viking celtic pagan

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viking nazi Wagner ring flight of the valkyries

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AN 10 25

At a press conference announcing that the suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk had been detained, FBI director Kash Patel ended his speech with a personal message to his “brother”, saying: “We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”

Many people commenting on the press conference reacted to this confusing reference to Valhalla with a mixture of amusement and disdain, with some pointing out the contradiction of eulogizing a Christian nationalist with reference to the pagan afterlife.

For scholars of the Vikings, Patel’s reference to Valhalla looked like something far more sinister. To understand why, we need to know both what Valhalla meant to the Vikings, and what it means in political discourse today.

The Norse peoples had a developed concept of the afterlife. The desirable destination for Norse warriors was Valhalla, the hall of the slain, where Odin watched over his band of chosen warriors as they prepared for Ragnarök, the world-destroying battle against the giants. Only those who died a heroic death in combat were brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries.

Those who died by sickness, old age or accident – or who had committed murder and other dishonourable crimes – seem to have been excluded from this martial afterlife. Some believed that you could cheat the Norse gods by arranging to be buried with deliberately worn and damaged weapons as if you had seen heavy combat. There’s a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is that in the 1930s the concept of Valhalla, along with the image of the heroic Viking and many of the symbols of Norse mythology, had a profound appeal to Nazi thought leaders. They looked to Norse mythology as a survival of a wider “Germanic” culture that had been erased by Judeo-Christian dominance.

The Nordic “race” was held up as the Aryan ideal. Norse cultural remnants were used to add legitimacy to the idea of a glorious German past. Heinrich Himmler in particular repurposed Norse symbols for use by the SS.

Today, many white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups continue to brand themselves using a widening range of symbols taken from Norse mythology. One aspect of Norse culture that has gained increasing prominence in the past few decades is the specific co-opting of Valhalla by those who are prepared to kill, and die, in the cause of “protecting” an endangered white supremacy.

Valhalla in terrorist manifestos

The most chilling example of the co-option of the phrase “see you in Valhalla” is found in the manifestos published by far-right terrorists in the wake of their atrocities.

In 2019, Brenton Tarrant carried out mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. He published a rambling manifesto in which he attempted to justify his actions, and touted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory which holds that Jewish elites are deliberately engineering the replacement of white populations through immigration.

This has since become a far-right talking point and was pushed by Charlie Kirk on his show. Tarrant signed off his diatribe against multiculturalism and “white genocide” by saying “Goodbye, god bless you all and I will see you in Valhalla.”

Tarrant in turn influenced other far-right terrorists. One such terrorist, Peyton Gendron, was convicted of the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022 in which ten black Americans were murdered. Gendron plagiarised much of his 180-page manifesto, and similarly ends his screed with the statement: “I hope to see you in Valhalla.”

By invoking Valhalla, these terrorists are attempting to cast themselves as warriors in the Viking tradition. There is, of course, nothing remotely heroic about gunning down unarmed civilians.

But the point is that this reference doesn’t require any understanding of the Norse tradition. In this context it comes directly from the Nazi’s fetishisation of violent death to secure the racial purity of Germany.

From terrorists to the FBI

Rather than borrowing from extremist discourse, Patel may have been influenced by the use of “til Valhalla” by the US marines to honour fallen comrades – including those who died by suicide. This is a use which has been traced back to the influence of Norwegian Nato forces in Afghanistan, who may have used “til Valhalla” as a kind of battle cry. Of course, the optics of using a military honorific to commemorate the assassination of a civilian is problematic in itself.

Patel’s “see you in Valhalla” was much closer in its wording to the sign off used by far-right terrorists – but even this phrasing was unlikely to have been lifted directly from extremists. It is more likely an example of a phenomenon often observed in the study of the far-right online ecosystem, which is the seepage of extreme right discourse into more mainstream spaces.

Neo-Nazi groups use memes, s--posting and humour as a deliberate strategy to seed increasingly extreme ideas into groups amenable to their message.

It isn’t hard to find references to Valhalla commercialized, repackaged as inspirational Viking quotes for MAGA consumption, referencing cancel culture, or even using Norse video games as a gateway to white supremacy. In this way, the more mainstream right often ends up sharing and amplifying extremist messaging.

Patel’s reference to Valhalla was at the very least a huge misstep by a government official trying to appeal to the MAGA base and elevate Kirk’s tragic killing into a heroic warrior’s death.

While he may not have made his reference to Valhalla in knowledge of its association with far-right terrorism, it nevertheless served as a signal to white supremacists. As reported elsewhere, there was a lot of engagement from the extreme right on social media, but their posts tended to ridicule Patel.

