Nero Had More Class

Peloni:  It is as if it were Trudeau’s purpose to try and enact the myth surrounding Nero, something which was so loathsome that even Nero did the complete opposite.

by Robert Spencer | November 25, 2024

Pro-Hamas demonstrators ran amok in Montreal Friday night, attacking police, burning cars, breaking windows, and in general displaying their profound understanding of Allah’s command to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60). The demonstrators, secure in the certainty of their own righteousness even as they sowed chaos and destruction in the once-charming Canadian city, burned Benjamin Netanyahu in effigy and threw what Fox News described as “small explosive devices and metal items” at police. And where was Justin Trudeau amid all this? He was boogieing the night away at a Taylor Swift concert. Yes, really.

Nero had more class. Contrary to legend, he didn’t exactly fiddle when Rome burned. When the notorious fire broke out in his capital city in 64 AD, the Roman emperor who has become famous for his indifference to his people’s suffering was in Antium, a coastal city 32 miles away. Reality is usually more prosaic and less interesting than myth, and so it is in this case: far from shrugging off the fire and practicing his instrument, Nero hurried back to Rome and immediately threw himself into efforts to bring relief to the people of Rome. The city was full of people whose homes had been destroyed, and Nero offered them refuge in his private gardens and the city’s public buildings. He compelled the towns around Rome to donate grain to feed the refugees.

None of that is remembered. All people today know, if they’ve heard of Nero at all, is that he was a callous autocrat who was cavalier in the face of a catastrophe befalling his people. This claim, which may have some truth to it, goes almost all the way back to the time of Nero himself. The first-century historian Tacitus, who was around eight years old at the time of the fire, wrote much later that Nero’s “measures, popular as their character might be, failed of their effect; for the report had spread that, at the very moment when Rome was aflame, he had mounted his private stage, and, typifying the ills of the present by the calamities of the past, had sung? the Destruction of Troy.”

One of Tacitus’ contemporaries, Suetonius, wrote that Nero “viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas,” which wasn’t true, as Nero had not been in Rome at all during the fire. Suetonius added that the emperor “sang the whole of the Sack of Ilion in his regular stage costume.”

Those two accounts are the seeds of the Nero-fiddled-while-Rome-burned legend. It is not at all certain that Nero really did sing about the destruction of cities during the fire in Rome, and Suetonius in particular casts doubt on the entire claim by inaccurately placing Nero in Rome during the fire. Nonetheless, even if Nero was callous and indifferent to his people, he had nothing on Justin Trudeau.

While Montreal burned Friday night, Trudeau was not calling in extra police, or the military, or whatever force that might have been warranted to quell the rioting in the quickest and most efficient manner possible. In fact, he wasn’t even on the job at all. Instead, Trudeau was caught on video attending a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto at the same time that the riots were going on in Montreal. The videos show Trudeau waving his arms and swaying to the music with joyous abandon, and even singing along, as he stands in a crowd of girls who generally appear to be about thirty years younger than he is.

Trudeau hadn’t gone to boogie among his fellow Swifties after quelling the riots in Montreal. He hadn’t done anything about the riots in Montreal at all. Nero was a better ruler, as he is on record making efforts to alleviate the suffering of his people. And if the claims of Tacitus and Suetonius were true, Nero’s sin was singing classical epic poetry about the destruction of earlier cities during the fire. At least Nero’s desire to indulge his artistic bent during a time of tragedy remained on-point. Trudeau, by contrast, was bizarrely indulging his love for bubblegum pop music manufactured and marketed for girls half his age while pro-jihad thugs ran wild in the city that was once the jewel of his nation.

Canada could use a Nero. At least he made efforts to show he cared when his people suffered. That’s not a priority for Justin Trudeau, however, and why should it be? Since when have leftist authoritarians ever cared if their people suffer? Making their people suffer is Job One for them.