Melbourne

I recently learned about fasces too! Its a bundle of sticks and the iconography goes back centuries (to the Roman Empire at least). And some allegedly non fascist countries continue to use the fasces in official iconography - the wiki article has heaps of examples from the US.

I went down this rabbit hole after watching some videos on the silly antics in the UK parliament including someone trying to walk off with the mace and learning the mace evolved from the fasces and why it's a symbol of power.

Unrelated but did you know until 1998 if you wanted to make a point of order in the House of Commons, you had to wear a top hat? (this was so you could be easily distinguished by the Speaker amongst any chaos. In fact, just before that clip the Speaker actually said "get the hat, I'll hear him. Otherwise I can't", in an already thoroughly farcical debate on banning the use of French in Parliament as a response to the French trying to ban the use of English derived words in their Parliament... how did I get there, I think it was about learning that vestiges of Norman French still remain in the formal parliamentary process. From the 1400s!!!! Okay, I've digressed significantly...)