The Left Thinks Western Civilization Itself Is ‘White Nationalist’By: Casey Chalk
November 21, 2025
Leftists smear conservatives appreciations for the classical world as a cover for white nationalist narratives.
Do you celebrate classical architecture? Or do you appreciate Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy, or seek to practice stoicism as taught by the ancients? Perhaps you’re inspired by stories of ancient Greek heroism, epitomized by Achilles before the gates of Troy, the Spartans at Thermopylae, or Alexander the Great’s victories against the Persians? You’d better beware — according to liberal propaganda efforts, you’re probably a white nationalist.
According to Curtis Dozier, an associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College and director of the website “Pharos: Doing Justice to the Classics” which “documents appropriations of Greco-Roman antiquity by hate groups,” conservatism is awash in appreciations for the classical world that are actually cover for white nationalist narratives. Based on the title of his new book, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate, you might think Dozier is focusing his attention on people such as Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer, or the crazies at the Neo-Nazi website stormfront.org. But in fact Dozier — and a panoply of prominent liberal institutions — aim to cast a much wider net.
For example, the Trump administration’s Executive Order 13967 (“Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture”), which sought to align federal buildings with the classical style intended by the Founders, is dangerous, because it was the preferred style of architecture for Hitler and Mussolini (a charge also alleged by contributors at Slate and The Guardian). Yet not only that, claims Dozier, but the Founders themselves built classically inspired buildings not because they admired them as objectively beautiful, but to send an “imperial” message to “displaced or exterminated” indigenous peoples. We do not admire classical architecture because it is good, the Vassar professor asserts, but “because we have been taught to find it so.”
Dozier censures the influence of classical sources such as Aristotle and Plato on the Founding because the ancient Greeks believed their culture to be superior and that there exist natural hierarchies. We see the supposed malign influence of this — and the connection to white supremacism — in the Constitution’s distribution of powers, which “institutionalized political hierarchy,” as well as the Founders’ promotion of homogeneity in such places as Federalist No. 2 written by John Jay.
Dozier thus casts aspersions at the entire Founding: “The men who articulated the founding principles of the United States did indeed turn to Greco-Roman antiquity to justify a social order that contemporary white nationalists would admire.”
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2025/11/21/the-left-thinks-western-civilization-itself-is-white-nationalist/
