The Donald Trump reality show has begun with a list of cabinet and high-level nominees who span the spectrum from normal to crackpot. One nominee has already withdrawn. Another faces scrutiny of his personal character, with objections over unprofessional behavior and even his tattoos.
I want to talk about the latter, the tattoos of Pete Hegseth, nominee for defense secretary.
Clik here to view.
Above is the Jerusalem Cross on Hegseth’s chest and, below, “Deus Vult” (God’s will) on his bicep.
Clik here to view.
These tattoos are associated with white supremacism. Industry-leading pearl-clutchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center and even one of America’s preeminent Catholic universities have documented the rise of this phrase and imagery among white nationalists.
I’m not going to dispute that these symbols have been coopted. Like when I defended Saint Louis IX of France, I am pushing back against the kneejerk reaction to the Crusades. From my article on celebrated French crusader:
[We shouldn’t judge historical figures] based on modern standards of morality. We are all products of our time, and these figures lived in very different times with different definitions of right and wrong. Those standards are always changing. Some vices that were deemed normal 500 years ago (slavery) are abhorrent today, while others that seem normal today were illegal 500 years ago (divorce).
Who is to say which era is correct? Given they’re dead, we do. But we’ll be dead someday. Do you want to be judged on the standards 200 years from now?…
In the wake of the 2017 battle of Charlottesville, which featured very fine people on both sides (according to our then-president), the Medieval Academy published this statement:
As scholars of the medieval world we are disturbed by the use of a nostalgic but inaccurate myth of the Middle Ages by racist movements in the United States. By using imagined medieval symbols, or names drawn from medieval terminology, they create a fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality. This fantasy not only hurts people in the present, it also distorts the past. Medieval Europe was diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, and medieval Europe was not the entire medieval world. Scholars disagree about the motivations of the Crusades—or, indeed, whether the idea of “crusade” is a medieval one or came later—but it is clear that racial purity was not primary among them.
White supremacists are not the only ones to get history wrong. Too much is viewed through a recency bias, and when I say recency I mean a bias toward the last century or two, in which white Christians dominated the world, often with brutality. But the Crusades occurred a millennium ago in a very different world.
The Middle Ages feature a rich history of Christianity and Islam battling back and forth for territory and souls. It was not Christianity always dominating and overpowering Muslims, even if that’s the case in the last century or two. Christianity lost land to Islam, many permanently. Christianity used to dominate north Africa. St. Augustine was from modern-day Algeria. Historic Christian cities include Constantinople, Tripoli, Carthage and Alexandria in Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Early Crusades established Christian state in Antioch, Syria, which inspired the naming of Antioquia in many parts of Latin America, including the state home to many readers’ beloved Medellin.
The Muslims conquerors of those lands did not stomp Christianity out. The Coptic Christians continue to live throughout the region, and the Coptic Orthodox Church founded by Saint Mark is still based in Cairo.
The Muslims who retook those lands were not what you may think of today as hyperviolent, backwards and third-world. The Ottomans overpowered the Byzantines with newer technology and economic strength. The Ottoman Empire continued as a regional power for almost 500 years, only falling after choosing the wrong side in World War I.
More from my article on Saint Louis:
When Louis IX ruled France, Muslim kingdoms still posed a threat to Europe. They still occupied his mother’s country. The Crusades he led were not about genocide or exterminating Muslims. He would have seen it as liberating lands in the name of Christ, which was what devout kings on either side did for centuries before and centuries after…
It’s worth noting that the Crusades didn’t only target Muslim kingdoms. The Northern Crusades conquered the pagan northern from Germany to the Baltics. If you’re like Hegseth and most gringos, your ancestors were on the receiving end of those wars. There were even Crusades against other Christians.
The real inspiration of this post wasn’t Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, but an incident on Halloween. One of my son’s friends came over decked out as Indiana Jones. Later, I saw his father dressed as the grail knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I didn’t put it together, I just saw him with faux chainmail covered with a red cross like the ones from the pearl clutchers’ links.
Clik here to view.
“Moorslayer!” I shouted into the street. People were already trick or treating, but I wouldn’t say there was a crowd, but over a dozen within earshot. He looked uncomfortable, unsure how to respond.
“Matamoros,” I shouted again. “The Moorslayer!” This guy is not a pearl-clutcher, in fact he’s a Trump voter. But I’ve learned that folks on the urban coasts aren’t used to provincials like me shouting such things in the street. I approached and explained the history of St. James the Moorslayer.
Clik here to view.
Santiago Matamoros was an apparition of the apostle, Saint James, on the battlefield in the Reconquest, in which Spanish and Portuguese Christians expelled the Moors who occupied Iberia for 800 years. In this case the Muslims were the invaders, the occupiers, the colonizers, the nation-builders, whatever term you want to use.
The Spaniards and Portuguese never submitted. By the power of their faith they expelled the Moors and installed the Catholic Monarchy, coincidentally in the same year that a Spanish-funded explorer discovered the Americas, portending one of the widest expansion of an Abrahamic religion in history.
St. James the Moorslayer was revered throughout Latin America. Matamoros, which translates to “Moorslayer,” is a common Hispanic surname. It is the name of at least three cities in Mexico and part of the name of five more (plus an airport and a bus station).
Some may take issue with the term and compare it to something like, “Jew-killer.” I wouldn’t. The moors in question were the aggressors. And maybe there are endearing terms in Afghanistan or Iraq akin to “yankee-shooter.” I wouldn’t like to hear it, but I’m not clutching pearls about it if they use it over there. We can’t be that sensitive.
What About Pete Hegseth?
Pete Hegseth would not agree (re: “yankee shooter”). He served honorably in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Later, as a Fox News pundit, he was the driving force behind Donald Trump’s pardoning of a war criminal who murdered Iraqi civilians and executed prisoners. The guy was turned in by his platoon.
Hegseth is also a Christian. Are his tattoos an expression of faith or Christian nationalism? I don’t want to judge someone else’s faith lest mine be judged, but it’s hard not to notice he is on his third marriage and somewhere in there he paid to settle a sexual assault allegation.
Even if his tattoos are part of a belief in Christian nationalism, I wouldn’t oppose his nomination on that so much as his lack of managerial experience. Or his lack of productive management anyway. He was ousted from two nonprofits for corruption or ineffectiveness. Promoting a manager like that to the largest organization in the world (~3 million employees with $842 billion budget) seems like maybe there is a better pick out there.
My two cents: because he was such an ineffective manager is why I wouldn’t worry about him. If Democrats want to contain the administration’s worst impulses, they can only kill so many nominations. Hegseth shouldn’t be a top priority. More likely than not he would make some news cycles, but not make much of an impact. The legitimate fear is that Trump wants him because he’ll unleash the military on Americans, like Nicolas Maduro. But I believe he’ll be ignored by the top brass, like Trump was by the adults in the room from his first administration.
You’ve noticed that I’ve been using AI to create images lately. Here’s what they created for this post:
Clik here to view.
