ABSTRACT
Benito Mussolini’s fascist politics were influenced by the medievalism of Italian thinker Julius Evola. Evola claimed the modern world would be best served by a return to medieval ‘Tradition’ in which the lion’s share of political power was vested in men who thought of themselves as knights imbued with spiritual power. In August 2017, Alt-Right demonstrators at Charlottesville, Virginia’s ‘Unite the Right’ rally carried medieval-style battle shields adorned with the Holy Roman Empire’s black eagle. From demonstrators’ use of Holy Roman Imperial insignia to the more intellectual claims of Alt-Right spokespersons, the Middle Ages come up again and again in the discourse of white supremacists in the United States. This chapter investigates the appeal of the Middle Ages to white nationalist and supremacist groups by exploring their understandings of feudalism, caste systems and racial homogeny in medieval Europe. Putting these into conversation with critical race theoretical concepts that explain the construction of whiteness, and with theories for medieval rhetoric’s role in the construction of modern blackness, the essay considers the integral role of the Middle Ages in the development of modern racial ideology. This essay offers intellectual strategies for resisting cooptation of the Middle Ages by those with racist objectives.
