The Alt-Right Is Appropriating Medieval Studies – Can Academics Stop Them?

“The resurgent white supremacist movement has been appropriating medieval (or medieval-flavored) motifs in the public eye this year, taking up the ‘Deus Vult’ slogan (or ‘God wills it,’ purported to have been chanted by medieval Crusaders) and the so-called Celtic Cross. … Should historians take responsibility for the abuse and exploitation of the past by amateurs, or even by those within their own ranks? Is scholarship doomed to be complicit in the violence done in its name?”