webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

pagan wicca

see viking,

format fail  tho i spoze diff

see jezebel

7 24 repurpose for devil term

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10/06/2025 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

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07/31/2025 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

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RWW

07/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

===

06/27/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

The Supreme Court has just limited the ability of lower courts to rein in Donald Trump’s anti-constitutional orders.

The Republican justices’ decision fundamentally altered how public schools must operate.

Christian nationalists are fighting over Israel’s role in the “end times.”

On The Auron MacIntyre Show, white Christian nationalist Andrew Isker claimed that witchcraft “stopped working” in the Americas after the arrival of European Christians. Isker also appeared to defend the Salem witch trials, asserting that “weird stuff” happened at the time which had “no rational explanation whatsoever.”

The Transportation Secretary pushed Christian Nationalism during his address at the Merchant Marine Academy, sidelining real issues.

The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that figure sounds at all familiar, there’s a good reason for that.

1 25

01/22/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist supporters are demonstrating once again that much of the harshest anti-Christian rhetoric in our political life doesn’t come from secular leftists, it comes from right-wing Christian leaders and activists who bitterly trash the faith of Christians who don’t share their religious and political worldviews.

Their most recent target is Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, who spoke at the National Prayer Service held at the Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday. Budde talked for about 15 minutes on the topic of unity, using her last few minutes to directly and respectfully address Trump and ask for mercy on behalf of gay, lesbian, and transgender people, immigrants, and refugees.

The same religious-right leaders and activists who have embraced or explained away Trump’s relentless lying, cruelty, corruption, and criminality, were outraged by Budde’s willingness to challenge him over the harmful impact his actions as president will have on many people.

Sean Feucht, a dominionist musician, political activist, and ardent Trump supporter, was contemptuous, referring to Bishop Budde as “the priestess” and saying, “They should let Christians preach next time.”

In a video posted from within the Cathedral, Feucht literally sneered at the interfaith service’s inclusion of “all these random religions and faiths,” concluding, “this was not a church service.” He continued:

We’re gonna go have a real church service with a bunch of folks that were in here. We’re gonna go lift up the name of Jesus because we are one nation under God, not all these other random religions. We don’t all worship the same God. And we definitely don’t worship the God of the LGTBQ mafia.

Feucht’s comments are a reminder that religious-right activists leaders are be quick to claim anti-Christian persecution when they are criticized for their harmful agendas or dishonest rhetoric, but they are themselves quick to attack other Christians. (Marjorie Taylor Greene recently provided another example, attacking the Catholic faith of Martin O’Malley because of his pro-choice position on abortion.)

“The Washington National Cathedral has become the Sanctuary of Satan,” ranted pundit Todd Starnes. He went on to denounce the Episcopal Church as “barely a religion.” He charged that “the blasphemous bishop at National Cathedral preached hate from her pagan pulpit.”

MAGA “prophet” Shave Vaughn declared Budde “a Bishop of Babylon.” Anti-LGBTQ activist John Amanchukwu denounced Budde as “a wolf in Bishop garments,” calling her “heretical” and “diabolical.” Dominionist Jim Garlow complained that it was “torture” to listen to Budde.

The kind of religious-right figures who constantly complain that conservative pastors aren’t preaching enough about politics complained that Bishop Budde would “lecture us about contemporary political positions,” in the words of Choral Ridge Ministries’ Rob Pacienza.

Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins denounced Budde’s comments as “rather pathetic,” tweeting that “The cause of America’s decline was not what was sitting in the pew but what was standing behind the pulpit.” Wallbuilders’ Tim Barton had the gall to complain about Budde “making a political speech from the pulpit” and griped about the service including people of other faiths.

Pastor and Trump apologist Robert Jeffress complained that Budde had “insulted rather than encouraged our great president.” Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia declared on X, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.” Alex Jones denounced Budde as a “wokist cult leader.”

Trump himself demeaned Budde on his Truth social feed, calling her a “so-called Bishop.”

Meanwhile, Feucht also posted a celebratory video sharing his excitement that Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has invited him to hold one of his Christians-only religious revivals in the Pentagon.

It’s worth noting that other Christians have praised and welcomed Budde’s remarks as an example of the kind of moral courage and leadership that is required in an era when Trump’s MAGA movement has been fully embraced by dominionists and white Christian nationalists. rww

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10/24/2024 rww

by

Kyle Mantyla

lance Wallnau Blames the Seduction of Witchcraft for Kamala Harris’ Success

By Kyle Mantyla | September 12, 2024 rww

Shorty after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not be running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and unabashed Trump cultist Lance Wallnau immediately began posting videos in which he warned that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel” and declared that she is “the devil’s choice.”

When Harris bested former President Donald Trump in a debate earlier this week, Wallnau was quick to blame it on “witchcraft,” and then doubled down on that attack Wednesday when heappeared on the “FirePower” show, hosted by fellow Trump cultists Mario Murillo and Todd Coconato.

“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau declared. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. … So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”

“She can look presidential,” he continued. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”

While Harris is supposedly operating under an occult Jezebel spirit, Wallnau claimed that Trump has “an Elijah mantle on him, probably from the intercession of a million Christians.”

“So, we have to double down in intercessory prayer in the warfare mode of Pentecostals,” Wallnau proclaimed. “We need to close ranks and actually begin to get in a superlative agreement over what we believe we’re hearing God say he wants to manifest, because this election is coming five days after Halloween—another high holy day for all the Satanist crazy people.”

“We’ve got to lean into this thing because the Elijah mantle can break the spell of witchcraft off America,” he concluded. “God can tear the veil and unless that veil is torn, we have a lot working against us.”

