zenpundit.com

[ Charles Cameron — my latest for your reading pleasure ]
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Some of you may be interested in my latest — 5,000 words on the Knights Templar crusaders & their various modern variants (Freemasons, proto-Nazis, Anders Breivik &c) as precursors to the Templarios cartel in Michoacán — now up at Small Wars Journal.

Opening paras:

It seems appropriate to begin this overview of the appropriation of Templar symbolism from the original, medieval Knights Templar religious order by the contemporary Caballeros Templarios cartel by noting that the borrowing of ancient religious and military symbolism by more recent and questionable groupings is not uncommon.

In contemporary Pagan-revival Odinism / Asatru, for instance, a re-appropriation of Nordic mythology by far-right groups is not uncommon.

Of Vinland productions historical reenactments, Simon Coulu reports in Vice:

[T]heir Viking imagery often resembles that used by neo-fascist groups. Its president, as well as at least one actor from the historical re-enactment company, are also involved in the activities of the ultra-nationalist group Atalante Québec and the skinhead band Légitime Violence.

More precisely to our point, the Knights Templar of history were founded as a military order of monks with a rule devised by the Cistercian St Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Troyes (1128/9). St. Bernard was also the author of a spectacular defense of Templar chivalric warfare against the Saracens, In Praise of the New Knighthood (Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae,1129). Their function was the protect both the holy places of Jerusalem and pilgrims traveling to visit them.

Since then, the Templars have featured in medieval Grail legends, in Masonic rites beginning with a Templar branch founded by Baron Gotthelf von Hund in 1755, and notably in one proto-Nazi cult. Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the Utoya massacre, claimed to be a Templar, as do various alt-right groups..

In 1907, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, some-time Cistercian monk, Ariosophist (among the precursors of Nazi racial doctrines), and author of the fabulously-named 1905 publication, Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods, founded the Order of the New Templars (ONT)—borrowing name and symbolism from the original Templars for his own Aryan race cult. Lanz’ membership of the Cistercian order would account for some of his interest in the original Templars, founded by the Cistercian St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The ONT was finally closed down by the Gestapo in 1942.

Read on:

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/templarios-echoes-templars-and-parallels-elsewhere

[ by Charles Cameron — personally, i don’t at all mind the fact that both saddam and the abbot are no longer around, given the brutality of their acts ]
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Saddam reveals himself {upper panel] to be plausibly mediaeval [lower panel]:

He also puts himself in the judgment seat the Abbot reserves for God…

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The massacre of Béziers, and the Albigensian Crusade of which it was the opening salvo, came about, I’d suggest, fundamentally because the good people of Languedoc — home of the Troubadours as well as the Cathars or Albigensians — found the leaders of the Cathars, known as the Perfecti, to be humbler, poorer, and less ostentatious than the Abbots and Bishops, leaders of the Catholic Church, who tended to be among the “fat cats” of their day.

Understandably, the Church disliked this almost unavoidable comparison, but was unwilling to relinquish its personal and institutional wealth — hence the Abbot’s instruction, Kill them all, God will sort out his own, which somehow made the massacre tolerable, theologically speaking.

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Reading, for the Cathars:

Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error

[ by Charles Cameron — ah yes, the Crusades of happy memory.. ]
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Here’s a screenshot from an Israeli government video portraying the history of the land of Israel:

I wanted to catch that crusader plunging his sword into the Israeli family’s widescreen TV in particular, with its Game of Thrones subtitle, just because I’m, well, so very hip to all that, never having seen an episode of GoT in my life.

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However, according to this WaPo story, A satirical ‘history of the Jewish people’ released by the Israeli government offends just about everyone.. Oh?

Here it is:

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For the record, I myself am not offended on behalf of the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the British or for that matter the League of Nations / or UN. I just don’t think official governmental humor, even from Israel, measures up to, ah..

Eh, what?