Random History Books I’ve Been Reading.

For this list, I’ve decided to share some of the books on the topic of history that I’ve been reading as of late. These specific lists will go on to replace the usual books I do where I publish a post covering a single book as I have done the last two times. I wasn’t too happy with how those two reviews came out and relying on a list will allow me to cover more material in a shorter amount of time.

1. Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, 2003

This one was a pretty depressing read. But then again that’s pretty much a given when focusing on Russian history.

Written by Jewish American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum in 2004, Gulag: A History documents the history of the expansive network of Soviet prisons, called “Gulags,” that were once spread all across the former Soviet Union. These deadly complexes, which were essentially concentration camps whose occupants were used as slave labor, have come to represent the worst that the repressive Soviet system had to offer. I was an oppressive process that peaked during the Stalin years and would evolve over successive eras.

The conditions inside these camps were beyond horrendous. Prisoners were forced to fight over revolting scraps of food during the grueling Russian winters, while criminals who roamed the premises were permitted by the guards to terrorize political prisoners through rape and murder. Many didn’t even make it to the camps. Prisoners were often crammed into unheated trains bound for these camps, which were common situated in Siberia, for at least a month. These trains would periodically stop to remove prisoners who had frozen to death and throw their bodies into nearby ditches. At least 18 million people experienced these horrors. At least 3 million of them died in these insufferable conditions.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Applebaum has been able gain access to sources that were not available in the years prior, including the release of memoirs of known survivors backed up with interviews and the release of secret archival documents originally kept hidden by the Soviets. Combining these newly released memoirs with the evidence published by the Memorial Society of Moscow and other institutes, the author has been provided a new way to extensively describe the changing, administrative history of the camps, how life was like within them, and how they grew out of and reflected Soviet society.

2. Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America by Steven J. Ross, 2017

In the middle of writing this list, I knew I had to include a book focusing on some aspect of Southern California. A place where I was born and raised.

Hitler in Los Angeles focuses on the extremely daring spying operations led by attorney Leon L. Lewis and his ring of operatives with the purpose of infiltrating Nazi and Fascist organizations in Los Angeles in order to foil their attempts at influencing the city which began during the great depression and ending at the conclusion of WWII. The book comes across much like a thriller as it covers Lewis and his spies, who were mainly composed of military veterans and their wives, being the only ones in the way of a sinister force who were undoubtedly bent on murder and sabotage.

The author, historian Steven J. Ross, first got the idea to write about this subject way back in 1999 while doing research for another book on Hollywood. While digging through the archives at U.S.C. and California State University, Northridge, Ross came across documents about Nazi activity in Los Angeles and the operations of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, as well as a memoir written by Lewis’ associate spy master Joseph Roos. It helped shine light on a war against Nazis that not only was occurring in our own cities but also began years prior to America’s entry into WWII.

I highly recommend this one for individuals who enjoy accounts of people defending their fellow citizens from extremists when their own government fails to do so.

3. The Man in the Iron Mask: The True Story about Europe’s Most Famous Prisoner by Josephine Wilk

There are few historical mysteries in the world that are as intriguing as the enigmatic Man in the Iron Mask. Passed around the French prison system for much of the reign of King Louis XIV of France (1643–1715), this mysterious prisoner was forced to don a mask of black velvet cloth, rather than a mask of iron as suggested by the moniker, and was prevented from speaking to his jailers unless he was trying to communicate about his basic needs.

The mans real identity has long been speculated and debated among historians for centuries. Theories on who the man actually was vary widely depending on the source and most seem to agree that he was originally involved with the French royal court in some way or another and was imprisoned after angering the king. Some have suggested that he was a disgraced French general or an Italian diplomat, named Ercole Antonio Mattioli, who had leaked details about the French occupy of a strategic fortified town to France’s Spanish enemies. Others have theorized that he may have been a close relative of the King, such as a secret twin brother or his real biological father, and was forcefully imprisoned as part of a royal conspiracy.

After diligently digging through the old French archives, Josephine Wilkinson reexamines a well-supported narrative that the Man in the Iron Mask’s actual identity was a man named Eustache Dauger. Her extensive research of contemporary records and documents, including the letters between the the kings war minister, Francois Michel Le Tellier, and the man who would be Eustache’s jailer, Benigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, not only clearly reconstructs the grueling and miserable experiences of those imprisoned but also gives a voice to an obscure individual who was forced to vanish from the world behind heavy stone walls.

4. Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino

As the name suggests, Wilmington’s Lie focuses on how the massacre of 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina was falsely labeled a “race riot” by the local, white press that tended to paint the black population of the city as the primary aggressors. In actuality, it was essentially a coup organized by wealthy, white elites who were aligned politically with Southern democrats who utilized simmering white resentment of “Negro rule” and fears of blacks taking jobs and white women in order to overthrow the democratically-elected, biracial government.

What resulted was a massacre in which 60 to 300 black residents after a mob of 2,000 stormed the city, burned town black-owned businesses, and forced the local government officials to resign at gun point. In the aftermath, one of the leaders of the coup, Col Alfred Waddell, installed himself as mayor and decades of black disenfranchisement ensued through the use of Jim Crow laws. What was once a black-majority city was turned into a “white citadel” almost overnight.

Zucchino’s award-winning book not only seeks to address the numerous causes of the coup and how it influenced white supremacy across the South, but it also seeks to draw parallels between then and now. It examines how politicians have relied on the same or similar tools as white supremacists had used a century to negatively effect African Americans ability to vote through race-based gerrymandering and “voter ID” laws. After over a century, these tactics have not gone completely away. They have merely evolved.

5. The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 by Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi

Even decades after they had occurred, the fact that the existence of certain genocides are still denied is nothing short of insulting and dehumanizing. Most unfortunately it’s not just specific individuals who are ultimately guilty of such denial. There are entire countries that have officially denied or downplayed well-documented atrocities that have occurred within their borders, including the very first genocide of the 20th century.

The Thirty-Year Genocide is about that very crime against humanity. As the name suggests, the 1915 Armenian genocide was predominantly committed against the Armenian population, who primarily resided in eastern Anatolia, by the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The mass murder led to the deaths of approximately a million people through the use of mass deportations and death marches as a means of turning the country into an ethnonational Turkish nation.

Authors Morris and Ze’evi explain that this systemic destruction of Anatolia’s Armenian population was part of a larger, turbulent process that lasted for at least thirty years. They describe that during this time, the regions Christian communities had begun to be feared with suspicion and targeted in campaigns to ethnically cleanse them from what is now Turkey, even though the country was in the midst of evolving from a crumbling empire into a secular republic.

Though the book isn’t perfect, it’s a great place to start if one is curious how how genocides develop through a complicated series of stages that are entwined with specific political, social, and geographical occurrences and are not strictly some irrational phenomena.

The Theories of Robert Sepehr and Why they are Dangerous.

Just as it is with other fields of study, how we practice anthropology, history, and archaeology has adapted and evolved numerous times in the past two centuries. The procedures we use to observe cultures and analyze historical events has repeatedly shifted on account of changes in methodologies, schools of thought, and access to new information. This typically ends up replacing older orthodoxies.

However, just like E.B. Tyler’s theory on “cultural survivals,” these outdated notions that we assume would go on to be replaced never truly die. In fact, they sometimes become adopted by reactionary elements in society and continue to endure and find new, larger audiences by taking on a new face and it’s all thanks to the virulent nature of social media. The scourge of misinformation that has escalated unabated in this post-truth era due to clickbait mills and poor journalism has created a perfect breeding ground where subjects that are considered on the fringe by professionals spread widely among internet users.

Make no mistake, much this is is the result of the media, which has relied on the “balance fallacy” when dealing with controversy. This is a known logical fallacy in which two sides of an argument are treated as equals in value regardless of what their merits are. Now fringe scholars and even downright charlatans are presented as respected members of their supposed fields of study, which ends up doing tangible harm to the publics understanding of history. Media perpetrators, like the History Channel, have literally given them a massive platform in the form of a multi-season series where they have hours to spend reiterating their pseudo-historical/pseudo-archeological beliefs on Atlantis and ancient aliens, which have been long rejected by the vast majority of scholars not only because they are considered outdated, but also because they are absolutely rooted in ethnocentrism. Their influence has gotten so pervasive that now, according to Chapman University Survey of Fears, 57% of respondents agreed that civilizations like Atlantis once existed, and 41.4% agreed that aliens visited Earth in ancient times.

YouTube is also guilty of platforming certain individuals leading to the rise to a new breed of internet scholar who exploit the Dunning-Kruger effect of their audience to push their fantastical ideas on ancient advanced civilizations. There is one specific individual I want to focus on whose known to foster such bigoted anti-intellectualism. He is a perfect case example regarding why racism is typically the end result after giving credence to such theories like Atlantis or Hollow Earth. His name is Robert Sepehr. What makes him a special case that separates him from arrogant frauds like Graham Hancock or Erich von Daniken, is that his racialist interpretations are considerably more blatant when compared to the others.

Originally, I wasn’t planning on posting a blog post on a certain individual, but their are two things about his life that I learned that piqued my interest. One, is that he is, supposedly, anthropologist, which is the subject I happen to major in and I feel it’s my duty to explain why his claims should not be considered a qualified example of this field of study by debunking his conspiracy theories masquerading as anthropology. The other reason I will get to later.

Sepehr isn’t just a minor producer whose videos have only been able to garner a few hundred views per post. In the past few years, he’s amassed a significantly large following over the course of his time on YouTube. Both of his channels, “Robert Sepehr” and “Atlantean Gardens,” have well-over two hundred thousand subscribers and some of his videos have racked up to millions of views. His video library is also extensive. Each channel contains over two hundred videos, some over which are over an hour long. One video, in particular, “Atlantean Gardens – Atlantis, Inner Earth,” is a staggering three hours and thirty minutes long.

In regards to production quality, his videos are nothing special. They mostly consist of stock footage overlaid with his own voiceover or clips from television show documentaries. Usually, the only original footage he includes are the intros, which feature him pretentiously walking along or staring out towards the same local lake or walking through a universities anthropology department.

Sure you are, bud. Sure you are. –Twitter

He’s also an author of quite a few books. According to his Amazon page he’s written at least four. I managed to attain a free copy of one of them, 1666: Redemption Through Sin (there’s no way I’m going to financially aid this man). It’s from these sources, including his blog, that I got the basic gist of his philosophy.

Here’s a rundown of each of some of his most wild claims I can find and my criticisms of each:

1. That the Out-of-Africa theory is a complete myth and that man, at least “white Aryans,” originated from the lost continent of Atlantis. He claims this is supported by the fact that Cro-Magnon had a larger cranial capacity when compared to people living today, their culture was “superior” to any culture that lived at the time, and their supposedly nonexplainable origins. He quotes Helena Blavatsky’s claim that the that the aboriginal inhabitants of the canary islands, the Guanches, were the lineal descendants of the Atlanteans as proof of this. For those who don’t know, Helena Blavatsky was neither a historian nor an anthropologist. She was a renowned, esoteric philosopher who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She was also a notorious fraud and this is coming from someone who read The Secret Doctrine. The claim that the origins of Cro-Magnon man and their descendants, like the Basques, is a mystery is nothing but a false dilemma. Thanks to a genetic study on the remains belonging to an individual located in Belgium who was part of the archaeological industry associated with them, the Aurignacian, we have learned that early European modern man, or EEME, belonged to the paternal haplogroup C1a and the maternal haplogroup M. Haplogroup C1a most likely originated in West Asia, while haplogroup M either originated from Southwest Asia or East Africa. Sepehr also falsely claims that Cro-Magnon man inhabited North America by 35,000 BCE, even though the continent was considered uninhabited according to historians and anthropologists until around 15,000 BCE. The funny thing about this is that even if the dilemma was real the consensus of scholars argues that Atlantis has never existed. The only source we have regarding whether or not Atlantis was even a real place is from Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, which claims that, between 590 and 580 BCE, Athenian statesman, Solon, translated Egyptian texts that supposedly recorded the existence of Atlantis. Critias argues that 9000 years prior, Atlantis was an expansive empire centered on a large island about the size of Texas beyond the “pillars of Herakles.” The problem with this is twofold. First, these Egyptian records have never been discovered and are unlikely to have ever existed. Second, there’s no archaeological evidence of such an empire existing during that specific period in our history, which was a time when we were still trying to learn agriculture and animal domestication. The myth of Atlantis was undoubtedly a metaphor constructed by Plato in order to discuss how civilizations collapse due to generations of increasing decadence and greed.