His words prompted memes on social media playing on the apparent absurdity of someone of Patel’s ethnicity cosplaying as a Viking. And among this racially tinged mockery, there was also some revelling in the fact that a stock phrase of violent white supremacy had found its way into the mouth of the director of the FBI.

Tom Birkett, Professor of Old English and Old Norse, *University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-racists-cynically-market-hate-by-hijacking-mainstream-symbolism/

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How racists cynically market hate by hijacking mainstream symbolism

Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos January 14, 2020

The gun that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, showed off on Instagram this week was intended to grab people’s attention: An AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adorned with dubious Christian “Crusader” decorations, sold by a Florida gunmaker who assures buyers that they are “inspired by some of the most fierce warriors who fought in nearly 200 years of epic conflicts known as the Crusades.”

In addition to the pseudo-medieval decorations, the gun (called “The Crusader”) featured a magazine decorated with a caricature image of Hillary Clinton behind bars.

A Trump Jr. spokesperson told The Hill: “The Instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals.”

However, the gun itself and its decorations were what caught a lot of people’s attention, since the Crusades and medieval mythology are yet another field of mainstream culture that has been appropriated by the racist alt-right in recent years. The way alt-right activists deploy such symbology—ironically, with full awareness of its mainstream meaning, behind which the people wielding them cynically hide by claiming that the people offended or disturbed by their use are simply oversensitive liberals—is similar to the alt-right’s similar appropriation of such mainstream symbols as the “OK” hand signal, or the cartoon Pepe the Frog and its permutations.

As with all these ploys, it’s frequently difficult to discern the user’s motives. Is it an innocent display intended to invoke its established mainstream meaning? Or is it a surreptitious (and cynical) expression of affiliation with racist ideology?

The ensuing confusion has a twin effect: It simultaneously creates chaos within the realm of mainstream discourse, while it provides cover for the spread of that racist ideology and its organizing.

“The adoption of these symbols is meant largely as a way ofsignaling anti-Muslim sentiment in particular, but also this notion that Christianity needs to retake western civilization,” Howard Graves, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told CNN.

Trump’s spokesman told CNN there was no connection, saying that “Symbols on firearms depicting various historical warriors are extremely common within the 2nd Amendment community.”

The gunmaker, Rare Breed Firearms, responded angrily: “It’s objectively silly and dishonest for leftwing groups, like the SPLC, to claim that this symbol on our Crusader model has anything to do with hate or an extremist ideology,” said CEO Cole Lelux. “In other words, these people have no idea what they’re talking about and should apologize for their outrageous smears.”

When Rare Breed first began making the gun, it explained the religious connotations of its decorations to the Orlando Sentinel in xenophobic terms: “They believe America and much of the world is threatened by Islamic terrorism and the Crusader is a symbol of shared Christian values and the right to defend themselves, he said. The safety selector that controls the Crusader’s trigger has three settings: Peace, War and God Wills It.”

Trump’s gun featured an etching of a Bible verse as well as the Latin phrase “Deus Vult,” another medieval term meaning “God wills it”—a phrase with an ominous quality, since the alt-right ideologues latching onto Crusader mythology have adopted it as their personal battle cry. It appeared on the streets ofCharlottesville in 2017, and still crops up regularly in far-right demonstrations involving such hate groups as the Proud Boys.

It turned up recently at the scene of the attempted firebombing of a Planned Parenthood women’s health clinic in Newark, Delaware. An 18-year-old man named Samuel Gulick spray-painted “Deus Vult” on an exterior wall before he threw a lit incendiary device into the building, police said.

Police investigators were able to identify Gulick through a combination of video evidence and his social media posts, in which he frequently used “Deus Vult” and ranted against abortion. More broadly,Gulick eagerly participated in alt-right ideology, using a Pepe-esque “Groyper” cartoon as his online avatar and posting viciously anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT sentiments.

One post featured a link to an article about transgender girl, on which he commented: “Hans, get the flamethrower.”

“The Nazis said killing millions of Jews was a national health issue. Democrats are using the same excuse to kill American children,” Gulick wrote in another post. “When will we start shooting? Its about time we kill these genocidal demons.”

His social media posts were filled with references to the Crusaders, as were those of another teenager charged last August in a strikingly similar case. Justin Olsen, an 18-year-old Ohio man, was charged with threatening federal officers for posts fantasizing about the murders of FBI agents after the 1993 tragedy involving the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Olsen operated an iFunny page titled “Army of Christ” adorned with images of Christian Crusade knights.

