That "Roman" Salute

Nazi appropriation of ancient cultural symbols and the illusion of legitimation

I’m going to be shorter about this one since I just wrote last night, but this “Roman salute” defense is making me nutz.

OF COURSE it’s a Roman salute. Mussolini appropriated it from the Romans as part of his Risorgimiento, his campaign for Italy’s “resurgence”, HIS literal “Make Italy Great Again” movement.

OF COURSE it’s a Roman salute. Hitler appropriated it among all sorts of Roman symbols, particularly imagery that aligned them with the military prowess of Rome and its expansionistic imperial power, to connect the Nazi movement to the grandeur of ancient Rome and reinforcing their idea of racial superiority by claiming a link to a powerful, ancient civilization. This included using the “Roman salute”, the fasces (a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle symbolizing that imperial power supported by the people bound by the bands of the military esprit d’corps) , and the eagle as symbols of their regime.

OF COURSE it’s a Roman salute. Hitler saw his “Third Reich (Empire)” as the natural heir of the Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire, the “Second Reich” founded by Charlemagne (or Karl der Große, as he would have been to Hitler), which in turn had risen from the ashes (in this narrative) of the “First Reich”, the Roman Empire. He claimed all of this to try to legitimaize his new “Thousand-Year Reich”. Hitler also co-opted the swastika, the “crooked cross”, after Heinrich Schliemann had discovered hundreds of them in the ruins of Troy after 1870. The association with Greece, Asia Minor, and India played into his idea (and contemporary cultural theories) of an Aryan “master race” (“Aryan” is Sanskrit for “noble”) from which the Germans descended in a pure, unsullied line (never mind that the swastika appeared historically in the art of historical cultures around the globe — inconvenient, nasty detail). He also appropriated medieval iconography to establish that connection between the “Reichs”.

OF COURSE it’s a Roman salute.

But just like the instantly-recognizable swastika was originally something harmless that meant something entirely different that the Nazis poisoned with their inexpressable evil, SO, TOO, DO WE ALL UNDERSTAND THAT “ROMAN SALUTE” AS SOMETHING INSTANTLY AND UNMISTAKEABLY RECOGNIZABLE THE NAZIS PERVERTED, POLLUTED AND MADE THEIR OWN. There's a reason the German newspaper Die Zeit said about Musk's gesture, "A Nazi salute is a Nazi salute is a Nazi salute."