Map of Atlantis from Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus in 1669.

2. That the Vril Society was a real Nazi occult organization and that Nazi Germany had flying saucer technology. For those unfamiliar with the conspiracy theory, the matriarchal Vril Society was supposedly an occult organization that was founded during the Weimar Republic that was led by a mysterious, Croatian woman by the name of Maria Orsic. She claimed that the Sumerian civilization, as well as Atlantis, was founded by the ancestors of the Aryan race from the planet Aldebaran 500 million years ago, which was information given to her through telepathic communication. This “parent race” apparently mastered a form of free energy called “Vril” to power their civilization and technology. According to this conspiracy theory, Hitler did not commit suicide in his bunker during the Battle of Berlin, but used the knowledge of Vril to create advanced propulsion technology and saucer craft which he used to escape to the Antarctic region of New Swabia where he and other Nazi leaders built massive subterranean bases. Using these Nazi UFO’s, Hitler fought back the United States Navy that were involved in Operation Highjump which was led by Real Admiral Richard E. Byrd. If this all sounds ridiculous that’s because it pretty much is. First, while there were real fascist, occult and pseudo-scientific organizations that existed during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany who believed that there existed an advanced Nordic civilization in prehistory, such as the Thule Society and Ahnenerbe, so far there is no documentary evidence of the Vril Society of having been a real organization. The conspiracy theory involving the Vril Society was made popular by the 1960 book The Morning of the Magicians, by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, where its authors make wild claims regarding ancient astronaut theories and esoteric Nazism. Their theories were most likely based on a complete work of fiction, called The Coming Race. Written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in 1871, the book describes an unnamed narrator who discovers a superior race of beings, called the Vril-ya, who inhabit underground cities and have mastered a powerful form of energy called “Vril.” There is also no evidence of the existence of a “Maria Orsic” in Europe during the interwar period or during the Nazi period. Clues to her obvious nonexistence include the fact that there are no known photographs of her. Only sketches of what she supposedly looked like exist. The mythology surrounding her was most likely invented in the 1980s by far right-wing occultists, Norbert Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl. Regarding the stories of Nazi UFO’s, much of those were invented by Neo-Nazi groups who were just feeding off the growing interest in UFO’s and New Age ideas that were increasing in popularity during the 70s and building from Bergier’s and Pauwels’ claims. One such organization was Samisdat Publishers which was owned and operated by the notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. During the 70s, he went under the pen name “Mattern Friedrich” and largely catered to the UFO community by writing books on how UFO’s were actually secret weapons invented by the Nazis who used a secret base located in Antarctica.

The existence of Maria Orsic has never been proven.

3. His book, 1666: Redemption Through Sin, is full of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. To be perfectly honest, I’m not in the least bit surprised by this. The books argument is basically this: in 1776 Jacob Frank, who was the leader of a heretical, Sabbatean Jewish movement, Adam Weishaupt, and Meyer Amshel Rothschild established the Order of the Illuminati in Bavaria as a means of establishing a one world, communist government by secretly controlling the media, finance, politicians, and academia. According Sepehr, Rothschild would essentially bankroll the Illuminati and the Freemason lodges they’ve infiltrated and convinced Weishaupt to accept Frankist antinomianism as a means of subverting the worlds religions. Rothschild proceeded to lay out a plan “to preach “Liberalism” to usurp political power, initiate class warfare, dismantle and reconstruct all existing institutions, and remain invisible until the very moment when the Illuminati had gained such strength that no cunning or force can undermine it.” I don’t know how preaching liberalism would bring about a communist world government when those are two very different ideologies, but whatever. Other parts of the plan include controlling the global money supply through corporate monopolies and using the media in order to invent an enemy for the masses to fear and then proceed to restore order so they seem like the heroes of mankind. You’d think that by covering such a serious claim Sepehr would have plenty of evidence and well-backed sources. His book, which is only a measly sixty pages long, has a complete and utter lack of primary sources. He provides not a single document, letter, or journal entry that details a correspondence between Rothschild, Frank, or Weishaupt at any point in time in history. Nor could I myself find any evidence that Jacob Frank’s Gnostic philosophy had any influence on Weishaupt. Frank was most likely not even in Bavaria, where the Illuminati was founded, when Weishaupt established his secret society. He was probably still living in Brno, Moravia with his followers, which he had been doing between 1772 and 1786. Sepehr also falsely claims that Adam Weishaupt’s father was a rabbi. Weishaupt’s father, Johann Georg Weishaupt, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt and I can find no evidence he was a rabbi though I found one source that claimed that he might have been the descendant of a family of Jews who converted to Christianity. Almost all of Sepehr’s sources, which can be found in the bibliography he provided, are from a plethora of either books or articles written by raving anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, much of whom aren’t even historians. This includes Eustace Mullins. A notorious Holocaust denier, Mullins once equated Hitler to Jesus and most likely lied about his educational credentials. Then there’s Nesta Webster. She was an English fascist who claimed that Jews and the Illuminati were responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution. Another is author Fritz Springmeier, who was incarcerated between 2002 and 2011 for bank robbery. He was known to equate Frankism with Satanism whom he believed were conspiring to take over the world. He was also obsessed with mind control conspiracy theories and believed in the nonexistent CIA mind control experiment Project Monarch. Sepehr also goes full on Hitler apologist near the final chapters of his book though I won’t bother covering it as this section is long enough as it is.

4. False origin theories regarding Rh-negative blood types. This is a common theory found in a lot of conspiracy minded websites that are known to have racist undertones. It has been suggested by many fringe theorists that because the Basque people, a Southwestern European ethnic group who reside in the western end of the Pyrenees, have the highest genetic frequency of Rh-negative blood than any other ethnic population in the world must mean that they are the pure descendants of some sort of relict population or antediluvian race that had come from Atlantis. Anthropological interest in the Basque people largely stems from their perceived uniqueness among other European populations due to their genetic distinctiveness and the fact that they speak a non-Indo-European language that is unrelated to any other language. Despite these long held assumptions, the Basque people aren’t necessarily the direct descendants of some paleolithic elder race that haven’t gone under any sort of admixture in the past 12,000 years. For instance, according to a research article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the Basque are general a mix of European Neolithic/Chalcolithic farmers who migrated to Iberia sometime around 3500 BCE and local hunter-gatherers. Also, despite the high frequency of Rh-negative trait found in the Basque population, this doesn’t necessarily make them all that special. Blood type is an ordinary genetic trait just like hair or eye color. It does not prove that those that have the recessive gene are the descendants of another species of hominin or aliens. Also, in one of Sepehr’s videos about the issue, he claims that the Basque believe that they come from a mighty maritime nation, known as “Atlantica.” I have no idea where he got this from. I’ve looked everywhere online and in academic papers covering Basque culture and I couldn’t find anyone making a similar claim. This is made all the more frustrating on account of the fact that Sepehr doesn’t bother to post his source, assuming he even has one.

5. A generally poor understanding of the Indo-European migrations which he uses to support his outdated racial theories regarding the founding of ancient civilizations, royalty, and mythology. In one of his videos, Sepehr makes the habit of conflating the term “Aryan” with Proto-Indo-European, or PIE. PIE is regarded by linguistic anthropologists to be the theoretical common ancestor language from which all members of the Indo-European language family, such as Germanic, Latin, Slavic, Greek, and Indo-Iranian, derive from. Aryan, on the other hand, was a racial category that was invented in the 1850s that designated the descendants of the original Indo-European speakers as a distinctive race. The concept would go on to influence Nazi racial ideology, which considered non-Aryans subhuman. The theory of an “Aryan race” has been routinely rejected by anthropologists for two reasons. First, there is no evidence that the Proto-Indo-Europeans designated themselves as “Aryan” in either a racial or ethnic sense. Second, it was only used as an endonym by the Indo-Iranian peoples as an ethnocultural category and not a racial one. The following are inaccuracies from the same video.

"He makes the bizarre and unsupported claim that the Sumerians were supposedly driven from their homelands north of the Black Sea by the Scythians and were Indo-European in origin." Any anthropologist will tell you this makes no sense. For one, the Scythians didn’t appear in the historical record until the 8th century BCE, long after the Sumerians resided in Mesopotamia. Sumerians didn’t originate from the north of the Black Sea, though some anthropologists have theorized that the Caucasus may be their homeland. This doesn’t prove that the Sumerians were Indo-European or what we would arbitrarily classify as “white.” He also falsely classifies the European Huns as an Indo-European people. The Huns were most likely the descendants of the Xiongnu people, who were either a Turkic or Mongolic ethnic group. “The Hyksos were Indo-European Aryans.” The Hyksos were a people who migrated to the Nile Delta from northern Canaan and ruled ancient Egypt as the Fifteenth Dynasty (1650–1550 BCE). They were not an Indo-European people but were in fact Semitic. Claims of an Indo-European origin developed in the early 20th century as a means of justifying colonization. “The Knights Templars built Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia.” The churches, including the Church of Saint George, were most likely constructed on the orders of  King Gebre Mesqel Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty sometime in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. “The Celtic Druids were Scythian royalty.” The Celtic druids, who were a class of religious leaders, political advisors, and legal scholars who had a high-ranking role in Celtic chiefdoms, had nothing to do with the Scythians. “The Tarim mummies were found near Chinese pyramids.” This is ridiculous. The well-preserved mummies, who were discovered in the exceedingly dry Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang, China, and the oldest of which has been dated to 1800 BCE, were members of an Indo-European people who had noticeably “Caucasian” features and a textile design that was highly similar Hallstatt culture of central Europe. However, there’s no evidence that they were behind the construction of the numerous pyramid shaped mausoleums used to house the remains of Chinese Emperors during the Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties.

Indo-European family tree. Sepehr makes the false assumption that the Proto-Indo-European peoples considered themselves a separate race or that they were one.

6. White people from the lost continent of Mu in the Pacific colonized the Americas tens of thousands of years ago. Sepehr appears to support the theory made by the British occult writer, James Churchward, that a massive continent, known as Mu, once existed in the Pacific Ocean fifty thousand years ago. It was supposedly inhabited by a white-skinned and blue-eyed race of man that had impressive seafaring capabilites who established colonies in the Americas, India, and Egypt. Churchward’s theories have been scientifically debunked since they are geologically impossible due to our understanding of plate tectonics and seafloor spreading. Sepehr, however, relies on reports about the Peruvian Chachapoya culture to support his theory that white Aryans existed in the America’s prior to the arrival of Native Americans and European colonists. According to Spanish conquistador and chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon the Chachapoya, people of the cloud forests, who were one of the nations subjugated by the Incan Empire, were described as the “whitest and most handsome of all the people” he had encountered in the Indies. Relying on this account as proof the Cachapoya were European-looking, blond Aryans presents many problems. For one, the racial classification system that included the use of the term “white” had yet to be invented by Europeans at that time. In fact, many of de Leon’s contemporaries describe native Peruvians as white despite that none of them portray the Andean populations as blond or European in appearance. Such claims were made by later racial theorists, such as Jacques de Mahieu, who believed Nordic Vikings introduced civilization to the Americas. Also, preliminary analyses of skeletons from known Chachapoya settlements have yet to prove that the inhabitants were of European descent and document typical Native American physiognomies.