IFrame Content

Murillo and Wallnau are close spiritual and political allies who are currently leading a “Courage Tour” to swing states ahead of the 2024 election in order to break the “demonic strongholds” in swing states that have supposedly been preventing Republicans from winning elections. The Courage Tour consists of series of multi-day events during which attendees hear from religious-right activists who mobilize them politically during the daily sessions, while the evening sessions are dedicated to spiritual revival and miracle healing. The purpose of these events is, as Wallnau explained earlier this year, to prepare Christians to rule and reign when Jesus Christ returns by training them to “occupy territory now.” As that language suggests, Murillo and Wallnau are associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation.

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:{August 23, 2024 rww

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July 30, 2024 rww

Scott Lively wonders if Kamala Harris might be the “Whore of Babylon” mentioned in the Book of Revelation: “We might just be witnessing her grand entrance on the world stage in the form of Kamala Harris – ‘sex-worker’ to the elites.”

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ANDREW KLAVAN (HOST): Megyn Kelly reminded me — I was talking to her yesterday on her show. She is absolutely great, by the way. She has such a great show. And she reminded me of this wonderful clip of Drew Barrymore, who now has a talk show, talking to Kamala Harris.

...

KLAVAN: Now, I happen to love Drew Barrymore. When I work out at the gym, she's always on the TV above me, and you don't hear the sound, but you can just see she kind of personifies — she's like all of Hollywood distilled into a single human being. She lives in a completely solipsistic, self-interested fantasy world, and she sells this to the women in her audience.

In fact, over at The American Mind, a really good site, Peachy Keenan has collected all the reports of what a screaming witch Kamala Harris is.

Klavan refers to The American Mind, which is a publication of Project 2025 partner organization the Claremont Institute.

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mma 8 24 sorta random grab?

  1. ### Right-wing media falsely claim that Kamala Harris wants to ban red meat

08/06/24 9:49 AM EDT

  1. ### On MSNBC's Deadline White House, Angelo Carusone discusses MAGA plans to undermine the 2024 election

08/05/24 6:54 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News' Greg Gutfeld calls Kamala Harris “conniving” and says she hasn’t “earned” a debate with Donald Trump

08/05/24 6:38 PM EDT

  1. ### Trump and his MAGA media boosters try to blame VP Kamala Harris for a drop in the stock market

08/05/24 4:34 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 contributor: Kamala Harris “resembles in attitude the slave owners of the old South” for supporting access to abortion

08/05/24

  1. ### **Charlie Kirk: “Kamala Harris wants to see the elimination of the United States of America”

08/05/24 12:51 PM EDT

  1. ### Donald Trump is set to be interviewed by streamer Adin Ross, who has hosted white nationalists and neo-Nazis

08/05/24

  1. ### **:{Daily Wire host: Kamala Harris “has the womanish traits of being a cackling, irrational, and venomous serpent”}:

08/05/24

August 2, 2024, edition of The Daily Wire's The Andrew Klavan Show

ANDREW KLAVAN (HOST): Now, last week I talked about the fact that this is a very male/female race. And we're not supposed to talk about that because, obviously, the male and females are exactly the same. In fact, you can change them out. We swap them out. They're so much the same. But here we're not gonna lie, so we're gonna say this is a male-female race.

Trump is a studly guy to the point where he exemplifies both the good and the bad of manhood. He can get a little bit over the top sometimes, and sometimes he just has that incredible courage that he displayed when he was shot at — and when he was shot, actually, I should say — and also when he went before the Black journalists, which was not quite as bad, but also dangerous.

And Kamala has the womanish traits of being a cackling, irrational, and venomous serpent without the womanly traits of, grace, generosity, and tenderness. We miss those in her. But those womanish traits are now in control of our politics. // jdv cat lady

----

  1. ### On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone discusses Project 2025: “Project 2025 is alive. It's just this one part of it. They're saying, you know, job done.”

08/03/24 11:45 PM EDT

  1. ### Jesse Watters on Kamala Harris: “She likes wine. She likes food. She likes to dance. ... She's just not at the level of what you would think would be a president.”

08/02/24

  1. ### Manosphere influencers and Rumble streamers respond to Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy by claiming it's a coup and the 2024 election will be rigged

08/02/24

  1. ### Charlie Kirk guest: Women got “the right to vote — after that, it all went downhill”

08/02/24

---

jezebel = slut witch?

July 24, 2024 rww

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  1. ### Daily Wire host: “The Olympic torch ceremony is an overtly pagan ritual”

07/26/24

---

mma

right-wing media’s playbook for attacking Kamala Harris: A flood of misogyny and racism

Right-wing media spared no time in hurling racist and sexist attacks against the likely Democratic presidential candidate

WRITTEN BY PAYTON ARMSTRONG, CHARIS HOARD & EMMA MAE WEBER

PUBLISHED 07/23/24

Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, right-wing media have launched sexist and racist attacks at Harris to try to diminish her qualifications. They’ve claimed that she can’t be president because she doesn’t have biological children, labeled her “the ultimate diversity, equity, and inclusion candidate,” fixated on her laugh, claimed that she promotes "the occult,” and likened her to “Jezebel.”

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

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no lnx

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viking nazi Wagner ring flight of the valkyries

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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., 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,” 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.

no lnx

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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.

Credit

Edu Bayer for The New York Times

Image

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.”

Follow 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.

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.”

E

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 recruitingon college campuses, sometimes co-opting the language of identity politics with calls for students to explore their “white heritage.”

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.

Credit

Edu Bayer for The New York Times

Image[px

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.”

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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 been interested in "black metal" music, which has been linked 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, and recently 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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