White nationalist fanboys’ love affair with the Crusades dates primarily back to 2011, when Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik published a manifesto titled “2083—A European Declaration of Independence,” adorned with Crusader imagery and demanding a “Second Crusade” in which Muslims would be driven out of European nations—just before setting off a truck bomb in downtown Oslo that killed eight people, and then murdering 69 teenage campers at a socialist youth camp.

At his trial, it emerged that Breivik claimed to be a member of a modern-day group of “Knights Templar,” the 12th-century military order. According to Breivik, an April 2002 meeting of the “Knights” in London featured pseudonyms for the participants such as “Richard the Lionheart” and “Sigurd the Crusader.”

More recently, the Christchurch shooter claimed a similar kind of affiliation in his manifesto, and the weapons he used to murder 51 people in March 2019 were scrawled with references to crusading knights. Fittingly, he also notoriously flashed the “OK” white-power symbol with his hands.

The Crusades have also been adopted by a broad range of alt-right activists, notably at neo-Nazi websites such as The Daily Stormer, where pro-Trump memes featuring Crusade imagery have been common. The debate has even made its way into academia. As Joseph Livingstone explained in The New Republic, all of these reinterpretations are travesties of history—and the internet has played a critical role in producing them.

Hijacking vaguely understood religious belief systems for their own ends is nothing new for the American radical right. In the early 1980s, a number of neo-Nazis—choosing to reject the racist “Christian Identity” movement popular among their ranks at the time, on the grounds that Jesus was Jewish and therefore tainted—instead decided to adopt certain ancient Nordic religions as their “true faith,” most notably the Odinist religion Asatru.

That trend has intensified in recent years, thanks in no small part to the increasing reach of far-right ideologies on the Internet. It’s also spread globally, and racists deploy it as a kind of cynical shield in much the same way as other appropriations from the mainstream.

Asatru recently turned up in news stories about a couple of Army National Guardsmen in Georgia who were given the boot after their activities as neo-Nazis were uncovered. Active in a local chapter of Asatru Folk Assembly, described by the SPLC as “perhaps this country’s largest neo-Völkisch hate group,” the men complained that they were being persecuted for their faith.

Ex-Guardsman Trent East told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is not a racist—rather, he’s simply interested in his ancestry and worshiping as his forebears did.

“The whole race thing started with me finding Asatru or Odinism or whatever you want to call it and seeing that as a better option than Christianity as a spirituality,” he said. “I’ve just never been a fan of Christianity, and so seeing a faith that was about my ethnic roots was something I could get into a little more.”

However, as the AJC noted, East’s social media profile—much of it deleted after he was exposed—told a very different story. It included “numerous memes and slogans popular among white supremacists, and his contacts include neo-Nazis and other extremists. After his doxxing, East opened an account on VK.com, a Russian social media platform popular among the racist far right.” He also attended a speech by alt-right godfather Richard Spencer in 2017, toting a sign bearing white nationalist slogans.

For white nationalists, disguising the vile bigotry inherent in their ideology is critical to their ongoing project to normalize their belief systems within the mainstream of society—which is why so many of them go to such lengths to deny their involvement or the existence of the innate racism in their movement.

As social media’s wide-open global distribution of ideas has taken hold, the work of camouflaging their beliefs has become increasingly sophisticated—particularly the way it hijacks popular internet behaviors such as trolling and the use of ironic language as both vehicles for ideas as well as means of intimidating and threatening their critics. This is central to the alt-right’s appeal to its targeted core demographic—namely, young white males between the ages of 12 and 30.

Talia Lavin at GQ acutely observes that Donald Trump Jr.’s exercise in indulging this mindset on his Instagram account—intentional, accidental, or otherwise—fits in neatly with the White House’s current push to war in the Middle East, one in which the underlying premise is that “war is holy”: “It’s a Knight Templar with an AR-15; it’s Arabic script as a signal of enmity. That’s the signal Donald Trump Jr. was sending, with his snug Crusader gun-helmet. And it may be ensconced even deeper in the halls of power, with those formally entrusted with our nation’s security under the Trump regime.”

The machinery of hate thus encompasses both the individual nebbishes—hiding in the dark corners of the Internet, ever-fearful about revealing themselves as the face of hate even as they revel in it as trolls—and their willing, if not always conscious, enablers who walk the world’s halls of power, as well as everyone in between. Mainstream observers, particularly those working in media, often feel confused by the resulting crossfire—unsure about the meanings of the wielded symbology, most likely feeling “left out”—and so dismiss the talk as functionally meaningless.