After extensively covering a considerable portion of his claims, it’s become clear that the underlying basis for much of what Sepehr believes in is derived from a fringe theory known as “hyperdiffusionism.” Generally speaking, diffusionism is an anthropological approach based on a highly comparative method that was popular among German anthropologists who sought reconstruct the history of a society by tracing cultural traits, such as religious practices, war technology, metallurgy, megalithic monument construction, and language, to specific centers of cultural innovation, known as “culture circles.” According to this theory, cultural change doesn’t occur in set stages due to the internal creativeness inherent in members of society as British anthropologists proposed in their theory of cultural evolutionism. Instead, cultural traits diffuse from a certain number of “culture circles” that come into formation due to specific environmental and historical factors and come into contact with other cultural traits usually by the means of population migration. These influences overlie one another like geological or archaeological strata, forming what is known as a “culture complex.”

Diffusionism would eventually erode in popularity among mainstream academia during the 20th century with the development of functionalist, historical particularist, and cultural relativist schools of thought, which was brought into focus by the likes of Bronisław Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and Franz Boas, who sought to examine culture on a holistic basis with a significant emphasis on extensive fieldwork. The cultural evolutionists and "culture circle" diffusionists during the 1800s, on the other hand, were frequently criticized by these later anthropologists for their grand theorizing that usually lacked the proper fieldwork needed to back up their conclusions. It’s for this very reason that they would go on to be referred to as “armchair anthropologists.” Yet diffusionism still had followers in the form of racialist fringe theorists. They especially gravitated towards its more extreme version, called hyperdiffusionism.

Hyperdiffusionism essentially argues that the influences of a culture circle spreads out over a vastly greater range. Rather than cultural practices diffusing from multiple culture circles that are spread out over a specific landmass, hyperdiffusionism contends that certain cultural ideas, such as farming or animal domestication, were introduced over absurdly long distances from a single progenitor civilization or culture. Normally, adherents of hyperdiffusionist models typically identify fictitious landmasses, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu, that supposedly existed in prehistory as the singular source for all ancient civilization and culture, while others consider other well-known and existing civilizations as a better candidate for the spread of all culture. One early proponent of this theory, for instance, was Grafton Elliot Smith. In the early 20th century, he suggested that all elements of higher civilization can be traced back to Egypt, which formed a massive culture complex that included parts of Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa, and even Mesoamerica. Since man was naturally uninventive, he asserted that culture can only arise under very limited circumstances and it’s from this single instance that just so happened to have occurred in Egypt that culture was ultimately born.

Map by Grafton Elliot Smith explaining how “sun worship” spread from Egypt.

Despite the fact that both cultural evolutionists and extreme diffusionists firmly adhered to the tenet known as the “psychic unity of mankind,” a concept first pioneered by German polymath Adolf Bastian, which holds that differences in ethnicity don’t directly corresponded to differences in mental frameworks, many later anthropologists considered ethnography during the mid-to-late 1800s to be steeped in ethnocentrism. This accusation, which was made by anthropologists such as James Morris Blaut, is not without basis. Cultural diffusionist theorists during the late 1800s and early 1900s had the habit of heavily implying that the world had a permanent culture center that just happened to be situated in Europe or the Near East, which was considered naturally progressive and innovative. Outside of that core, however, mainly constituted non-European civilization, which was regarded as culturally stagnant and superstitious and can only progress through the accumulation and introduction of European ideas as the result of colonialism. Such Eurocentric views can be observed in the “African Atlantis” hypothesis that was theorized by noted diffusionist ethnographer, Leo Frobenius, in 1904. He hypothesized that there had once been a now-lost civilization composed of white people of Mediterranean origin that was regarded as the source of numerous cultural traits exhibited by native Africans, including military technology and architecture. It insinuates that, without this outside influence of immigrant whites during the ancient past native African society was incapable of advancing on its own.

While diffusionism and its related theories would grow out of popularity among anthropologists during the 20s and 30s, it would be extremely misused by an exceedingly problematic group of individuals who proceeded to incorporate esoteric theories and pseudo-historical notions surrounding lost civilizations along with with diffusionist principles into their racist worldviews. They frequently had the habit of describing the inhabitants of these ancient and vanished progenitor civilizations or cultures, who they claim to have migrated to different continents in antiquity after their homeland was supposedly destroyed due to some catastrophe, as “Aryan” or “Nordic.” It heavily suggested that the white race evolved separately from other human populations and that this same primordial tribe was wholly responsible for the spread of technological progress.

One such group of thinkers that was involved in this philosophical meshing was the ethno-nationalist Völkisch movement of Germany. Being romantic nationalists, the Völkisch movement was originally an anti-urban, anti-cosmopolitan, populist ideology that idealized rural folktales and considered the “Germanic or Aryan race,” known as a “Volk,” as a sort of metaphorical bodily organism that was united by a collective want and linked to a certain geographical area, called a “living space.” Individuals who weren’t considered members of said Volk, namely Jews, were regarded as alien outsiders who stood opposed to the wants of the Volk. By the late 19th century, some organizations involved in the movement would take advantage of the growing interest in the occult among the German middle-class at the time, which was significantly inspired by Helena Blatvasky’s Theosophy and her theories on the existence of “root races,” one of which was referred to as “Aryan,” that inhabited separate, mythical continents that were purported to exist such as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Hyperborea. Another source of inspiration was the popular 1882 book, Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, by Ignatius L. Donnelly. Largely responsible for singlehandedly creating the modern obsession with Atlantis, the book not only suggested that it did exist as a landmass in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but that it was also the center of a mighty empire whose inhabitants were the ancestors of the Aryan peoples who had founded every civilization of the ancient world.

Though he was considered progressive for his time, Ignatius L Donnelly almost single-handedly birth modern pseudo-history.

By the end of World War I, a known Völkisch and white supremacist secret society that had adopted heavy themes regarding German esoteric philosophy and theories surrounding long lost civilizations was the infamous Thule Society. Central to their beliefs was the assumption that the Aryan race originated from an artic landmass known as Ultima Thule. Despite the fact that Hitler himself was not a member of the society, its membership list consisted of many individuals who were notoriously known to be early Nazi and fascist sympathizers. These same members would go on to hold many prominent positions of power during the Nazi Reich. Such individuals included noted Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, known for laying down key Nazi creeds in his seminal work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, and Hitler’s devoted secretary, Rudolf Hess, who would be appointed Deputy Führer in 1933.

Emblem of the Thule Society.

By now you should be noticing significant parallels between ultranationalist and white supremacist, mystic pseudo-history and Sepehr’s claims: both center around the idea of an advanced, Aryan super-civilization or a well-developed culture circle founded by a race of ancient Aryans, whose members were composed of individuals who supposedly appeared white or Nordic. Members of this society would go on to spread their cultural practices, such as agriculture, on a global scale due to their advanced sea-faring technology before the arrival of “non-Aryan” peoples into regions that are now inhabited by non-white, native populations. It should be noted that, while Sepehr’s racist ideas are obviously more explicit than those who generally have a passion for tales of lost civilizations, all modern interest in pseudo-archaeological and pseudo-historical theories, whether it be Atlantis or ancient aliens, are firmly rooted in such ethnocentric notions that were becoming increasingly popular in the late 1800s. They further perpetuate the sentiment that non-European cultures are incapable of achieving complex architectural feats that stand the test of time without being taught how to construct such massive monuments by some advanced, European civilization. Ancient astronaut and hyperdiffusionist theorists also disproportionally focus on civilizations that have been historically non-white as purported examples of ancient cultures receiving technological aid from some mystery culture, while European architectural marvels, such as Stonehenge or the Roman Forum, are either typically glossed over or given very little attention as to imply that Europeans could achieve such cultural accomplishments on their own. It’s due to these similarities that certain members of the alt-right tend to gravitate to such theories and commonly use them as a sort of recruitment tool for individuals obsessed with internet rabbit holes and reactionary topics.

Currently, while these theories and their politically extremist adherents, like Sepehr, have largely been relegated to the fringes of society and are entirely seen as laughable by qualified anthropologists, we shouldn’t assume that makes them any less dangerous. They can, in fact, become destructive tools of oppression once individuals in powerful positions start to believe in them. For instance, it isn’t surprising these interests became incredibly popular during the 1800s when European colonialism, ultranationalism, and theories regarding racial hygiene were also becoming more prominent. Tales and reports of complex ruins that some have theorized to have been built by a lost race of white, Aryan, or Caucasoid people, like those of Greater Zimbabwe and the Mound Builders of North America, were regularly used by European powers as a justification for imperialist projects that were marketed with the aim of “civilizing” the natives. They implied that European culture was inherently superior in comparison to the culture that was practiced by non-Europeans, whom they regarded as exotic yet primitive. The result was the rapid, and often deadly, colonial exploitation of Africa and Asia for the purpose of economic gain.

The concept of an ancient Aryan race was also, unsurprisingly, utilized by officials who were part the hierarchy of the Nazi German Reich as a means of justifying a form of racist, settler colonialism known as Lebensraum, or “living space,” (a term that was, itself, appropriated from German ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel) in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and to indoctrinate subordinates into believing they were members of a “master race.” Though pop culture and Neo-Nazi organizations have largely exaggerated Hitler’s interest in the occult and pseudoarcheology (he even went so far to refer to it as “nonsense”), the Reichsführer of the SS and prime overseer of the Nazi genocidal program, Heinrich Himmler, was absolutely fascinated by occult mysticism and the notion that a “biologically superior” Aryan tribe of people was solely responsible for much of the cultural developments that have occurred throughout history. By 1935, he would found a think tank, known as Ahnenerbe, composed of researchers with similar ideas to Himmler’s in order to make it seem as if Hitler’s racial doctrines had a greater scholarly backing than what it actually had in reality. The organization would recruit numerous anthropologists, ethnographers, archaeologists, biologists, folklorists and historians with the expressed purpose of finding evidence of an advanced Aryan civilization that consisted of some massive, intercontinental empire that spread from the North Atlantic, in order to emphasize the past architectural and technological accomplishments of the ancestors of the German people. Himmler would go on to rely on Ahnenerbe’s “findings” in order to fuel the extermination of what Hitler and the Nazis considered “undesirables.” For example, Himmler used the discovery of the astonishingly well-preserved bog bodies in Northwestern Europe as proof that Iron Age Germanic peoples exterminated homosexuals as part of some ancient, homophobic tradition. Himmler also relied on members who advocated hyperdiffusionist models in Anhnenerbe when he commissioned Generalplan Ost, a plan to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing of ethnic groups the Nazis considered racially inferior, namely Jews and Slavs, on an absolutely unheard of scale in the territories they occupied in Eastern Europe.

Emblem of Ahnenerbe. A Nazi archaeologist think tank that was largely responsible for “legitimizing” Nazi pseudo-science and the theme of Nazi mysticism in pop culture.

Beliefs leading to damaging behaviors and actions also didn’t just occur in the distant past. As I already mentioned in a previous post, in 2014, two German pseudo-scientists broke off a piece from one of the Giza pyramids in order to “analyze” it because they believed academics were hiding the “truth” that the Egyptian pyramids were actually built by a race of people from Atlantis. Another incident occurred in 2017 when members of the fraudulent “Alien Project” raided Nazca graves. They were accused by the World Congress on Mummy Studies in South America of taking part in the desecration and mutilation of native Peruvian bodies in order to lend credence to the claim that the Nazca lines were the result of ancient extraterrestrial contact.

