#david perry

White supremacists continue to reach back to medieval European history as a way to tell a story about whiteness, a sense of lost (but imagined) masculinity, and the need to shed blood. We see this across Europe when they cosplay as crusaders at anti-immigrant rallies, as they wield spray-painted shields with "Deus Vult" at rallies in Virginia, as they post screeds linking themselves to an imaginary new Knights Templar in Norway, as they invoke battles between Muslims and Christians to justify a massacre in New Zealand. They draw on the popular, political and scholarly stories of the "Dark Ages" but use new technologies to connect across oceans. They want to return to their imagined Middle Ages. Wherever you find white supremacists, you'll find medievalism, and you'll almost always find murder.