It’s not, particularly for the racist ideologues who organize and spread their hatefulness behind the resulting fog and smoke they throw up for the rest of us. Donald Trump Jr. may not have intended to send an encouraging, approving signal to white nationalists—it’s likely it never crossed his less-than-a-steel-trap mind—but intentions matter little in this arena.

That’s not how things work in the world of white nationalists. Just as with his father, these kinds of signals are received rapturously as proof that the Trumps are on their side, and that their values are shared by people at the very apex of the social ladder: thus, they feel deeply empowered. Any later denials are laughed at and excused as “what he has to do.”

The key to the game, no matter who’s playing, is plausible deniability for everybody involved. The alt-right has mastered its use as a way to market and spread the movement’s hate.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-mask-on-the-beltway-medias-embrace-of-white-nationalism-keeps-rearing-its-ugly-head/

One of the important factors in the rise of white nationalism is the way it has been normalized within the national media — treated at best as an afterthought, a purely fringe phenomenon that we really needn’t worry our heads about, with coverage often accompanied by warm fuzzy features remarking on how normal these neo-Nazi types can seem in real life.

People both inside and outside the media business often wind up scratching their heads in wonder that this sort of thing can happen even in an age when there is ample information on the toxicity that white nationalism represents. But the more we learn about the alt-right and its tentacles, the clearer it’s become that there are people situated within the media mainstream who in reality are silently sympathetic to these causes, and they are influencing the decisions over what gets covered and how.

A recent BuzzFeed piece by Rosie Gray does an excellent job of exposing how white nationalism has managed to insinuate itself inside the Beltway media ecosystem, mainly through a coterie of ostensibly mainstream conservatives who, it seems, are extraordinarily tolerant of neo-Nazism. It recounts the saga of Katie McHugh, an alt-right provocateur who moved in the right-wing Washington circles of Breitbart, The Daily Caller, GotNews, and WorldNetDaily, and who now deeply regrets the error of her ways.

It’s not entirely clear from the piece that McHugh has come to terms with the deeper issues around the work she did in helping propagate a vicious brand of white nationalism surreptitiously, under the guise of “conservatism.” It’s certainly not clear that she has yet reckoned with the real damage she did and her obligation now to do what she can to repair it, but time will tell on that front.

On the other hand, she clearly is regretful for her past actions, which is where everyone needs to start on the road to recovery from the grip of hateful ideologies. And she deserves credit for taking that biggest of all steps.

She also has started out by performing what is probably a huge public service in exposing much of the inner workings of the Beltway media white nationalist coterie. Editors and other reporters who operate with supposedly mainstream credentials are shown to be co-players in the white nationalist propaganda they all engaged in, though they all deny doing so.

Appropriately enough, the nexus of this coterie is none other than Tucker Carlson, both his Daily Caller news operation, of which he is co-founder but no longer publisher, as well as his daily Fox News program. As McHugh describes it, the vast majority of the surreptitious white nationalist organizing occurred within the ranks of Daily Caller staffers, heavily flanked by a full complement of Breitbart writers.

Some of the more prominent white nationalist movement figures—such as Kevin DeAnna, McHugh’s former boyfriend, who has long been on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center for his youthful organization of campus white nationalists in the 2000s—apparently operated more on the periphery, while their close friends occupied media positions inside the Beltway.

McHugh, you may recall, was fired from Breitbart for an overtly racist tweet about Muslims (“There would be no terror attacks in the UK if Muslims didn’t live there”). Of course, it was not actually the most racist thing she had ever tweeted out, but her timing was indiscreet, and she got caught in a media crossfire and was shown the door after having been a protégé of Steve Bannon’s, all while attending truly weird neopagan events:

McHugh sometimes accompanied DeAnna on weekend trips down to the Wolves’ headquarters for what they called a “moot” — a ceremony in which the assembled Wolves would smear ash on their bodies around a fire and give what McHugh described as “dramatic speeches” aboutself-sufficiencyand relying on the other group members. They would then sit around the fire and drink beers.

The Wolves placed a heavy emphasis on masculinity. The women would prepare food for the gatherings earlier in the day before the moot commenced, according to McHugh. The Wolves were into a “Centurion Method” of physical fitness; a video still on YouTube shows DeAnna and Paul Waggener, one of the founders of the group who used the pseudonym “Grimnir,” taking turns lifting up the trunk of a car filled with cement blocks, scrambling around on a bunch of debris, and squatting while holding logs.

What we also learn is that there is a reason the same fellows grunting around campfires to establish their masculinity are eager viewers of Tucker Carlson: his news operation has provided a home for a number of them. Indeed, Snopes.com last year explored the striking extent to which Daily Caller writers have expressed white-nationalist views. Now it’s also clear why that is.

