Twitter was always toxic but lately it’s become a real cesspool. I created a new account the other day just so I can keep tabs on how recent news plays out over there, and before I had really even followed anyone there were racist dogwhistles and alt-right content right there on the timeline.

Also, the account you’re arguing with has a fairly high chance of being a bot.

That’s some great read.

Those muppets (alt right talking about antiquity) are a dime a dozen. You see a lot of them in 4chan, too. They look at the past with a “the grass was greener” mindset, cherry picking stuff to justify their political bullshit, without a single iot of critical thinking.

And they usually suck at understanding the past, as their cherry picking doesn’t allow them to get a picture of how and why things happened. They obsess over the Roman Empire and Sparta, but when you talk about the Republic or Athens they go into “lalala I’m not listening lalala” mode - because both contradict their discourse of “we need a strong rule, like people in the past, to fight against degeneracy”.

They’ll also often screech if you mention why Octavius adopted the title of “imperator” (emperor) instead of “rex” (king). Because guess what, once they acknowledge why people in Republican Rome saw kings with disdain (kingdom = primitive system and breeding grounds for tyranny), all their political discourse goes down the drain, so Octavius had to “sell” his stupid idea under a different name.

Don’t tell them about the Aurelian Moors, by the way. Or Caracalla’s familiar background. Or do tell them, if you enjoy seeing them screech.