Sepehr and pseudo-scientists like him don’t just share a common, racist theme that is routinely expressed in their deluded theories. They are also share a common psychology that’s far from unnoticeable once you really examine their rhetoric: they are all extremely arrogant. Sepehr and others like him believe they represent a class of persecuted scholars who are on a holy mission to reveal the “truth” about the origins of man and civilization, which is kept secret by an academic establishment that is trying to corrupt our youth with some sort of left-wing, “Afrocentric” political agenda. They are so full of themselves that they tend to regard the academic community as being involved in a vast, logically impossible conspiracy against the “white race” by teaching approaches that refrain from devaluing or erasing the cultural accomplishments of non-white peoples and denying the allegedly existing evidence for hyperdiffusionism. His Twitter feed is is highly evident of this. For example, as part of an online exchange with a legitimate archaeologist, in an act of pure professionalism, Sepehr referred to his opponent as a “low IQ overpaid Marxist charlatan,” followed by an expletive. In fact, Sepehr has a long history of referring to his opposition, in an extremely juvenile fashion, as a bunch of “Marxist,” “BLM,” and “libtard” supporters as if he’s still in high school and gets his political insults from 4chan.

His Twitter feed also contains numerous racist dogwhistles that you would typically find in alt-right troll accounts rather that in an online profile of a respected anthropologist. For example, in a response to an article concerning an Amazon manager who was caught on camera calling a company driver the “N” word, Sepehr brings up a claim about supposedly there being millions of victims as the result of black-on-white crime and the existed of 300,000 interracial rapes without proving that these figures are accurate or that they were the result of racial hatred. Other alt-right talking points he’s made include the claim that established WWII history is “all lies,” that America has “lost its identity and culture to Afrocentric Marxism,” that mankind has devolved due to interbreeding with other species which resulted in reduced cranial capacity, and that contemporary archaeologists are guilty of “pushing Afrocentrism,” “promoting cultural Marxism,” and “glorifying Feminism.” Then there’s his incessant manner of harassing other anthropologists and archaeologists on the same platform, usually by accusing them of being dupes or puppets or not having the courage to speak the “truth.” These aren’t the views of an anthropologist, but of a sociopathic narcissist who is obsessed with the idea that having certain shallow mutations affecting skin tone, eye color, and hair color somehow makes him superior despite the fact he’s willing to follow known hoaxes and woefully outdated anthropological points of view.

Speaking of his narcissist tendencies, he also frequently labels himself an “anthropologist,” and, let me tell you, DOES he want you to know he’s an anthropologist. Currently as of writing this, his pinned tweet contains a picture of himself in front of a mirror holding a mug with the words “Word’s Best Anthropologist” written on it and a photograph of himself at his graduation ceremony, though suspiciously not of a closeup of his actual certificate. Every account he administers, whether it his Twitter page, YouTube channel simply mentions that he is an “anthropologist” in his bio without providing anything else about his background. I can do nothing but doubt the veracity of such a claim, as I have already mentioned how faulty his theories are academically. Not to mention the fact that his inability to provide sources is normally something you’d notice in the most amateurish of scholars. He also never mentions the specific degree he received or what his thesis was anywhere online or in his book from what I can find. You’d think have if your goal was to center your entire online identity around being an anthropologist you would have included such info to give oneself credibility, especially when you repeatedly condescend to other users on Twitter about your “scientific credentials, education, and academic competence.”

There is no way he managed to graduate with a degree in anthropology while simultaneously espousing such pseudo-anthropological views. But who knows, maybe he kept quiet so no one would notice his toxic beliefs while he continued to take courses in college. Even then, you’d still find evidence somewhere. This goes back to one of my reasons why I decided to cover Sepehr. You see we didn’t just graduate with a degree in anthropology, or so he claims. We also happened to possibly graduate from the same university. That university being California State University Northridge. I also happen to stay in contact with many of the instructors I had while taking classes there in the early 2010s. I don’t want to name them as I don’t want then to get harassed online, but none of them could recall his name. Finding out if he even attended is impossible as much of that is confidential. However no one can find any information on his thesis in the ProQuest database. Make of that what you will.

So you’re probably wondering by now why social media sites, specifically Twitter and YouTube, still platform an individual with a long history of behaving like an amateurish scholar who has the habit of pulling claims entirely out of thin air and regurgitating alt-right and anti-Semitic talking points. It all has to do with the power of the almighty algorithm. Algorithms, like those on YouTube, are specifically designed to keep users from leaving the site on account of the fact that the longer someone continues to watch more content the more ad revenue can be accumulated over time. The main problem, however, is that these algorithms aren’t more inclined to recommend videos or posts based on those with a greater level of credibility or informational accuracy. It may start with you looking up a video about ancient aliens and then, after hours of the site providing you another autoplay video with the same conspiratorial pitch over and over again, it’s suddenly 4am in the morning and you haven’t slept in hours because now you’re obsessed with stories about how our reptilian overlords live in deep underground bases as part of a secret deal made with the Illuminati. That’s because the algorithms are meant to maximize engagement and retention leading to cranks, like Sepehr, finding a large audience to peddle to, which allowed them to rake up hundreds of thousands and, sometimes, even millions of views. That success was further reinforced as the system was unintentionally targeting individuals who were already susceptible to conspiratorial thinking and sending them greater, more concentrated doses of pseudo-historical drivel.

Lastly, while the potent combination of social media and TV networks are mainly the ones responsible for the growing popularity for pseudo-science in todays world, there is also the issue involving the wide disconnect between academic professionals and the general public. Many have felt that academic professionals are more interested in trying to impress other academics and are more inclined to rely on more professional avenues, such as scholarly journals. to express their displease with the influence of pseudo-science in todays culture. Now, sources known for their reliability and containing much-needed vital information to counter the misinformation that is so haphazardly spread online is normally either locked behind a subscription or requires a fee-per-article in order to be viewed by online users. Unless someone has access via a library or a university website, usually the most an individual with an internet connection can read online is an small abstract. Meanwhile, pseudo-scientific “documentaries” that lack the rigorous standards that are often associated with quality journalism or a scholarly article and are sometimes well-financed from backers are easily accessible and normally free from any sort of required monetary transaction. This is why public outreach initiatives are such a necessary task for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians to bridge the disconnect between scholars and the general public as a crucial means of dispelling myths. This clear detachment has been neglected so long that it basically invites charlatans, opportunists, and bigots to fill that void with falsehoods masquerading as if they were well-supported, scientifically tested theories. I can completely understand how disinformation related to history and anthropology can seem highly alluring. Tales of super-advanced civilizations that were founded by some possibly nonhuman mystery people can seem a thousand times more compelling than the much more gradual cultural changes that scholars typically write about. That’s why academics involved in the humanities need to get across the divide by accurately showcasing how ancient peoples succeeded in accomplishing certain cultural feats without the aid of some fictitious, advanced race and to continue to vehemently pressure television networks and social media websites to refrain from platforming charlatans and cranks. Otherwise, people like Sepehr are just the beginning and more of his ilk will continue to take advantage over this this profound loss of trust and communication.

The Khazar Myth and it’s Ties to Anti-Semitism

It’s an extremely sad fact of life, but very few ethnoreligious groups have been the victim and target of so much racist pseudo-history as the Jewish people have. Whether it be the blood libel, the stab-in-the-back myth, Holocaust denial, or the belief that they are absolutely hell-bent on world domination, the marginalized status of Jews has long been exploited as a convenient scapegoat whenever something goes terribly wrong, whether it be the Black Death or 9/11. The root causes for many of these anti-Semitic pseudo-histories largely depend on the time period from which it arose, but during the 19th and early 20th century, a considerably amount of these ideas were directly tied to the growing wave of nationalism that had been occurring in Europe ever since the French Revolution. Ethnic nationalists, especially, began to promote ethnocentric ideas by tying ethnicity to national identity in order to justify the oppression of ethnic minorities and implementing jingoistic foreign policies as a means of protecting “the fatherland.” As a result, Jews were overwhelmingly targeted in this period, especially in autocratic countries, such as the Russian Empire, as they were continually regarded as disloyal interlopers known for undermining of the will of the people and sought to damage national unity by being the primary spreaders of “dangerous” intellectual viewpoints and ideologies, like liberalism or socialism for instance.

With the exception of the blood libel, it is from this era of turbulent politics where much of the already mentioned anti-Semitic canards and accusations derive from. However, there is one anti-Semitic pseudo-historical myth that is rooted in nationalist schools of thought and theories regarding race that were incredibly common in this period that typically doesn’t get as much attention as the others. This is despite it being just as closely tied to anti-Jewish beliefs. It is commonly known as the Khazar Theory. First widely popularized by Hungarian British author and journalist, Arthur Koestler, the theory is frequently discussed by white nationalists online and is sometimes even advocated by individuals who are unaware of its anti-Semitic elements.

For those unfamiliar with the idea, the Khazar Theory is a historical hypothesis that suggests Ashkenazi Jews are primarily descended from a semi-nomadic, mainly Turkic people, known as the Khazars, who formed a considerably large tribal empire in the Caucasus and Caspian-Pontic steppe during the Early Middle Ages. Ashkenazi Jews are Yiddish speaking Jews who make up 65-to-75% of Jews who had migrated to the Holy Roman Empire during roughly the same period of the Khanate's formation. Unlike other nationalist “historians” that seek to legitimize an ethnolinguistic groups heritage and dominion over a certain area by arguing that they are the direct descendants of those that roughly inhabited the same territory mentioned in antiquity, the adherents of the Khazar Theory seek to delegitimize Jews Semitic heritage. The purpose of such a belief isn’t just to suggest that that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t actually “real” Jews, but, as I will discuss, it is also an attempt to hijack that very heritage in attempt to claim that a certain ethnic or racial group of people are, supposedly, the “true” Jews.

The Khazar Khanate existed for about three centuries, between the years 650 and 965 CE, after it emerged from the breakup of the Göktürk Khaganate in the 7th century. In what was essentially a conglomerate of steppe nomads, the Khazar Khanate was ruled by a relatively small Turkic elite that was ethnically dissimilar to their subject peoples. Like most semi-nomadic Khanates in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and Central Asia, the Khazar military was primarily composed of thousands of horse-born warriors who accumulated vast amounts of wealth by raiding and extracting tribute from neighboring countries. As there territory expanding in the 7th and 8th centuries, they repeatedly came into conflict with other expansionist powers that existed in close proximity, specifically the new and rising Muslim Arab empire of the Umayyads and their Abbasid successors. For at least two-and-a-half centuries, the Khazars were considered a prominent polity until the beginning of the 10th century when there dominance had begun to weaken due to their lands being seriously ravaged by the Pechenegs and Magyars from the east and the Kievan Rus' from the west. In 968 or 969, the Khanate was devastated by the latter in a campaign led by Sviatoslav I, which resulted in the sacking of the Khazarian capital of Atil. Afterwards, Khazarian imperial power was, for the most part, destroyed and would soon go on to be replaced by other semi-nomadic tribes.

The Khazar Khanate at its greatest extent.

What makes the history and culture of the people of Khazaria so intriguing, however, isn't just just their impressive military victories against the Arabs or their close ties to the Byzantines, but their supposed conversion to Judaism, which future authors would rely on for their theories on Jewish heritage. It was, in fact, one of the few societies to make such a unusual, though not unique, conversion considering that most non-Judeo-Christian societies at the time preferred either Islam or Christianity when having a shift in faith. However, the degree in which they adopted Judaism has been hotly debated by historians for decades. Some have argued that most, if not all, Khazars converted to Judaism. Others have postulated that only the ruling Khazarian elite embraced the religion, while most of their subjects kept to the old, animistic faith of Tengrism. There are also those that believe that the Khazars never accepted Judaism and that old Medieval sources detailing such a conversion are to be doubted or to be considered skeptically rather than accepted at face value.

