Ethan Scanlon, Leverhulme Study Abroad Student at the British School at Rome from October 2025 to July 2026, shares insights into the development of his research project, “What’s past is present: A critical multimodal analysis into the use of Classics in the Iconography of the Italian far right”.
Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è, bisogna che tutto cambi
‘If we want everything to stay as it is, everything must change’
(Il Gattopardo – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa)
Even when things change, it is often surprising how little is different. My project examines the appropriation and misuse of Roman (and occasionally Greek) antiquity in the visual culture and iconography of the Italian far right. Through critical analysis, it explores how references to the classical past have been mobilised to construct political identities and ideologies from the Fascist period to the present.
References to the ancient past have long formed part of political discourse and visual culture in Italy. However, the appropriation of classical history by extremist political movements can distort both our understanding of antiquity and contemporary political discourse. I trace the use of classical iconography in contemporary Italian far-right discourse through posters, manifestos, newspapers, cards, and more recent forms of communication such as online posts and videos. The project does not document these materials in order to celebrate or reproduce them, but rather to understand critically how classical imagery has been deployed within extremist political communication.
My research traces how classical imagery and narratives have been appropriated and transformed across different periods, from the Fascist regime through the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), Alleanza Nazionale, and contemporary far-right commemorative practices, including those associated with Acca Larenzia. Most of my time is spent in archives, libraries and the street – the three main places where I engage with the visual manifestation of political discourse through image and text. Each of them offers a different perspective of understanding far-right discourse, and whilst the materials I view within these locations are inherently different, due to their distinctions both spatially and temporally, they often draw from the same texts and iconographies.
I have also become increasingly interested in the work of Henri Lefebvre, particularly his writing on the rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean cities and the production of lived social space. Engaging with Rome’s contemporary materiality, I have begun to investigate how far-right posters, graffiti, and symbols are physically embedded within the city’s built environment. To this end, I have spent time walking Rome’s streets, documenting the visual traces of the far right: graffiti, posters, and stickers that, despite their ostensibly ephemeral nature, often exhibit a surprising permanence. These walks have revealed sites of ongoing political contestation, where walls become arenas for a continual dialogue—and struggle—between competing groups wielding spray paint and stickers. The territorial marking of particular “zones” has made visible which political allegiances are most active in different neighbourhoods, while also revealing the spaces where these boundaries become blurred. I have returned to many of these locations several times. Although the posters often changed and the graffiti was altered or overwritten, the visual culture of Rome felt recognisable and unchanged.
Their semi-permanent existence may not have been realised in the rhythms described by Lefebvre, though it illustrated the fluid movement of extremist far-right discourses that remained at the forefront of the physical social space of Rome. The permanent feature of such semi-permanent material made clear how malleable the socio-political architecture of Rome is, and often how much it changes within the seen space. In turn, since then, I have developed this work into a paper and website in collaboration with the BSR and King’s College London, to map out the contestations of discourse, understand the fluid movements of political space, and illustrate to a wider audience how public space continues to be shaped by tangible forms of communication.
As I reflect on my time at the BSR, and in Rome more broadly, I think back to how I began this year, how much has changed, and yet how much still feels familiar. Perhaps this reflects the rhythms of the Mediterranean city described by Lefebvre. It may also suggest the persistence—and continual reinvention—of Fascist-era imagery and narratives within sections of the contemporary Italian far right. Investigating these continuities through the lens of classical reception and visual culture has been one of the central aims of my research. My time at the BSR has not only deepened this investigation but has also reinforced the value of studying the enduring dialogue between the classical past and contemporary political culture.
