In recent articles discussing Pete Hegseth’s pro-Crusader views and tattoos, we saw how the “Left” and its media mouthpiece rely on the Fake History version of the Crusades. We also exposed the true source of their fears, namely, Christians finally realizing that the highest virtue of their religion is not being a doormat but rather standing up against evil.
There are, however, two other noteworthy aspects to the Left’s attack on Hegseth.
White on Brown Violence?
The first is this notion that anyone who holds a favorable view of the Crusades is automatically a “white supremacist.” This bizarre claim was made in virtually every article and report written about Hegseth’s pro-Crusader views, including a New York Times piece titled, “Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade.” It says that the Jerusalem (or Crusader) Cross and the Latin phrase Deus vult (“God wills it”) — both of which are tattooed on Hegseth’s frame — are “used by white supremacists.”
This connection is apparently based on the fact that the overwhelming majority of history’s Crusaders were Europeans, and the overwhelming majority of their enemies were Muslims. But this dichotomy is based on something else: the Muslim conquest of non-European lands.
Once Islam exploded out of Arabia in the seventh century, it conquered all of North Africa and the Middle East, which was almost entirely Christian. Those Christians, who were not European, were quickly subdued — killed, converted to Islam, or living as dhimmis, cowed subjects of the Islamic state.
All that was left of Christendom was Europe (though portions of it were also conquered, such as Spain and later Eastern Europe). In other words, all that were left to fight on behalf of or defend Christendom were white people.
Yet this fact has now become imbued with “racism.” Those who are obsessed with identity politics could care less why it just so happened to be white people who finally responded to nonstop Muslim aggression and expansion — the reason being that they were all that was left of free Christendom. Rather, all they see is white vs. nonwhite, a formula which always makes the former the aggressor, the latter the victim.
So now, to like or appreciate the Crusades is no longer to like or appreciate just causes in defense of the weak, but to harbor “white supremacist” tendencies. (Such thinking oddly makes me, your friendly neighborhood Mr. Ibrahim, a “white supremacist.”) It is just name-calling to dissuade people from holding a favorable view of the Crusades, which now becomes tantamount to being racist.
All Wars Are Tragic
The other noteworthy aspect that came out in the plethora of hit pieces on Hegseth concerns the knee-jerk apologies offered by those who do hold favorable views of the Crusades. The NYT and other media quoted several scholars who hold a more objective view of the Crusades but still offered the caveat that many horrible things occurred during them. This apparently includes Hegseth himself:
Mr. Hegseth has written that while the Crusades were filled with injustice and unspeakable tragedy, the alternative would have been “horrific,” because it is Western civilization that has nurtured the values of “freedom” and “equal justice.”
Of course there were “injustices and unspeakable tragedy” during the Crusades. But the impulse of pointing this out whenever the Crusades are discussed raises an important question: Has there ever been a war — especially one spread over two centuries — that did not contain “injustices and unspeakable tragedy”? No, there has not. Even the most romanticized wars of patriotic lore contained atrocities, rape, and injustices. That, after all, is the nature of war — all wars.
So why is it always and only for the Crusades that we must forever offer caveats and clear our throats when discussing? Why don’t we do that when discussing, say, the Revolutionary War, World War I, etc. — all of which had atrocities, and from the “good guys”? Who now flatly condemns America’s role in World War II because American GIs raped 14,000 civilian women in Germany, France, and England? Who begins every conversation about America’s role in WWII by referencing these mass rapes as proof that the war on Hitler was illegitimate?
In short “bad things” happen in all wars. Though that is a given, it rarely besmirches the validity of any war — except, of course, the Crusades (even though, in reality, the “injustices and unspeakable tragedies” that occurred at the hands of the Crusaders were often mild compared to those committed in modern wars, not to mention those committed by their Muslim enemies, though all of these get a pass).
To be fair, we either must start hemming and hawing and wringing our hands in regret every time we mention any war, or stop singling out the Crusades for such treatment, always holding them to an impossibly high standard that has never been achieved.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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