The strength of historical evidence for the Khazar conversion to Judaism varies heavily depending on the source. When it comes to historical records, non-external sources are very rare, though this is to be expected due to the fact that semi-nomadic Khanates aren't known for their bureaucratic level of record keeping like more administrative empires. Most supposedly came from a few Muslim and Jewish sources in the 9th and 10th centuries which are difficult to ascertain how accurate these reports were considering the lack of literary heritage the Khazars left for us to piece together. One piece of evidence that does exist, despite the fact that it's authenticity has been called into question in the past, is the Khazar Correspondence. Written in either the 950s or 960s, these are a set of documents and letters between Joseph, Khagan of the Khazars, and the Jewish foreign secretary to the Caliph of Cordoba, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. In Joseph's response as part of the correspondence it mentions a past king of Khazaria, called Obadiah:

After the days of Bulan there arose one of his descendants, a king Obadiah by name, who reorganized the kingdom and established the Jewish religion properly and correctly. He built synagogues and yeshivot, brought in Jewish scholars, and rewarded them with gold and silver. They explained to him the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud and the order of divine services. The King was a man who revered and loved the Torah. He was one of the true servants of God. May the Divine Spirit give him rest! -  Khazar Correspondance

Another document that is usually used as evidence is the Schechter Letter. It was discovered by an American rabbi, named Solomon Schechter in 1898 in a collection of Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid documents, called the Cairo Geniza, that was located in the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. It is essentially a letter from a unnamed Khazarian Jew, written some time in the 10th century, discussing how Jews had fled to Khazaria to escape persecution and assimilated with the local population. In the end, these Jews who migrated to the steppes forgot most of their old traditions with the exception of circumcision and the Shabbat. It goes on to describe how one of these Jewish Khazarians becomes a respected military leader who encourages the Jewish population in the area to live more closely in accordance to the old ways.

- Solomon  Schechter

While scholars, such as Douglas Morton Dunlop in his 1954 book The History of the Jewish Khazars, who is largely credited to bringing the topic into the mainstream, have hailed the letters as authentic and suggest it gives a heavy amount of credence to Khazar conversion, criticism of such views still persist among academia. Scholars who contest their authenticity normally accuse the purported evidence, like the Schechter Letter, as a product of Jewish self-consolation by bringing forth memories of former statehood during instances of extreme oppression. One such critic is Shaul Stampfer of Hebrew University's Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. In an article, published in the scholarly journal Jewish Social Studies in 2013, called Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?, Prof Stampfer argues that the literary evidence is much too scant to conclude that the Khazars were religiously Jewish. He states that the contemporary sources longed used as evidence, such as the Khazar Correspondence, lack in reliability and may have been falsely attributed to their alleged authors. Stampfer also notes that if the conversion took place then why was there no mention of it in more reliable texts such as the heavily descriptive letter of the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas, that was written sometime around 914, which never mentions any such conversion?

But what about the archaeological record? Surely there had to be some material clues in the form of artifacts or grave stones laying about in the steppes that prove such a conversion had taken place, right? Unfortunately, the amount of available archaeological evidence is even more meager than the literary kind. In fact, according to Medieval historian, Michael Toch, Khazar burials, in which over a thousand have been thoroughly investigated, are notoriously known for their severe lack of religious artefacts. There is such a lack of strong archaeological evidence that it's safe to say that the current prevailing opinion is that the level of conversion was incredibly minimal and relegated to only a few members of the ruling elite, since burial artifacts have shown that most of the common people still practiced traditional Turkic paganism. If the noble class did convert it was most likely out of political necessity since shamanistic paganism was slowly being considered as obsolete and primitive, while more and more societies were accepting monotheism.

The ironic thing about this whole argument, however, is that even if the Khazars adopted Judaism, it still doesn't prove that Ashkenazi Jews are related to these converts. In fact, for the most part, genealogical studies done on Jewish populations have largely disproved the theory. In the past two decades, there have been two important studies that are considered the most prominent. Both of deal with a wide range of genetic data, including haplogroups, which which is a group of alleles that are inherited together from a single parent, especially those defined by mutations in the non-recombining portions of DNA from the male-specific Y Chromosome, which are highly useful in determining common ancestry. The first one, by Nebel et al., which was published in 2005, concluded that, while 11.5% of male Ashkenazim were found to belong to Haplogroup R1a, the dominant Y chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europeans, due to gene flow, Ashkenazi Jews are found to be more closely related to other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than to their host populations in Europe. Another study, released by Doran Behar et al. in 2010, found that, after comparing genotype patterns between Diaspora Jewish communities and Old-World non-Jewish populations, Jewish people most likely have their origin in the Levant. Behar even did a follow up study, in 2013, concluding that:

No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region. - Behar et al.

While these two studies have largely cemented the dubiousness of the Ashkenazi-Khazar link, another study was released in 2012, by Israeli-American geneticist, Eran Elhaik, breathed new life into the debate. His studies before delving into the genealogy of Jewish populations focuses on the genome sequencing of arthropods. He decided to use his background into supposedly finding the true origins of Jews. He began by analyzing data on 1,287 “unrelated individuals of 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations" and, since the ancient Judeans and Khazars no longer exist, used contemporary Middle Eastern and Caucasian populations as surrogates for the latter and Palestinians for the former.  He argued in his study that the Khazar theory contains more merit than previously thought due to the supposed clustering between Ashkenazi Jews and people living in the Caucasus region, such as Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijani Jews and that “contemporary Eastern European Jews comprise the largest ethno-religious aggregate of modern Jewish communities, accounting for nearly 90% of over 13 million Jews worldwide”.

-  Eran Elhaik

Unsurprising, his study has been met with a considerable amount of criticism from geneticists and anthropologists. One point of contention is how Elhaik's study used Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews as proxies for Khazars, despite the fact that they are an Anatolian Indo-European people, rather than Turkic, who share many Middle Eastern genetic components. Also, Elhaik's data regarding contemporary Eastern Jews was sourced from demographic data that covers only Jews that live in the United States. There also seemed to have been a bit of selective bias in his findings. For instance, when the study found out that far more genetic similarity existed between the Druze and Ashkenazim than with the Ashkenazim and Armenians, Elhaik chose to interpret this as evidence of Druze having Turkic origins when they actually originated from Syria instead of indicating a common Semitic origin. Elhaik maybe knowledgeable on the subject genetic patterns of the leafcutter ant, but his expertise when it comes to anthropology and history is severely lacking. Lastly, genetic scientists who themselves have done studies on Jewish communities in the past, such as Michael Hammer and Pavel Flegontov, have come forward to label Elhaik's findings as "unrealistic" and relying on poor methodology and conclusions.

So how did the myth that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of Turkic Khazars gain such prominence among some historians and the mainstream populace despite a spotty historical record, unsupportive archaeological findings and genetic studies? Also, how did the notion become tied to anti-Semitism and racist theories that were extremely prevalent ? One of the first to make the connection was French Semitic scholar Joseph Ernest Renan who largely denied Ashkenazi Semitic heritage. Renan believed that, according to his lectures, rather than being descended from Middle Eastern populations, Ashkenazi Jews originated from Turkic refugees that had converted to Judaism who had migrated to the Rhine after the Khanate had collapsed. Even though Renan was highly critical of the common idea of the time that Jews comprise of a singular biological racial group, much of his writing implies that Jews were responsible for their own oppression and suffering.

During the late 19th century and early 20th not every purveyor of the myth echoed these notions for purely anti-Semitic reasons. For example, in 1885, rabbi Isadore Loeb used the myth as proof that, like every other ethnic group and nation, Jews arose from miscegenation, while an early critic of Zionism, French Jewish member of parliament, Joseph Reinach, who believed the majority of Russian and Polish Jews are descended from the Khazars, since he opposed Jewish Zionists called Palestine the land of their ancestors. However, during the immediate post-WWII years, the myth began to be more closely aligned to anti-Zionism, especially during the formation of the state of Israel in the late 40s, which already has a sprinkling of anti-Jewish rhetoric. This was noticeable during the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, which would have split it into separate Jewish and Arab states, where two Arab statesmen, Syrian prime minister Fares al-Khoury and member of the highly influential and respected Husayni family Jamal al-Husayni, argued at the UN that a creation of a Jewish state in Palestine had no historical basis because, supposedly, Ashkenazi Jews had no roots in the Middle East and were instead the kin of converts from the nomadic steppes of southern Russia. They may have acquired this line of argument from a notorious businessman and holocaust denier, by the name of Benjamin H. Freedman. A convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism, Freedman was a champion of the Palestinian cause whose arguments extended from simple anti-Zionism. He was known to argue that Jews, especially those who were decisively pro-Israel, lacked loyalty to the United States and couldn't be trusted in matters of state. He was also known for providing financial support for anti-Semitic publications, such as  Common Sense, which were known to deny to validity of Holocaust. Anti-Semites have along history of using him as a source, due to his Jewish background, in a half-hearted attempt at avoiding being called anti-Semites.

As I previously mentioned, currently no other source regarding the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry has been more relied upon than author Arthur Koestler's 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe. Drawing on the theories proposed by Dunlop, as well as historian Abraham Polak, the well renowned writer, Koestler, argues in the book that Ashkenazi Jews aren't the descendants of the historical Israelites that are found in the Bible but are from the Turkic Khazars. Koeslter's purpose and motivation for writing the book for were actually well intentioned, albeit short-sighted. He wanted to disprove the concept of Jews as a racial group and the anti-Semitic accusation that Jews are guilty of deicide. He hoped that, by revealing the faultiness of such assumptions regarding Jewish heritage, antisemitism would eventually disappear in the future. The sad truth of the matter is that it backfired, horribly so. The work, while often praised by a few journalists, was heavily panned in the academic realm at the time due to it being almost totally meritless. One author even went so far to suggest that the book was the unfortunate result of Koeslter's failing mental capacities. This isn't Koestler's first foray into controversy and flawed theorizing. In his 1971 book, The Case for the Midwife Toad, for example, Koestler provided arguments many would regard as neo-Lamarkian. He was also a noted parapsychologist and has a long history of endorsing the paranormal and pseudo-scientific concepts, such psychokinesis and telepathy, often claiming that theoretical physics were the answer to them.

-  Arthur Koestler in 1969

Since the creation of the state of Israel, the Khazar myth only became more closely tied to anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric as time went on. It would be even be grafted onto other anti-Semitic accusations and canards that denote that a supposed cabal of Jews are secretly behind all the world's financial corruption and vice with the invention of the term "Khazarian mafia." In this view, the reason why Jews have a supposedly "parasitic nature" or a culture emphasizing greed that is characterized with a penchant of doing nothing beneficial for the host nations they reside in is because they are not really Jews at all. They are actually the descendants of a race of murdering, horse riding thieves that terrorized its neighbors with impunity. Not only is this a sick attempt to further to demonize and dehumanize Jews into scheming monsters but it's also an extremely ethnocentric take on the nomadic peoples who used to reside in the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

With this, we get a much better understanding of how the Khazar myth is rooted in anti-Semitism. But it's also, extremely important learning about what these racist, obsessive notions do for the people who believe in them. For example, for a Palestinian ultranationalist, the Khazar myth reinforces the idea that Jews hold no real historical claim to any part of the Middle-East, are not Semitic or Middle-Eastern in origin, and therefore, do not have the right to inhabit the Levant. For a specific breed of white supremacists, known as Christian Identity, which is basically an offshoot of British Israelism, the Khazar myth reaffirms the belief that who we currently refer to as "Jews," are actually a race of imposters and mongrel barbarians, while it's actually the Anglo-Saxon, aryan race who are God's true "chosen people," which, thereby, confirms of inherent virtuousness of the white race. In fact, there's a long history of groups and individuals claiming to be the descendants of Biblical Jews as an attempt to to influence racial or ethnic pride. These includes French Israelism and the Black Hebrew Israelites, just to name a couple. Lastly, the libel is frequently brought up as a means of avoiding being called "anti-Semitic." After all, how can someone be anti-Semitic against a group of people who aren't even real Jews. This method is obviously holds little weight considering they are still relying on common anti-Semitic tropes that were used to justify oppression and marginalization by implying that Jews are liars whose culture is based on undeservedly taking what doesn't belong to them.