There is a reason that white nationalists avidly watch Carlson’s nightly Fox program in hopes of gleaning talking points and ideas. There is a reason the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer’s favorite pundit is Carlson (Andrew Anglin calls him “literally our greatest ally”). There is a reason the chat boards and other white nationalist haunts positively hum with chatter over Carlson’s TV broadcasts (“Tucker is a national treasure and will be the catalyst for real social change”; “At best, he’s a gateway for us and they know it”).

Of course, Carlson is not alone in the Beltway media in promoting white nationalist talking points. His cohort at Fox Business, Lou Dobbs—one of Donald Trump’s favorite pundits—mouths an endless stream of white nationalist and authoritarian talking points as well.

However, it’s obvious that Carlson’s sphere extends well beyond just the frame of the Fox network, and into a much darker world altogether. Nor is he alone.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/a-fantasy-medieval-scholars-educate-white-nationalists-on-their-pure-white-europe-claims/

White nationalists who have reached back into medieval history to justify their bigotry are finding themselves confronted by scholars who state they are reading it all wrong, reports the New York Times.

In a deep dive into history and a culture appropriated by young white men who feel they have a champion in Donald Trump since he was elected president in 2016, the Times reports that historians are pushing back at “a rising tide of far-right extremists” who have taken to the streets in protests and attacks.

“Since the 2016 presidential election, scholars have hotly debated the best way to counter the ‘weaponization’ of the Middle Ages by a rising tide of far-right extremists, whether it’s white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va., displayingmedieval symbols or the white terrorist who murdered 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand,using weapons inscribed with references to the Crusades,” the report states.

Noting the use of “shields evoking the Knights Templar or holding banners with Anglo-Saxon runes” during the Charlottesville protests, one scholar said the nationalists are misguided.

“Medieval Studies always wants to be relevant,” explained Ruth Mazo Karras, a historian at Trinity College, Dublin, and president of the Medieval Academy of America. “But now we’ve become relevant in the wrong way.”

“A week after Charlottesville, the Medieval Academy and 28 other scholarly groups released a statement condemning the ‘fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality’,” the Times reports. “Some medievalists overhauled their teaching, discussing misappropriations of history along with the history itself. Suddenly, professors began worrying about how to respond to students who might bring up white nationalist themes in class — or who might assume that medievalists themselves are white supremacists.'

'In Europe, academic study of the Middle Ages developed in tandem with a romantic nationalism that rooted the nation-state in an idealized past populated by Anglo-Saxons and other supposedly distinct ‘races,’” the report continues. “In the United States, universities, cultural institutions and wealthy elites drew on Gothic architecture, heraldry and other medieval trappings to ground American identity in a noble (and implicitly white) European history. So did Southern slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan.”

According to the report, scholars are also at each other’s throats over how the history is taught, with one scholar, Cord Whitaker, an assistant professor of English at Wellesley College stating, “It’s about asserting the racial and political innocence of the Middle Ages. For medievalists to try to protect the field from engagement with race is ultimately to try to withdraw from the world.”

You can read more here.

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5, 2019

Each May, some 3,000 people descend on Kalamazoo, Mich., for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, which brings together academics and enthusiasts for four days of scholarly panels, performances and after-hours mead drinking.

But in recent years, the gathering affectionately known as “K’zoo” — and the field of medieval studies itself — has been shadowed by conflicts right out of the 21st century.

Since the 2016 presidential election, scholars have hotly debated the best way to counter the “weaponization” of the Middle Ages by a rising tide of far-right extremists, whether it’s white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va., displaying medieval symbols or the white terrorist who murdered 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, using weapons inscribed with references to the Crusades.

And hanging over it all is an even more fraught question: Does medieval studies have a white supremacy problem of its own?

To some scholars, the answer is yes, and not just because the field is overwhelmingly white. Scholarship on the Middle Ages, they argue, helped create the idea of white European superiority, and still bolsters it today. There have been calls to “decolonize” medieval studies by confronting the structural racism that has kept both nonwhite scholars and nonwhite perspectives outside its gates.

On the other side are those who see the field as under siege by activists seeking to replace scholarship with ritualistic denunciations of white male privilege, pursued with a with-us-or-against-us zeal.

There have been vitriolic blog exchanges, expletive-laced social media conflagrations and conference blowups. (Some members of the group Medievalists of Color have announced they will be boycotting this year’s Kalamazoo conference, which begins on Thursday.) Facebook groups have splintered amid charges and countercharges of bullying, cybermobbing and infiltration by trolls.

