Abstract
A feature of neo-conservative critiques during the course of this century, concerning public issues such as immigration and multicultural policy and Islamic terrorism, has been the use of a rhetori...
Highlights
History, as the papers in this volume show, can be used as a discourse of authority in a variety of ways
This paper examines one recent incident of the use of a highly charged trope of Classical history, the Fall of the Roman Empire, as a discourse of authority in current public debates on western multicultural policies, in relation to the tragic events of the Paris terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015
In reflexively conceiving Rome’s Fall as a cautionary trope at that particular point in time, they and their readers were susceptible to identifying European multiculturalism as a ready if rough analogy of ancient demographic movements and cultural shifts. The statements by these scholars are not political tracts, but their view of remote period of history seen as the precursor of the modern West—a Roman empire undone by insufficient defence of its values and territory in the face of foreign migration—has had a Classicising appeal to contemporary proponents of anti-immigration and anti-migration policies, which is deployed by Ferguson and approved by conservative commentators
Summary
As the papers in this volume show, can be used as a discourse of authority in a variety of ways.
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