Finally, for those who care about combating anti-Semitism, it's important to remember that attempts to debate with professional bigots with the points made above, who have consumed their lives with such an irrational passion, is often a complete waste of time. Many have already made up their minds and by using the sources I mentioned above as a method to refute their claims you'll often be given the reply that these studies are just part of a wider conspiracy to conceal the truth about the "true" history of the Jews. Instead, we should recognize how these myths tend to sneak their way into topics worthy of discussion like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict especially during times of significant flare up and when animosity is high between the two. White supremacists and ultranationalists love to use these periods of upheaval and open conflict as an opening to spread pseudo-history and propaganda and we all must be knowledgeable of history to avoid this trap and even some people on the left fall victim to. Like any other country, the government of Israel isn't above scrutiny, especially in their treatment of Israeli Arab citizens and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, but we must be diligent to avoid parroting pseudo-history that is mean to dehumanize an entire ethnoreligious group.  

Sources:

"Did the Khazars Covert to Judaism?" Jewish Social Studies. Stampfer. 2013. The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people."

Nature. Behar et al. 2010. "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews."

Behar et al. 2014. "Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews."

European Journal of Human Genetics. Nebel et al. 2005. History of the Khazars. Michail Artamonov.

History of the Byzantine Jews: A Microcosmos in the Thousand Year Empire. Elli Kohen. 2007.

The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Michael Toch. 2012.

A Book Review of Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire by James Romm

A Book Review of Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire by James Romm

As many of you are already aware, the history of Alexander the Great’s conquests are far from an unfamiliar tale. Most of us have, at least, a passing knowledge of the Macedonian’s grand military genius, which is normally instilled in our minds during high school history class. It was this comprehensive understanding of complicated battle plans, coupled by the extreme love and devotion is…

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The 1776 Commission is Unsurprisingly Terrible

The 1776 Commission is Unsurprisingly Terrible

As you may recall, back in my essay regarding the history of the Lost Cause myth, I mentioned the 1776 Commission and their upcoming report. It was essentially an advisory committee composed of 18 members that was established by then president Donald Trump in order to support a more “patriotic education.” I also mentioned that it was considered partly a response to more African-American or social…

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Top 5 Archaeological Sites and Relics that were Irreplaceably Damaged on Account of Human Stupidity

As a major in the humanities, nothing makes me more livid than learning about the loss or irreversible damage of an immensely important example of cultural heritage due to mankind’s massive propensity to royally screw something up. Reasons for such poorly thought-out actions that lead to the impairment of historical artifacts can be the result of either amateur archaeologists who foolishly believed they knew what they were doing to outright malicious acts of vandalism. Whatever the reason the outcome is still painfully the same: the erasure of a cultural site that is incrementally tied to the fabric of ones cultural identity, preventing those who share that same identity from engaging in their own heritage. Here are some examples I found the most serious.

5. A Bunch of Brits Damaged an Important Irish Archaeological Site Because they Believed they were the Descendants of Biblical Hebrews

Ah, the late 1800s. A time when the European industrial powers had begun to implement foreign policies with an overwhelming focus on dominating other countries, especially those in Africa and Asia, as a means of obtaining inexpensive raw materials to feed their growing economies. In terms of amount of land annexed and political dominance, there was no imperialist power more successful in this complex process than Great Britain. In order to justify such vastly one-sided geopolitical influence, social Darwinian theories were frequently espoused by British statesmen which had the habit of arguing that the supposedly “superior” white race had the right and the duty to civilize nonwhite races that were deemed inferior. However, some Englishmen wanted to take it a step further by advocating an even more ridiculous belief, known as British Israelism.

Influenced by writings, such as John Wilson’s 1840 Our Israelitish Origin, adherents of this theory suggest that the modern day inhabitants of the British Isles are, both genetically and linguistically, the direct descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. Apparently, according to the pseudo-etymology used by British Israelists, the Saxons are the descendants of the ancient Scythians, a nomadic people who resided on the Pontic Steppe. The Scythians are, in turn, the descendants of the biblical “Isaac,” due to the phonetic similarity between what the Persians called the Scythians, the Sacae, and Israel’s patriarch. The name, Saxons, is also further interpreted to mean “Sac’s sons” or “son of Isaac.”

If all this sounds preposterous to you, that’s because it pretty much is. The languages of the British Isles, such as English, Welsh, and Gaelic, and Hebrew belong to two completely separate language families. The former is Indo-European, while the later is Afro-Asiatic. However, these hints that their theory was nothing more that pseudo-linguistic drivel didn’t stop British Israelists from damaging one of Ireland’s most important archaeological sites, the Hill of Tara.

Considered one of the most sacred locales in Ireland and an important symbol of Irish nationhood, the Hill of Tara had been used for three thousand and a half years as a pagan burial site and, during the early Middle Ages, it served as the seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Between 1899 and 1902, British Israelists led by judge Edward Wheeler Bird began to frantically dig up the site, mutilating much of it, in hopes of, get this, discovering the legendary Ark of the Covenant. Because if the Ark of the Covenant would be anywhere it would be in a place ancient Hebrews had no idea even existed. As one could imagine, Irish cultural nationalists, including professional archaeologists and journalists, were furious but ultimately couldn’t do a thing to stop them since the excavators paid off the local landlord and guarded the site with firearms as a means of keeping a group of protesters away from the dig site.

4. A German Amateur Archaeologist uses a very “Unconventional” Method to Excavate Troy

Archaeological fieldwork, especially excavations, are an incredibly meticulous process. The long, painstaking procedure of acquiring grant funds, organizing staff and equipment, mapping out the appropriate dig site, removing earth one layer at a time, and sifting through buckets of dirt looking for artifacts may take months if not years to fully accomplish. There’s a perfectly good reason for such scrupulousness since attempting to excavating a site without the proper know-how is extremely haphazard and can potentially damage the very thing you’re trying to uncover. A perfect case of this are the actions of one Heinrich Schliemann.

Born in 1822 to a relatively poor family in northern Germany, Schliemann had been obsessed ever since he was seven years of age with discovering and excavating the legendary city of Troy. After acquiring a sizeable fortune working as a businessman, Schliemann traveled to western Anatolia where Troy was vaguely believed to have existed. He was then pointed to a to nearby tell (an artificial mound formed by the accumulated debris of generations of people who once resided in a settlement), called Hisarlik, which, according to an Englishman named Frank Calvert who owned the land the mound was located on, as a possible location of Troy. In 1870, Schliemann then gathered a team of about one hundred local laborers and began digging at the site for about three years until he made an astounding discovery: Hisarlik wasn’t just the site of a single, important city, but multiple ones layered on top of one another formed after millennia as the settlement had been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt by inhabitants.

In order to reach the lowest layer, which he believed was Troy from the Iliad, Schliemann relied on a very unorthodox method that other archaeologists wouldn’t even consider using and for good reason: dynamite. Ancient cities and priceless artifacts were literally obliterated into dust due to his recklessness and poor record keeping until eventually Schliemann thought he found what he was looking for. When he finally reach one of the lowest layers, he discovered a cache of golden objects and jewels, which he proclaimed to be the treasure of Priam, the king of Troy in Homer’s poem. However, there was a serious problem. Not only did Schliemann destroy countless finds on his destructive mission to reach what he believed to be Troy, but the treasures he recovered were actually from a city that existed centuries prior. According to dating methods, the Troy from the Illiad was actually located in the strata Schliemann annihilated with dynamite.

3. The Great Pyramid of Giza is Vandalized by Two German Amateur Archaeologists because they Believed they were Built by Aliens

Currently, one of the primary disseminators of pseudoarchaeological and pseudohistorical theories is undoubtedly the New Age movement. Beginning in the 1960s, this philosophy, which suggests that the world has become too materialistic and has turned away from the spiritualism that is the heart of creation and that there is a non-physical reality than underlies our physical world, is largely responsible for much of the spread of evidence-less beliefs that are related to history and archaeology. These assertions include claims regarding lost, technologically advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu, or the theory that aliens have visited us in the Earth’s past and influenced our culture. Such fantastical notions have largely exited the fringe and have become more accepted since the late 20th century thanks in part to being picked up and discussed the History Channel.

Generally speaking, these theorists are typically harmless when it comes to their presence at archaeological sites, that changed in 2013 when a couple of German amateur archaeologists decided to vandalized Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza in order to prove that the monuments weren’t built by ancient Egyptians. In April of that year, Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann, as well as a filmmaker, were, for some reason, given permission to enter the inner chambers of the pyramid that’s normally closed off to the public and proceeded to take a number of samples from a cartouche, which is a hieroglyphic inscription that normally represents the name and title of an Egyptian monarch, and smuggle them out of the country to Dresden University for further study. Neither men were professional archaeologists, nor were the associated with any institute involved in the field.

Apparently, the purpose of their defacement was to prove their “alternate theory” that the pyramids weren’t built by ancient Egyptians. Rather, they proposed that the Egyptian pyramids were build by a technologically advanced civilization that had existed much earlier than around 2500 BCE, which is when the Great Pyramid of Giza is believed to have been built.

As you can imagine, both German and Egyptian government authorities were absolutely furious over their actions. The three German hobbyists, as well six Egyptian guards and inspectors who let them into pyramid in the first place, are now facing serious charges. Lastly both Goerlitz and Erdmann tried to apologize for their vandalism in a letter directed to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities but it has been rightfully rejected.

2. Museum Workers use Epoxy Glue to Repair Tutankhamun’s Mask

Without a doubt, archaeological restoration and conservation is a delicate and arduous task that demands a considerable amount of research. Besides it requiring a professionally trained team of conservators and restorers who’re capable of making sure the object matches its original condition as close as possible while using a variety of methods, it is also highly dependent on that team to be aware of the materials used when the object was constructed. Completing such work can take what seems like ages as the restorers meticulously reverse or preserve the appearance of famous works of art, while following a strict code of ethics and scientific guidelines. Interestingly, employees at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo decided to ignore all that nettlesome repair work when they accidently damaged one of Egypt’s most important works of art.

Back in 2014, the famous Mask of Tutankhamen was clumsily damaged when it had it’s beard broken off while employees were busy fixing a light in it’s display case. Instead of following protocol by relying professional restoration methods and acquiring an expert in art restoration, they made the astonishingly poor decision of hastily gluing the beard back on with a quick-dry epoxy, that is normally used for wood or metal, in order to conceal their crime. This was followed a reckless scrapping by using a spatula in order to get some of the excess glue off, which ended up causing a scratch. They then placed the mask back into the display case with the hopes that no one will noticed. Unsurprisingly, however, guests did notice in 2015 when, on closer inspection, the beard appeared off center and that there was clearly a visible layer of glue between the face and the beard.

Despite fears that the damage was completely irreversible, German restoration specialist, Christian Eckmann, along with a team of conservators, archaeologists, and natural scientists successfully removed the glue and reattached the beard in a delicate operation that took nine weeks. First, they took a 3d scan of the mask to document it and then they raised it’s temperature in order to safely remove the epoxy glue with wooden tools. They then proceeded to fasten the beard by recreating the same technique the ancients would have relied on using beeswax. Now, the mask has been put back on display since late 2015 after a lengthy procedure. Meanwhile, eight of the employees who botched the repair job have been referred to trial by the Administrative Prosecution and are accused of negligence and unrefined restoration of the mask.

1. Greenpeace Damages the Nazca Lines due to a Publicity Stunt

Located in the arid Nazca Desert of Southern Peru, the Nazca Lines are an impressive series of large geoglyphs that span an area of about 19 sq mi. Created sometime between 500 BCE and 500 CE, these expansive markings that were etched in a pebble-covered, windless landscape, vary in design, but they the majority normally come in the form of straight lines that, when combined, are eight hundred miles long. They also appear to depict a myriad of plants, animals, and humanoid figures, such as a hummingbird, monkey, and a whale, that are usually composed of a single continuous line. Since they were first intensively studied in the 1940s, the reason for their existence has largely escaped modern scholars, though there have been numerous theories as to their purpose.

