This volume explores how crusading rhetoric, iconography, and historiography have been purposed by far-right, nationalist, and related groups in the recent past.
Engaging the Crusades is a series of concise volumes (up to 50,000 words) which offer initial windows into the ways in which the crusades have been used in the last two centuries, demonstrating that the memory of the crusades is an important and emerging subject. Together these studies suggest that the memory of the crusades, in the modern period, is a productive, exciting, and much needed area of investigation.
This volume explores how crusading rhetoric, iconography, and historiography have been purposed by far-right, nationalist, and related groups in the recent past through case studies as varied as Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at a mosque and Islamic centre in New Zealand in March 2019; a modern American ‘military order’ that uses memes to recruit members and spread its ideology; and the bestselling video game Assassin’s Creed. As nationalist and far-right ideologies have gained adherents in Europe and the Americas, understanding how ideologues have misused the crusading past for their own ends is more important than ever.
The Crusades and the Far-Right in the Twenty-First Century is useful for all students and scholars interested in the intersection between the history of the crusades and far-right ideology in the modern age.
Introduction: Contesting the Misuse of History
1. Bad Crusader:
Bohemond, the Scholars, and the Christchurch Shooter
2. Ordo Militaris Inc.:
A Modern Military Order, Medieval History, and Historical Authenticity
3.
British Newspapers, Brexit, and the Little Crusaders of Middle England
4. One
Foot in Europe and the Other in Dixie: Neo-Confederates, Holy War, Chivalry,
and the Crusades
5. Knives in the Dark and the Death of History: Validating
the Far-Rights Middle Ages through Assassins Creed
Charlotte Gauthier is Thornley Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. Her research interests include the diplomatic and intellectual history of the later crusades, and the modern uses of crusading imagery and memory.
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