Not the Templars again
There’s a quirk in the white supremacist movement that I was unaware of: it likes to play Medieval.
White supremacists explicitly celebrate Europe in the Middle Ages because they imagine that it was a pure, white, Christian place organized wholesomely around military resistance to outside, non-white, non-Christian, forces. Marchers in Charlottesville held symbols of the medieval Holy Roman Empire and of the Knights Templar. The Portland murderer praised “Vinland,” a medieval Viking name for North America, in order to assert historical white ownership over the landmass: Vinlander racists like to claim that whites are “indigenous” here on the basis of medieval Scandinavian lore. Similarly, European anti-Islamic bigots dress up in medieval costumes and share the “crying Templar” meme. Someone sprayed “saracen go home” and “deus vult”—a Latin phrase meaning “God wills it” and associated with the history of the Crusades—on a Scottish mosque. The paramilitary “Knights Templar International” is preparing for a race war. In tweets since locked behind private accounts, University of Reno students reacted to seeing classmate Peter Cvjetanovic at the Virginia tiki-torch rally, saying they knew him as the guy who said racist things in their medieval history classes.
Mark Twain could have told us this would happen. He called it “Sir Walter disease” and he despised it.
I thought back to other, less explicit ways that I’ve observed white supremacists engaging with the Middle Ages. I’m not sure we’re as ready to handle the racism when it lurks in the subtext and context, rather than when a bigot picks up a Templar shield. It’s easy to overlook both the depths of white-supremacist celebration of the Middle Ages and the ease with which these groups pluck out appealing nuggets of white-supremacist ideology from any product that lacks an explicit rejection of same.
For example, before it was taken offline, I would regularly read the white-supremacist discussion boards at Stormfront, scanning for medieval history content so I could better understand this dynamic. The posters, predictably, spend time celebrating their understanding of the spirit of the Crusades (treating them as a heroic Lost Cause) and gleefully retelling narratives of Jewish expulsion while denying that there was ever a wholesale massacre.
It’s too bad they don’t all watch cooking shows instead.
That same period is also known as the Dark Age. No Wonder it’s so appealing to fascists..
I was thinking that. It was a time of low technology and arduous travel, which kept travel and cultural exchange to a minimum – and the Renaissance explosion of interest in the classics hadn’t happened yet, so the church had fairly uncontested dominance over what people thought about and learned. Just what white supremacists like, I guess.
I was also reading recently that they are advocating the “classics”, believing that the old Greek and Roman empires were filled with lily white military leaders and citizens, and that any non-white people that would happen along would be immediately enslaved – or something. Anyway, they clearly needed better history teachers.
“rather than when a bigot picks up a Templar shield.”
OHH that’s what those dorky shields were supposed to resemble. I thought it was a Worlds of Warcraft thing.
I suppose these would be the same people complaining about the black Roman thing recently?
Don’t confuse demented white supremacist celebration of the Middle Ages with history.
Bjarte Foshauge,
No, the period was not known as the ‘Dark Ages”. That term refers to the few centuries immediately after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the period was ‘dark’ because of the lack of historical records. It’s a common misunderstanding.
Ophelia,
There was cultural exchange due to the Islamic invasions of North Africa and Southern Europe. The later Middle Ages were a period of rapid social and economic transformation, for example double entry bookkeeping and “Arabic” numbers transformed Western economies before the rediscovery of the ‘Classics’.
I didn’t say there was no cultural exchange, I said it was minimal.
Someone forgot knightly virtue, honour, and chivalry (yes, I’m well aware that it’s just a romanticization of reality in much the way the Tokugawa samurai were regarded, but still…)
It’s fucking sickening.
Sure, go out and rescue damsels in distress…dragons are often threatening our damsels, I hear.
I don’t find virtue, honor, and chivalry to actually be all that appealing. It usually ends up being self-righteous priggishness, and usually results in women being in a subordinate position.
The Knights Templar were quite literally militant old school Catholic warrior priests. I doubt they would look very approvingly at your common and garden variety white supremacist fuckhead as anything other than meat for the grinder unless they found the approved God quick smart and committed to a life of ascetic, celibate, barbarity.
I believe in the waning days of the Templars, many of them met their end roasted to death in their armour in European forests. Yes, they made that much of a pain in the arse of themselves.
Also, these guys seriously need to read some real history, not the wet dream stories that glorify just one side.
RJW
I stand corrected (Then again common usage and all that, so I’m not apologizing too much)
Bjarte Foshaug
Thanks for the acknowledgement. My point is that the term creates a false impression.
Ophelia,
Cultural exchange was far from minimal, large areas of Southern Europe were occupied by Muslims and the Crusaders learned much from their enemies.
Rob,
You might be confusing the Knights Templar with the Teutonic Knights. The Knights Templar were multi millionaires by modern standards, their power and weath was the cause of their downfall at the hands of the French King.
Iknklast,
Medieval Knights were usually the cause of a damsel’s distress, not their rescuers. Chivalry applied to their own class, the lower classes were fair game.
RJW, not so much confusion as you may think. The bit about roasting in armour, yeah Teutonic Knights. Although that said, the king of France burnt quite a few Knights Templar he owed money too on the pretext of them being heretics.
While the Templars certainly became a wealthy order, they did in fact start out quite impoverished and they were undoubtedly one of the great military forces of the time. Think my original comments stand.
Sort of the point I thought I was making; I guess it didn’t come across clearly.
RJW – well “minimal” isn’t an absolute, is it, so I don’t think it’s something you get to “correct” me on quite so briskly.
Iknklast, I’m reminded of one of the Merovingian kings (or maybe he was a Prince – I read it 30 years ago) who was chasing a women he had taken a ‘liking’ to while out riding. She ran through a low archway, he pursued and brained himself. Talk about target fixation.
Rob, I should look that up. It would be great in one of my plays (probably translated from a horse to something else, though. Most directors are leery of putting actual horses onstage in live theatre; they tend to be a bit…messy…and large).