Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and many more…
These people had beliefs and worldviews that were so horribly, by today’s standards, that calling them fascist would be huge understatement. And they followed through by committing a lot of evil.
Aren’t we basically glorifying the Hitlers of centuries past?
I know, historians always say that one should not judge historical figures by contemporary moral standards. But there’s a difference between objectively studying history and actually glorifying these figures.
Murderous people are great if they’re spreading your culture and bringing your country prosperity. They’re terrible when you’re the one being murdered.
Hitler is particularly bad because he murdered out of plain racism. Exterminating a people was about as important as conquering territory. He didn’t kill “for he country”, he killed because he wanted to and he killed for the country.
I doubt Genghis Khan invaded Europe to get rid it white people. He sought empire, and didn’t much care about the peoples he murdered. He’s still considered evil where I’m from, though. It all depends what side of the fight you were on.
I think the trend to criticise historical figures based on today’s standards is a rather recent one. There’s a reason all those statues were built to slavers and rampaging murderers, even after they’ve died.
This stuff still comes up today, though. For instance, the Belgians wanted to mint a special coin to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon (obviously a bad guy if you’re not French) but the French objected, not wanting a valid 2 euro coin that celebrated their defeat. As a result, Belgium altered the coin (making it only legal currency within Belgium) so France couldn’t veto it. Funnily enough, the French didn’t seem to consider Napoleon very controversial when it comes to their coin commemorating him.
Plus, most of these figures don’t have much objective history written about them anyway. Stories putting Caesar in a negative light would’ve needed to come from Caesar himself, because he was the most influential author about his own life. He also just made up tons of shit during his failed attempts at conquest.
Historic people aren’t often remembered for who they were, but rather for what they represent. For Caesar, that was transforming the political design of the Roman Empire. For Genghis Khan, it was the mongol invasion. For Columbus, it was the start of European interest in the Americas. The people are just a metaphor for the things they represent or set in motion. Even people considered to be good in general did bad things, like keep slaves or abuse their spouses, but it’s not really about them as a person most of the time.