In the middle are the broad mass of medievalists, who may sympathize with one camp or the other, but mostly want to stay out of the fray.

“People don’t become medievalists because they want to be political,” said Richard Utz, a literary scholar at Georgia Tech and president of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism. “Most are monkish creatures who just want to live in their cells and write their manuscripts.”

The term “medieval” came into use in the 19th century, to refer to Europe from roughly 500 to 1500, between the end of the Roman Empire and the rise of modernity. But while the field may seem divorced from the contemporary world, its own origins were hardly apolitical.

In Europe, academic study of the Middle Ages developed in tandem with a romantic nationalism that rooted the nation-state in an idealized past populated by Anglo-Saxons and other supposedly distinct “races.”

In the United States, universities, cultural institutions and wealthy elites drew on Gothic architecture, heraldry and other medieval trappings to ground American identity in a noble (and implicitly white) European history. So did Southern slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan.

Today, the field is sprawling and interdisciplinary, and includes historians, literary scholars, art historians, philologists, archaeologists and others. Its boundaries have expanded past its traditional focus on Northwest Europe to include the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and even, among those advocating a “global Middle Ages,” the entire world.

But it remains an intellectually conservative field that has largely resisted the waves of critical theory that have washed over much of the humanities in recent decades. It has also been slow to take up the subject of race.

While archaeological evidence shows that Africans and other nonwhite people were present in medieval Europe, some scholars argue that race is a modern construct, with limited relevance in a period when differences in religion mattered more than skin color.

But other medievalists see in such arguments a desire to wall off medieval scholarship from uncomfortable questions.

“It’s about asserting the racial and political innocence of the Middle Ages,” said Cord Whitaker, an assistant professor of English at Wellesley College and a member of Medievalists of Color. “For medievalists to try to protect the field from engagement with race is ultimately to try to withdraw from the world.”

If withdrawal from the world was ever possible, it has become harder lately. During the 2016 election, memes like Donald Trump in armor on a horse and the Crusader slogan “Deus vult” (God wills it) began proliferating on social media. White nationalists stepped up recruiting on college campuses, sometimes co-opting the language of identity politics with calls for students to explore their “white heritage.”

[pix Some marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 displayed medieval symbols, like the rune shown on this flag, which was also used by the Nazis.Edu Bayer for The New York Times]

Some marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 displayed medieval symbols, like the rune shown on this flag, which was also used by the Nazis.CreditEdu Bayer for The New York Times]

Then came Charlottesville, where the sight of marchers carrying shields evoking the Knights Templar or holding banners with Anglo-Saxon runes came as a shock to many scholars.

“Medieval Studies always wants to be relevant,” said Ruth Mazo Karras, a historian at Trinity College, Dublin, and president of the Medieval Academy of America. “But now we’ve become relevant in the wrong way.”

A week after Charlottesville, the Medieval Academy and 28 other scholarly groups released a statement condemning the “fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality.” Some medievalists overhauled their teaching, discussing misappropriations of history along with the history itself. Suddenly, professors began worrying about how to respond to students who might bring up white nationalist themes in class — or who might assume that medievalists themselves are white supremacists.

“We had to think about, ‘Who do they think we are?” said Nicholas Paul, director of the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University and a co-editor of the forthcoming book “Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past.”

The idea of medieval studies as a haven for white nationalist ideas gained ground when Rachel Fulton Brown, an associate professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago, began feuding with Dorothy Kim, an assistant professor of medieval English literature at Brandeis, after Dr. Kim, writing on Facebook, highlighted an old blog post of Dr. Fulton Brown’s titled “Three Cheers for White Men,” calling it an example of “medievalists upholding white supremacy.”

Many scholars were outraged when Dr. Fulton Brown, in a riposte to Dr. Kim written a few weeks after Charlottesville, tagged the right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos, whose website then ran an article about the dispute. Last July Mr. Yiannopoulos followed up with a 16,000-word attack on the field, which assailed Dr. Kim and others as “an angry social justice mob.”

The article caused a furor, as scholars accused colleagues of providing screenshots of private Facebook conversations and surreptitious recordings of conference sessions to Mr. Yiannopoulos.

Since then, Dr. Fulton Brown has become more isolated, as some who initially supported her have distanced themselves after she began citing the far-right writer Vox Day and even, in a recent blog post, entertained the idea that the Christchurch shooting might have been a “false flag operation.” (Dr. Fulton Brown, in an interview, said the depiction of her as a white supremacist or a member of the alt-right is “a misnomer” that “depends on a fantasy about me.”)

