When I was growing up as a Nice Jewish Boy in day school, we were taught that the Crusades were one of the worst episodes in history: marauding Christian soldiers massacring everyone in sight. Especially Jews. Most historians tend to agree that the Crusades were a dark chapter in Christian history, with extraordinary violence carried out in Christ’s name, and with Christian doctrine often a mere excuse for murder and pillage. This, no doubt, is why President Obama mentioned the Crusades as an example of heinous religious violence last week. It would seem to be an uncontroversial claim. Historians estimate that between one and three million people died in the Crusades (including the Crusaders), at a time when the world’s population was 300 million. That’s right—up to 1 percent of the entire world population perished in the paroxysms of violence between 1095 and 1291. The equivalent of sixty million people today.
Barack Obama referring to the Crusades as an example of heinous religious violence should be a no-brainer for anyone who knows anything at all about the history of religion. Crusaders killed roughly 1% of the world’s population in the name of Jesus Christ; if that doesn’t qualify as “heinous religious violence,” I’m not certain what would. Citing historical fact shouldn’t be controversial…unless, of course, you’re a card-carrying member of the Rabid Religious Right and resent the fact that The Black Man in the White House © is even drawing breath.
The claims that “OBAMA INSULTED CHRISTIANS!!” came fast and furious…even though the President said nothing wrong. He was, in fact, absolutely correct in his historical assessment. The Crusades didn’t exactly cover Christianity in glory, nor was it a good time for those forced to convert or be slaughtered. Those who called themselves Christians spilled an unspeakable amount of blood in their name of their religion, an historical fact that has long since been established. So the controversy would be….?
The misdirected and frankly silly righteous outrage points to a very disturbing trend: Conservative Christians have defaulted to defending the Crusades and the atrocities associated with it in their desire to attack a President they despise with every fiber of their collective being.
As Voltaire once said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Given the subject at hand, I think that stands pretty well on its own merit.
You read that right. The point being made is not that Obama is wrong to compare ISIS to the Crusades because the Crusades happened long ago (this was Bobby Jindal’s cute, misleading quip), or because the historical context is different. It’s that Obama is wrong to compare ISIS to the Crusades because the Crusades were actually a good thing.
Perhaps the leading theme in this literature is that “The Crusades—despite their terrible organized cruelties—were a defensive war.” This was thusly emphasized Jonah Goldberg in the National Review. (Goldberg proceeded to quote Bernard Lewis, “the greatest living English-language historian of Islam,” apparently unaware that he is the primary target of Edward Said’s book Orientalism and has been shown, time and again, to have anti-Muslim bias.
Reasonably intellectually agile Conservatives are almost able to put the Crusades into something vaguely resembling a historical context. Ross Douthat, for example, described the Crusades as an “incredibly complicated multicentury story,” as if genocide is somehow not simply murder on a massive scale. What’s “incredbily complicated” about that?
Then’s there’s Rick Santorum- no one’s intellectual giant- who came up with this beauty:
The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom. They hate Christendom. They hate Western civilization at the core. That’s the problem.
“Somehow an aggression on our part”…because really, the Crusades were all about Christians playing defense, don’tchaknow??
As for the American left hating “Christendom,” nothing could be more thoroughly ridiculous. Frankly, many of us are profoundly indifferent to “Christendom,” so to think we’d waste brain cells hating and plotting the demise of “Christendom” borders on the absurd. I suppose this is what happens when you allow Santorum to believe he’s anything but a euphemism for the aftermath of anal sex.
There are even those who argue in all seriousness that the Crusades were defensive in nature, while jihad is purely offensive.
#AssholeOfTheDay Star Parker, for claiming Obama committed "verbal rape" by stating facts http://t.co/PVD3T536kq pic.twitter.com/S6NDgTpZRR
— Some Asshole (@assholeofday) February 11, 2015
Let’s try a little thought experiment. How about, instead of the Crusades, we ask Conservatives to make the same argument (genocide is defensive in nature) using the Holocaust. It’s not as far-fetched as you might think. Both involved murder on a massive, almost impossible to comprehend scale. Both were justified as necessary- one to protect Christianity, the other to purify the master race, free Lebensraum for Aryans, and rid the world of Jews. There are other similarities, but I think you get the point.
The truth is that no Conservative would even consider that defending the Holocaust was appropriate…yet they willingly and unabashedly defend genocide that killed a far greater percentage of the world’s population. How this can be justified takes a logical leap I’m simply not capable of comprehending.
There’s a disturbing tendency among Conservatives when it comes to Christian genocide, a la the Crusades. When it comes to the historical facts, they tend to appropriate what they consider good and jettison what doesn’t fit the preferred narrative. It’s revisionist history at its worst and most self-serving, but it feeds their fantasy that Christian warriors were merely defending the faith while jihadis attack those who faith they despise.
Honestly, I sometimes think that if this President came out in favor of oxygen, some of these folks would immediately attempt to suffocate themselves. Come to think of it, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