In the past few decades, the extremely fragile geoglyphs have come under threat due to changes in global weather patterns brought on by climate change. Disturbances caused by human actions is also a risk, since the ground is notoriously sensitive due to the fact that the ground is made up of nothing more than black rocks atop white sand. So far any damage the Nazca Lines have attained due to either environmental factors and human impact have been regarded as minimal. However, in December 2014, they sustained damage from an unlikely source which managed to infuriate the Peruvian government. As part of a publicity stunt, individuals affiliated with the environmental organization Greenpeace, of all people, entered an area near the geoglyphs that is strictly prohibited due to the fact that a single step can cause permanent damage. Then, as part of a message meant for a highly important, UN-sponsored meeting regarding global warming that was occurring in Lima at the time, they proceeded to lay down big yellow cloth letters near the hummingbird geoglyph that read: “Time for Change, The Future is Renewable.” After observing drone footage taken in the aftermath of the stunt, it was revealed through visual evidence that new lines were formed after the activists hiked to the site and what appears to be an outline of the letter “C.”

In response to such recklessness, Deputy Cultural Minister Luis Jaime Castillo has threatened legal action against the activists for what he rightly referred to as a “slap in the face at everything Peruvians consider sacred.” The Peruvian government was also seeking to prevent the participants from leaving the country and sought to identify the careless activists. Meanwhile, Greenpeace did its best to apologize for their actions in a statement they issued which states they plan to entirely co-operate with any investigation Peru has planned out. Unfortunately for Greenpeace, the apology did go over well with the people of Peru, which prompted Castillo to refer to it as a “joke,” since Greenpeace had initially refuse to identify the vandals or accept responsibility. After mounting pressure, however, Greenpeace decided to release the names of four of the activists involved by giving their names to prosecutors in the hopes that they will drop the charges against two journalists who were also at the event.

d e t a i l s

The Prevalent Lost Cause Myth and the Flawed 1619 Project

The Prevalent Lost Cause Myth and the Flawed 1619 Project

For historians and history buffs, there is nothing more dangerous than the infectious and almost undying nature of a form of discourse known as historical denialism. Also called historical negationism and often confused with historical revisionism, adherents of denialism typically rely, either willfully or ignorantly, on erroneous research methods as a faulty attempt to deny past atrocities and…

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Slovak Renaissance by Petra Lajdová (2012-2014)

Contemporary art photography of the beauty and artistry of Slovak traditional costumes, specifically headpieces and the upper parts. The multi-colored character of these parts of Slovak folk costumes has its origins in Slovakia’s wealth of natural beauty – it’s diverse terrain, mountains, valleys, green lowlands, wide meadows, rolling hills, mountain pools and lakes. In addition, the costumers’ richness emerges from the ethnically, socially and religiously diverse character of the country.  All of this is reflected in their colorful patterns and the richly or simply decorated headpieces.

Women in Restoration by Isabella De Maddalena

Top 5 Royal Political Power Struggles That Were More Deadly And Brutal Than Anything Seen In Game of Thrones

By now it’s pretty widely known that many elements of George R.R. Martin’s book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s HBO television adaptation, Game of Thrones, are highly influenced by Medieval European society, geography, politics, and religion. In fact, you hardly need a degree in history to notice the multiple similarities between the violent power struggles that strongly characterized Medieval politics, such the War of the Roses, and the main conflict featured in the book and television series. This is in part due to the numerous blog posts, online articles, and YouTube videos have accurately shown that the history and society of Westeros is undoubtedly a lot like Britain’s during the Middle Ages.

Yet, this is one of the main reasons why we find George RR Martin’s series so intriguing even after when our favorite characters are killed in some of the most horrific ways imaginable. Rather than a simple narrative involving a clichéd fight between good and evil, the series is a soft adaption of history that features an ensemble of morally ambiguous characters that are based of real historical figures. Each and every one of these characters has very human and understandable motivations and are involved in a deadly game of influence over a throne that’s the center of an unforgiving warrior culture where money-grubbing, feudal warlords rule much of society. Like many historical figures that are involved in power struggles, the characters in the series are all taking part in a dance of death where anyone can die no matter what our opinions of them are or their station in life. Martin’s series also accurately shows how politics can become severely unstable and are prone to periods of harsh chaos due to the poor decisions made by the states reigning monarch who is either absolutely raving mad or is driven more by their own self-interest rather than devoting their time into competently managing the realm.

This is why I want to share some extreme instances of volatile political intrigues from history that could have influenced or are highly similar to elements in A Song of Ice and Fire. The following examples show how truly unforgiving and unromantic history can be, especially in regards to dynastic feuds where acts of unbelievably ruthless cruelty and extreme depravity were all too common. As you can imagine, many of the following descriptions will be pretty graphic so consider this a bit of a warning before you decide to continue. One other note: the following accounts aren’t the only instances of Machiavellian political intrigue in that specific states or empires history, so keep that in mind. If I mentioned everything this list would be absurdly long.

1. Ancient Macedonia

Situated in what the classical Greeks considered as a border region between culturally superior Greek civilization and inferior northern barbarity, the ancient kingdom of Macedonia had some of the most frequent, bloody transfers of political power than any other state during the Classical period of Greek history. This was mainly due to the absurd amount of assassinations that were committed in Macedonia during the 4th century BCE, which targeted whomever was the reigning monarch at the time. In fact, after doing a bit of research, I found out that political assassinations and executions were such a common occurrence in Macedonia that of the seventeen kings who reigned between 400 BCE and 300 BCE only one, Amyntas III, died due to advanced age, while another, Cassander, died of dropsy.

Possibly the most infamous assassination during this period was that of Phillip II who was father of the famed Alexander the Great and the man who turned Macedonia into a major political and military power. According to Diodorus Siculus and Aristotle, Phillip II was murdered by his former lover and captain of the guards, Pausanius of Orestis, when the former refused to punish his general, Attalus, after he had Pausanius viciously gang raped by his household slaves after a night of heavy drinking. The reason for Attalus’ actions were due to the fact that he blamed Pausanius for the death of his close friend and Phillip’s current lover who was, confusingly enough, also named Pausanius whom Pausanius of Orestis considered his rival.

However, many historians have suspected that Phillip’s wife, Olympia, or his son, Alexander the Great, may have actually been the ones who masterminded the assassination. This suspicion is due to primarily three reasons. First, Alexander had a falling out with his father, Phillip, who was possibly planning to disinherit him on account that he was only half-Macedonian and Phillip had recently married and impregnated the niece of Attalus, named Cleopatra Eurydice, which would have resulted in a full-blooded Macedonian heir. Secondly, after the assassination, Pausianius was conveniently slaughtered by Alexander’s friends and bodyguards Attalus, Leonnatus, and Perdiccas, while he was trying to flee which would have prevented him from being interrogated and implicating others that were in on the plot. Lastly, after Alexander had left Macedon to build his empire, Phillip’s widow, Olympias, had a memorial built especially for Pausanias next to that of her former husbands.

Speaking of which, there was probably no woman who exerted so much power and influence than Olympias in historical antiquity. She is a perfect example that, even in some of the most strictly male-dominated societies in the ancient world, women could still participate both openly and covertly in political power struggles that can change the course of history. Originally a princess hailing from the kingdom of Epirus, whose royal dynasty believed they were descendants of the Greek hero Achilles, and a practitioner of the orgiastic snake-worshipping cult of Dionysus, Olympias was extremely supportive of her son and would not hesitate from committing even the most heinous of deeds if it meant Alexander would end up on the throne of Macedonia. She was also notoriously vindictive to such an unreasonable degree that she makes the book version of Cersei Lannister seem tame in comparison. Her most shocking act of violence that perfectly encapsulates her cruel nature was the murder of Phillip’s last wife, Cleopatra Eurydice, and their daughter, Europa. After Phillip had been assassinated and her son left to invade the Persian empire, Olympias forced Cleopatra Eurydice to commit suicide after forcing her to watch as her infant daughter was roasted alive.

2. Ottoman Empire 

Beginning as a small principality in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia in 1299, the Ottoman dynasty established one of the most impressively expansive empires the world had ever known. For over five centuries, the Ottoman empire continued to dynamically evolve politically, militarily, socially, and economically up until it’s dissolution soon after World War I. However, the Ottoman sultans, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, believed that in order to prevent the empire from weakening as a result of disunity brought on by a civil war they’d have to commit to an extremely cruel practice that led to the deaths of numerous members of the royal dynasty when each new sultan began his reign: fratricide.

First legalized by Mehmed the Conqueror (1444-1446, 1451-1481), who had his own infant brother strangled in his crib, this unconscionable practice was seen as a means to foment stability in the empire by preventing the sultan’s brothers from launching rebellions from their respective powerbases and potentially driving the state into a lengthy civil war, since at this time, in accordance with Turkish customs, the Ottoman Empire had an open succession rather than through primogeniture in which the eldest son inherits the sultanate. Mehmed The Conqueror largely justified such a merciless act by referencing the reign of his grandfather, Mehmed I (1413-1421), who emerged the victor in a civil war, known as the Ottoman Interregnum. For eleven years, Mehmed I went to war with his brothers, Suleyman, Isa, and Musa, who had refused to recognize him as Sultan and each had tried to take the throne for themselves, which resulted in a considerable drain on manpower and significantly weakened the state.

The most deadly instance of fratricide among the dynasty occurred when Mehmed III inherited the title of Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from his father, Murad III, who died of natural causes in 1595. Upon ascending the throne, Mehmed III had all nineteen of his brothers and half-brothers executed by strangulation, as it was forbidden to spill the blood of royalty, even after the begged him to spare their lives. The act was considered so shocking, especially among the religious authorities, that Mehmed III’s successor, Ahmed I, broke with Ottoman tradition and refused to order the execution of his brother, Mustafa.

Also, violence between brothers wasn’t the only slaughter perpetuated between ambitious relatives. For instance, Suleiman the Magnificent had one of his sons, Mustafa, executed in 1553 after he feared the popular prince was planning to kill him during a military campaign in Safavid Persia. After tricking Mustafa into entering the Sultan’s tent, Suleiman proceeded to watch behind a curtain as his guards strangled him to death after a long struggle.

3. Tsarist Russia

After hours of research in making this list, I can conclude without a sliver of doubt that the royal court of the Russian Tsardom had one of the most excessively gruesome environments than any other court during the 16th and 17th centuries. I fact, the exceedingly graphic descriptions in my sources were so overwhelming that I literally had to take a long break from reading. Much of the violence that characterized the political chaos in Russia at this time was mainly due to the influence of a class of nobles, called boyars, who turned the court into a pit of vipers where it’s members openly resorted to violence in order to acquire influence over the crown. These instances of bloodshed typically occurred during periods of regency when the future tsar was still young and had next to no agency when directing government affairs.

One such instance occurred after the death of the Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasili III, in 1533 when his son, Ivan IV, was only the age of three. Though his mother, Elena Glinskaya, ruled as regent for four years, Ivan IV was basically orphaned and was left without any sort of protection in 1538 when she died after being poisoned. Ivan IV soon became poverty stricken in his own palace since the feuding princely families, the Shuiskys and the Belskys, cared little for his wellbeing and during the few times they did provide him with any attention it was normally in the form of harassment or molestation. Ivan IV was also forced to watch countless atrocities as the two families turned the palace into an orgy of bloodletting where heinous murders occurred frequently.