But the climate of intense suspicion and division the feud helped foster, particularly on social media, remains.

Paul Halsall, editor of the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, is among the scholars who remain friendly with Dr. Fulton Brown, the author of highly regarded studies of medieval devotion to the Virgin Mary, though he said he disagrees with her political views “profoundly.”

Last summer, he started two open Facebook groups after one dedicated to the Kalamazoo conference erupted in a dispute about racism and its comments policy, which resulted in a number of people, including its moderator, leaving or being expelled from the group.

Mr. Halsall deplored what he called the “cooties” approach that he says has taken hold, chilling debate.

“There’s this idea that if you talk to someone, you are stained,” he said. He added: “Anyone who is vaguely middle of the road or conservative is suddenly racist or white nationalist.”

Dr. Kim, a member of Medievalists of Color, said white medievalists who say they fear weighing in, lest they be accused of racism, are enacting a “classic white fragility script.”

“Those of us from marginal, targeted groups have no choice” about speaking up, she said. “This is about our own survival in the field.”

Some efforts to make the field more inclusive have met with resistance. Last year, the Medieval Academy created an annual award for scholars of color named for Belle da Costa Greene, the first manuscript librarian of the Pierpont Morgan collection, and an African-American woman who passed as white.

An anonymous group left a donation of $350 with a letter declaring support for the idea of inclusion but objecting to “skin pigmentation as grounds for a scholarly grant,” according to Lisa Fagin Davis, the academy’s executive director.

Last year, there was an outcry after the Kalamazoo conference, which is run by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, rejected a number of panels proposed by Medievalists of Color. An open letter, signed by more than 600 scholars, denounced the organizers for “a bias against, or lack of interest in, sessions that are self-critical of medieval studies, or focused on the politics of the field.” The panels about race that were accepted, some scholars noted, were organized by white scholars.

Jana Schulman, the director of the Medieval Institute, said procedures for selecting panels this year were being overhauled to be more inclusive and transparent. She said she regretted that members of Medievalists of Color were staying away, calling their critique of the field “important.”

“An individual’s area of interest completely colors what it is they look at” in the past, Dr. Schulman said. “Those of us in the field need to be aware that ours was maybe limited.”

by Jennifer Schuessler

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/arts/the-battle-for-medieval-studies-white-supremacy.html

may

5, 2019
Each May, some 3,000 people descend on Kalamazoo, Mich., for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, which brings together academics and enthusiasts for four days of scholarly panels, performances and after-hours mead drinking.

But in recent years, the gathering affectionately known as “K’zoo” — and the field of medieval studies itself — has been shadowed by conflicts right out of the 21st century.

And hanging over it all is an even more fraught question: Does medieval studies have a white supremacy problem of its own?

In the middle are the broad mass of medievalists, who may sympathize with one camp or the other, but mostly want to stay out of the fray.

E

But other medievalists see in such arguments a desire to wall off medieval scholarship from uncomfortable questions.

If withdrawal from the world was ever possible, it has become harder lately. During the 2016 election, memes like Donald Trump in armor on a horse and the Crusader slogan “Deus vult” (God wills it) began proliferating on social media. White nationalists stepped up recruitingon college campuses, sometimes co-opting the language of identity politics with calls for students to explore their “white heritage.”

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Then came Charlottesville, where the sight of marchers carrying shields evoking the Knights Templar or holding banners with Anglo-Saxon runes came as a shock to many scholars.

A week after Charlottesville, the Medieval Academy and 28 other scholarly groups released a statement condemning the “fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality.” Some medievalists overhauled their teaching, discussing misappropriations of history along with the history itself. Suddenly, professors began worrying about how to respond to students who might bring up white nationalist themes in class — or who might assume that medievalists themselves are white supremacists.

The article caused a furor, as scholars accused colleagues of providing screenshots of private Facebook conversations and surreptitious recordings of conference sessions to Mr. Yiannopoulos.

But the climate of intense suspicion and division the feud helped foster, particularly on social media, remains.

Mr. Halsall deplored what he called the “cooties” approach that he says has taken hold, chilling debate.

“There’s this idea that if you talk to someone, you are stained,” he said. He added: “Anyone who is vaguely middle of the road or conservative is suddenly racist or white nationalist.”

Dr. Kim, a member of Medievalists of Color, said white medievalists who say they fear weighing in, lest they be accused of racism, are enacting a “classic white fragility script.”

“Those of us from marginal, targeted groups have no choice” about speaking up, she said. “This is about our own survival in the field.”

