Roman salute
[1] Originating from Jacques-Louis David's painting The Oath of the Horatii (1784), the gesture quickly developed a historically inaccurate association with Roman republican and imperial culture.
The gesture was further elaborated upon in popular culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in plays and films that portrayed the salute as an ancient Roman custom.
Since the end of World War II, displaying the Nazi variant of the salute has been a criminal offence in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.
The modern gesture consists of stiffly extending the right arm frontally and raising it roughly 135 degrees from the body's vertical axis, with the palm of the hand facing down and the fingers stretched out and touching each other.
The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.
[6] The images closest in appearance to a raised arm salute are scenes in Roman sculpture and coins which show an adlocutio, acclamatio, adventus, or profectio.
[9] An example of a salutational gesture of imperial power can be seen in the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta which follows certain guidelines set out by oratory scholars of his day.
In the Tennis Court Oath (1792) the National Assembly are all depicted with their arms outstretched, united in an upward gesture comparable to that of the Horatii, as they swear to create a new constitution.
But unlike his previous paintings representing republican ideals, in Eagle Standards the oath of allegiance is pledged to a central authority figure, and in imperial fashion.
[24] On June 22, 1942, at the urging of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Congress passed Public Law 77-623, which codified the etiquette used to display and pledge allegiance to the flag.
[32] Inspired by the Italo-Turkish War, in which Italy conquered the North African Ottoman province of Tripolitania, Pastrone pursued a politically volatile issue.
[37] D'Annunzio has been described as the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism,[38] having invented many of the theatrical rituals, including the salute and the balcony address, that became part of the movement's symbolic repertoire .
[37] Achille Starace, the Italian Fascist Party secretary, pushed for measures to make the use of the Roman salute generally compulsory, denouncing hand shaking as bourgeois.
[40] The symbolic value of the gesture grew, and it was felt that the proper salute "had the effect of showing the fascist man's decisive spirit, which was close to that of ancient Rome".
In 1938, the party abolished handshaking in films and theater, and on November 21, 1938, the Ministry of Popular Culture issued orders banning the publishing of photographs showing people shaking hands.
[46] The compulsory use of the Hitler salute for all public employees followed a directive issued by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick on July 13, 1933, one day before the ban on all non-Nazi parties.
[48] The military were required to use the Hitler salute only while singing the Horst Wessel Lied and German national anthem, and in non-military encounters such as greeting members of the civilian government.
[56] In Greece in 1936, when Ioannis Metaxas and his 4th of August Regime took power, an almost identical salute was adopted – first by the National Youth Organization and later by the government as well as common people – and used even while fighting against Italy and Germany in WW2.
In Spain, in the early 1930s, CEDA, the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas ("Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups") adopted a form of the Roman salute.
[64] During the Vichy regime in France, the Roman salute was regularly used by members of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne.
Famed poet Ezra Pound used the salute in praise of his adopted country of Italy when he returned in 1958 after being released from an insane asylum in the United States.
[69] When the Italian Social Movement had its greatest electoral gains since the Second World War in June 1971, crowds at the party headquarters cheered and gave the outstretched arm salute.
"[72] In 2005, Italian footballer Paolo Di Canio created controversy by twice using the gesture to salute S.S. Lazio fans, first in a match against archrivals A.S. Roma and then against A.S. Livorno Calcio (a club inclined to leftist politics).
"[77] A video of the event was posted on the Web site of the newspaper La Repubblica that showed Brambilla extending her right arm upward in what appears to be a fascist salute.
[91] Opposition figures like Elly Schlein and Nicola Fratoianni condemned National Youth's actions and called on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for clarification while right-wing politician Italo Bocchino defended them and dismissed Fanpage's investigation as "garbage".
Golden Dawn was accused by its opponents of being neo-Nazi, but the party denies this and claims that the salute was ancient Greek or Roman, and that it was used as a tribute to Ioannis Metaxas and his 4th of August Regime which led Greece against the foreign occupation forces in WWII.
[115] Hundreds of supporters in 2010 delivered straight-arm salutes outside the funeral for its founder and former leader Eugène Terre'Blanche, who was murdered by two black farm workers over an alleged wage dispute.
[121] In the 1951 film Quo Vadis, Nero's repeated use of the salute at mass rallies explicitly presents the Roman Empire as a fascist military state.
[128] The film portrays a futuristic totalitarian society modeled after the fascist state, including black uniforms, book burnings, and thought control.
In the episode, Captain Kirk and members of his crew are transported to a parallel universe in which the United Federation of Planets has been replaced by an empire characterized by sadistic violence and torture, genocide, and unquestioning obedience to authority.
