com/2026/04/14/w...

for sure, congratulations to magyar. but the real heroes imo are those in civil society & journalism & rank-and-file opposition & academia who have fought against the disintegration of rule of law, the weaponization of the courts/media, & so much more for so long. 🇭🇺

4.8 million people in TX voted for Harris. That's more than voted for Trump in all but 3 states and more than voted for Harris in blue New York!

If you listen to Critical Roll or Glass Cannon or Dungeons and Daddies etc etc etc you can now see where it all came from, the first ever actual play ever recorded and distributed online

I'm going to be making some remarks about white nationalism and Greco-Roman antiquity as part of a virtual conference this Friday/Saturday on "Mediterranean Antiquity in the Work of H. P. Lovecraft." Lots of great speakers and topics, register here www.carmanromanophd.com/lovecraftcon...

I have lived in places that are sometimes considered the most beautiful in the country but when I moved to the NE and saw hillsides covered with bare trees in winter, in a deep way I felt "I am home"

So much great stuff as always in this Pasts Imperfect but one thing I'd like to know more about is the "flipped" conference where attendees work together on texts and present findings 👀

"Only Farms" is the same tech bro humor that gave DOGE its acronym If there's anything worse than a fascist regime it's one full of people who are doing it for the lulz

Yes there are tons of braindead Nazis who treat Germanic migration as a threat to civilization! But there's another strain that claims that "racially pure" Germanic migrants saved Europe by destroying the degenerate "mongrelized" Roman empire and restoring whiteness. This is the more dangerous idea

Admit that I conform to the humorless stereotype of this site's users but in my line of work I don't automatically go to laughter when I see something about the current regime embracing Greco-Roman antiquity

And even being able to say "we are still here" is proof it is doing something

A little slow in posting this but I was interviewed about "The White Pedestal" on @ancienthistmag.bsky.social 's podcast www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-us/blogs/...

Thanks to @gaius.bsky.social for the invitation to speak on his YouTube Channel about "The White Pedestal"! www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu8x...

Cosmic Crisp forever

My AMA on Reddit about Ancient Grece/Rome and White Nationalism is live! Hop in and get us started! www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

My "Ask Me Anything" about white nationalism and Greco-Roman antiquity is Friday at 9AM EDT on www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori.... Hop on and ask a question! (engagement drives the algorithm to make the post more visible to more people so it really helps!)

Now available for preorder, with promo code TCCCR2026, "The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race," a major intervention against the decades-old orthodoxy of the alleged anachronism of "race" and "racism" for the study of the ancient past. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Agree and then it turns out there's nothing about Rome in the whole piece except a quote that's only an adaptation of a Classical work. How much more obvious can it be that antiquity is just there to put a respectable veneer on violence

I'm going to being doing an "Ask Me Anything" on www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori... about white nationalism and Greco-Roman antiquity this Friday starting at 9AM EDT. It's moderated against trolling so we can really get into the topic. Spread the word if you're followers might be interested!

I guess a movie about Black terrorists and joke white supremacy is always gonna be more popular than one about Black people trying to live their lives and real white supremacy. But congrats to Michael B Jordan, well deserved

Too many

The piece @bradduplessis.bsky.social rebuts argues that to "make our War Colleges great again," "our senior military ranks need more Spartans and fewer Athenians." That language tries to dress up Hegseth's crude and inflexible "cult of lethality" as something glorious, honorable, heroic.

Met an interesting local artist, @grammaticas.bsky.social, at a talk I gave last night about "The White Pedestal." She has a post on her substack that defamiliarizes some of the women we see in sculpture (e.g. around NYC) by telling their stories. grammaticas.substack.com/p/5-of-monum...

I went on @thisguysucked.com expecting fun snark and hot takes. It did not disappoint, but even better was seeing how deeply @ceaubin.com cares about history. She's a hater, yes, but what she's really focused on is how the significance we give history depends on the way we study it. Great show

I've admired @kevinsolez.bsky.social since he contributed expertise on Homer to Pharos when we were writing about the casting of David Gyasi to play Achilles. He's now hosting expert guests, including @sentantiq.bsky.social, at his "Homer Hotline" on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30u...

My review essay on recent and forthcoming work by scholars whose earlier work inspired and informed "The White Pedestal" is out in this week's Pasts Imperfect. Very pleased to have it appear in a publication where "antiquity" means much more than Greece and Rome

You guys I am such a sucker for the chosen one trope so my judgment may be clouded but my daughter and I just finished She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and that show is so good. And, it's hard not to think of the people standing up to ICE violence www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACsi...

My teacher the classical scholar Jim Tatum died about a week ago. I wrote a reminiscence substack.com/home/post/p-...