“An individual’s area of interest completely colors what it is they look at” in the past, Dr. Schulman said. “Those of us in the field need to be aware that ours was maybe limited.”

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Calls for Probe Into White Supremacy and Domestic Terrorism After Arrest for Arson Attacks on Black Churches

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/11/calls-probe-white-supremacy-and-domestic-terrorism-after-arrest-arson-attacks-black

Civil rights advocates on Thursday called for a serious examination of racist hate crimes and domestic terrorism in the wake of arson attacks on three black churches in Louisiana.

Authorities announced that they had arrested Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old suspect accused of setting fire to three historically black churches in southern Louisiana over the course of 10 days. Matthews, who is white and the son of the deputy sheriff of St. Landry Parish, was charged with three counts of arson.

The NAACP argued that the church burnings, which are reminiscent of several similar incidents which took place throughout the South in the civil rights era, should be investigated as a racist hate crime.

"This is the same domestic terrorism that has been the hammer and chisel used to chip away at the humanity of Black Americans and the suppression of our political power," the group said in a statement.

The group noted that crimes linked to white supremacy have been on the rise since President Donald Trump took office and called on the federal government to lead in the fight against domestic terror attacks:

Since Trump has taken office, we've seen a rise in white supremacy and hate crimes—so much so that we issued letters to push both the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees of the House of Representatives to hold hearings for the resurgence of hate and raced based crimes that are overcoming the nation. Change must come from the top and we will continue to push Congress for additional hearings and concrete next steps to thwart acts of terrorism against communities of color.

Local officials in Louisiana noted publicly that Matthews had beeninterested in "black metal" music, which has beenlinked to white supremacist groups which burned churches in Norway in the 1990s. As Daily Beast reported:

A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Matthews showed he was active in pagan and black metal pages, and that he commented on two memes about far-right former neo-Nazi metal musician Varg Vikernes, who served 15 years in prison for killing a fellow metal musician and burning churches in Norway.

Some on social media cautioned the news media not to suggest that the suspect was simply influenced by an anti-religion philosophy, noting that a potential connection to racism should be investigated seriously.

...twts

twt no lx

So here’s a thing. The cop’s son who is currently under arrest for burning down black churches is into the neo-pagan Viking/Death Metal scene. People are try to angle this as “he wasn’t racist, he was demonic and anti-Christian!” DON’T LET THEM

...

white supremacist faux-Vikings don’t want, like, socialized healthcare or a 100% literacy rate, like Scandinavian countries currently have, they want to rape and pillage and do violence against “impure” people, like the Vikings of their imagination. It’s racist cosplay.

...

Those churches were not burned down because they are churches. They were burned down because they are black churches.

Megan Romer

@meganromer

Christians are not a targeted minority in the US. Black folks are. 3/3 is not a coincidence here or anywhere.

...

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ref

d beast

...An arrest warrant reportedly showed that officials connected Matthews to the crimes through the charred remains of a brand of gas can found at the scene of the April 4 fire. Matthews allegedly used his debit card and ID to purchase that same brand of gas can, along with a lighter and a 10 pack of automotive shop towels on March 25, The Advocate reports.

The same color and model pickup that Matthews drives was also present at two of the churches shortly before the fires were reported to 911, according to video footage referenced in the arrest warrant.

FBI agent Eric J. Rommal, also at the press conference, said the bureau is investigating whether the crimes were “bias-motivated.”

“Right now we are just making sure we gather all the facts,” he said, when pressed on the issue.

A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Matthews showed he was active in pagan and black metal pages, and that he commented on two memes about far-right former neo-Nazi metal musician Varg Vikernes, who served 15 years in prison for killing a fellow metal musician and burning churches in Norway. The comments revealed little other than that they indicated his familiarity with the figure.

The pagan circles Matthews and Vikernes frequented can be popular with neo-Nazis. Matthews frequently posted about pagan beliefs, andrecently uploaded a picture of a gun and a knife with the caption “I carry this..... maybe not legally but I only truly follow the law of Odin..... which says as you said, arm yourself...... Odins advice> modern law.” Odin is a pagan Norse god.

One of the pagan pages Matthews was active on specifically forbade racism and “nazi stuff.” Matthews also appeared aware of the religion's white supremacist associations. In one post, a group member noted that a drawing of a pagan figure had a swastika-like design on his belt. “well yea the belt gives him extra strength and power..... white power lmao jk jk I had to,” Matthews wrote.

While Gov. Edwards said he didn’t know what Matthews’ alleged motive was, it cannot be justified or rationalized. It was an evil act.”

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