Here, before the evidence and scholars, let’s play a quick game. Let’s give the good faith. Let’s say he’s just super enthusiastic about the crusades.

Why? Why is a modern day conservative so obsessed with a brutal, genocidal war between christians and muslims? Is it the aesthetic? Is it the armchair analysis? Or is it because he’s a fucking fascist who loves the idea of a primitive war of brutality against muslims?

What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?” he asks. “Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.”

> He then writes: “We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it … If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”

When used in combination, the Jerusalem cross and “Deus Vult” are “an invocation of the claim that crusader violence and its atrocities (including the massacre of civilians) was legitimate,” said Tom Hill, president and executive director of the Center for Peace Diplomacy, a nonpartisan organization working to end and prevent wars.

> “It is this bloody, militant intent that comes first when seeking to understand its current usage as a symbol for those pledging their allegiances in contemporary politics — and this is why it has been appropriated by the so-called ‘alt right,’” Hill said.

> White supremacists using Crusaders’ crosses and other medieval imagery on their homemade shields say the time period is an ideal of a white Europe. But medieval scholars say the white supremacists are wrong and the scholars are fighting back.