Another outbreak of violence between boyar families, in this case the Miloslavskys and the Naryshkins, had transpired during the regency of Peter I in 1682 when he was only ten-years-old. At the time the Miloslavskys had convinced a mutinied hereditary regiment of musketeers, known as the Streltsy, that the life of Tsarevich Ivan, whose mother was a Miloslavsky and was half-brother to Peter I, was in mortal danger due to the threat posed by Peter I’s uncle, Ivan Naryshkin. Led by Prince Ivan Khovansky, who was nicknamed the Windbag, the Streltsy stormed the Kremlin where Peter I was forced to watch as two of his uncles, including Ivan Naryshkin, his mother’s chief advisor, Arteem Matveev, and the son of a haughty general, Mikhail Dolgoruky, were tossed off the balcony and impaled on the raised spikes below. Afterwards, their corpses were hacked to bits and their severed body parts were paraded around Red Square by a delegation of musketeers.

As you can imagine, such an experience heavily traumatized the young Tsars, especially Ivan IV who would latter be known as Ivan the Terrible and for good reason. During his reign, Ivan was known to be extremely paranoid, frighteningly manic, and incredibly cruel to the point that it wouldn’t be surprising if he was the influence of the character the Mad King from Game of Thrones. These personality traits became significantly more pronounced after the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, who was suspected of having been poisoned in 1560. Soon afterwards, Ivan founded an order of fanatically devoted bodyguards, called the Oprichniki, who were part police force, part monastic order. Dressed in all black and attaching the severed heads of dogs onto their saddles, these maniacs were meant to terrorize the civilian populace and to torture and execute anyone Ivan IV suspected of being a traitor. No one was safe from them, including the Metropolitan of Moscow, Phillip II. Ivan IV most deplorable act of unprovoked slaughter was the Massacre of Novgorod, in which he falsely believed was planning to defect. Ivan IV and his private army basically laid waste to the entire city and had most of the arable land surrounding it razed to the ground. He had his Oprichnikin loot cathedrals, beat clergymen to death, and had men, women, and children thrown into the freezing waters of the Volhkov River. Afterwards, the once great city was so devastated due to the decline of the local population that it became nothing more than a common town.

Ultimately, it was Ivan the Terrible’s deteriorating mental state that drove the Rurik dynasty to extinction. Ivan IV killed his first and more capable son, also named Ivan, in a fit of rage by bashing his head in with his sceptre in 1581, while his third son, Dmitry, accidently stabbed himself during an epileptic seizure. The only one left to rule was his intellectually disabled second son, Feodor, who died childless in 1598.

4. Imperial China

The Chinese imperial court was a notoriously unforgiving pit of death even before the formation of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE. In fact, Imperial China had largely inherited its system of lethal statecraft during the Warring States Period, a tumultuous time when the old feudal system that was so prevalent during the Zhou and Shang dynasties was replaced with a ferociously indiscriminate legal code that established a centralized, bureaucratic administration. Later Chinese scholars, specifically those who lived during the reign of the Han dynasty, would typically describe the resulting legalistic imperial regime that was established by the First Emperor of Qin after he unified China as consistently tyrannical, though now many historians consider such a narrative as nothing more than propaganda to justify the Han dynasty’s usurpation of the Mandate of Heaven. However, it’s still fair to characterize the Qin dynasty as extremely Machiavellian on account of the fact that the numerous schemes conducted by rival imperial ministers and advisors, who manipulated the succession for their own self-interests, caused the Qin dynasty to last a mere fifteen years before it was eventually replaced by the Han.

The initial signs of the dynasty’s unraveling occurred as soon as the First Emperor had passed away inside his carriage during a tour of his empire and was primarily masterminded by the ambitious eunuch, Zhao Gao, who held the post of chief of the imperial carriages. With the intent of putting the poorly qualified Prince Huhai on the throne as a means of running the empire, Zhao Gao diligently suppressed both news of the Emperor’s passing and his last written testament that sought to put another son on the throne until they made it back to the capital. Once there, the plotters installed their puppet prince as emperor and forced the First Emperor’s favored heir to commit suicide after charging him with treason and forging orders from his father the demanded him to end his life. Zhao Gao then had the influential politicians and military generals, Meng Yi and Meng Tian, arrested and imprisoned and encouraged the Second Emperor to execute the former and forced the latter to commit suicide.

Following the crafty eunuch’s takeover of the government, a destructive reign of terror was unleashed through the liberal utilization of a destructive form of collective punishment, known as the “nine familial extermination,” that targeted anyone implicated of treason, who included ten princes and twelve princesses. The result was that the condemned who confessed to treason after a lengthy session of torture, as well as any of their living parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, in-laws, cousins, aunts and uncles, siblings, and spouse, were promptly executed by dismemberment. Another important figure who fell victim to said trumped-up charges of treason was the infamous legal scholar, Li Si. He was ordered to undergo the “five penalties,” which consisted of tattooing, amputation of the nose, ears, fingers, and feet, flogging, beheading, and having the torso cut in two at the waist.

Zhao Gao finally met his end after he encouraged the Second Emperor, Qin Er Shi, to commit suicide in order to avoid capture after a hostile force invaded his place of retreat, which were actually Zhao Gao’s own soldiers that were pretending to be involved in the anti-Qin rebellion that had been occurring at the time due to the eunuch’s tyrannical policies. Zhao Gao then tried to have the First Emperor’s grandson, Qin San Shi, installed on the throne as another puppet. However, unlike the previous emperor, Qin San Shi had caught on to Zhao Gao’s schemes and had him quickly executed after ascending the throne.

5. Byzantine Empire

While the Western Roman Empire collapsed due to decades of political crises, civil wars, military ineffectiveness, growing corruption and extortion, a faltering economy, and “barbarian” invasions, the Eastern Roman Empire, on the other hand, continued to exist for another one thousand years and even managed to flourished during much of that time. Similar to its unified Roman Empire predecessor, the culture of the Byzantine political life was basically a heavily competitive and bloody contest between courtiers and relatives who vied for power and influence over the respective emperor which had led to so much complicated chaos and civil strife in the Empire to such overwhelming level that the very word “Byzantine” has become synonymous with intrigue and confusion.

Technically, no one was safe in such a malignant environment, where betrayal was common even among close relatives. One instance of such occurred in 969 after Emperor Nikephoros was informed of a plot against him that led by two disgruntled generals, Michael Bourtzes and John Tzimiskes. The two generals received aid from Nikephoros’ wife, Theophano, whom Tzimiskes was having an affair with and was in the middle of a loveless marriage with her husband. Theophano hid the assassins in her bedchamber who promptly stabbed the Emperor to death in his own apartment after she intentionally left his room unlocked. Another infamous assassination orchestrated by an individual close to the indented target was the murder of Leo V the Armenian on Christmas Eve, 820. The assassins, who were disguised as monks and were under the orders of the Leo V’s old comrade-in-arms, Michael the Amorian, tried to slaughter the Emperor while he was attending service but, at first, mistook a priest for him due to the dim light. The Emperor then tried his best to fight off the conspirators after grabbing a large crucifix from the altar, but they soon overpowered him and hacked him to pieces on the communion table. Afterwards, they dumped whatever was left of him in the snow.

Acts of violence also came in the form of ghastly mutilations, as the Byzantines believed that a disfigurement prohibited a candidate from attaining the throne considering the emperor was regarded in Byzantine culture as a reflection of God’s power and since God was considered perfect his earthy representative also had to be flawless. For example, the express consort by marriage to Emperor Leo IV, Irene of Athens, had her own unpopular son, Constantine VI, blinded with the help of the eunuch, Staurakios, when he was twenty-six years of age in 797 in order for her to seize power and be crowned as empress regnant. However, mutilation did not always end the political prospects of those who suffered after having been blinded, having their noses removed, or being castrated. For instance, Basil Lekapenos, who was the illegitimate of Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, was castrated when he was an infant since castrated men weren’t considered as a threat by the political establishment. However, Basil had proven himself to be a capable administrator and military commander under emperors Constantine VII, Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, and Basil II. Another instance of a successful comeback after a political mutilation was the case of Justinian II who had his nose amputated after he was deposed in an uprising due to his unpopular tax policies, his persecution of religious minorities, and his land policies that threatened the power of the aristocracy. After being exiled to the Crimea, Justinian II had his missing nose replaced with a replica made of solid gold and gathered supporters to retake Constantinople. He managed to accomplish this feat by entering the city with his companions through an unused water conduit under the cities walls and orchestrating a coup d’état in the middle of the night. After taking control of the city, he had his rivals who were responsible for his ouster beheaded before a jeering crowd, but not before placing his feet on their necks as a form of humiliation.

Lastly, besides the occasional backstabbing and the severing of body parts for political purposes, civil wars and revolts also occurred with high frequency. In fact, after doing a bit of research, I managed to count over 110 civil wars and rebellions that had taken place between the 5th and 15th centuries. One of the most complicated of these had to be the two rebellions conducted by Bardas Phokas in the 10th century. After taking part in a failed rebellion against his cousin, John I Tzimikes, Bardas Phokas was imprisoned after being defeated by general Bardas Skleros. He was brought out of exile, however, by the regent Basil Lekapenos in order to counter the skilled commander, Basil Skleros, who had started his own rebellion in Cappadocia. Phokas had managed to put down Skleros’ rebellion and was rewarded with a important senior military post for his services. As time went on, however, the new emperor, Basil II had become too powerful and independent, which greatly alarmed Lekapenos, who planned to revolt. Seeking greater support for their rebellion, Lekapenos and Phokas recruited their former enemy, Skleros, and proceeded to mimic the latter’s strategy by overrunning Asia Minor. Unfortunately, Phokas never managed to take Constantinople after proclaiming himself emperor when his life anticlimactically ended after suffering a seizure while he rode out and charged the Emperor in the hope of defeating him in personal combat.

Another example involved the aristocrat Nikephoros Phokas and military commander Nikephoros Xiphias against Emperor Basil II in the 11th century. Trouble with overseeing the plot had began almost immediately after it was conceived, since both conspirators couldn’t decide who should rule after the deed had been done. Basil II used this to his advantage after he got word of the plot, while he had been away on a military campaign against the Georgians. He managed to sow discord between them by sending a separate letter to each rebel leader, which led to Xiphias assassinating Phokus. The rebellion collapsed soon after and Basil II had Xiphias exiled.

Top 5 Royal Political Power Struggles That Were More Deadly And Brutal Than Anything Seen In Game of Thrones

Top 5 Royal Political Power Struggles That Were More Deadly And Brutal Than Anything Seen In Game of Thrones

By now it’s pretty widely known that many elements of George R.R. Martin’s book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s HBO television adaptation, Game of Thrones, are highly influenced by Medieval European society, geography, politics, and religion. In fact, you hardly need a degree in history to notice the multiple similarities between the violent power struggles that strongly characterized…

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Book Review: James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and the Persistence of the Lost Cause Myth

In terms of influencing how both the public and professional historians perceive and understand the American Civil War, there is no better book on the subject than James McPherson’s masterful work and crowning achievement: Battle Cry for Freedom: The Civil War Era. Published in 1988 by Oxford University Press, this insightful, Pulitzer prize-winning book on the bloodiest four years in America’s history still holds up since it’s release over thirty years later which led it to becoming one of the most commonly used texts for students in an unspeakable amount of classrooms across the United States. The texts extremely prevalent academic use is mainly due to how deeply it dives into the political, cultural, and economic determinants that led to war, its extensive use of quotes with well-supported endnotes, and its ability to come across as impartial when presenting information.

When it comes to purview, this hefty tome of over a thousand pages is extensive in it’s coverage of the American Civil War. Not only does the author focus on the course of the four-year conflict, from the Battle of Fort Sumter to the assassination of President Lincoln, but a significant portion of the book is also devoted to describing and analyzing the political and economic differences between the North and the South that facilitated in the outbreak of the war. For example, the book doesn’t go into detail concerning the initial start of the war when until the eighth chapter, while earlier chapters are dedicated to precursor clashes that further divided Americans who were either pro-slavery or free-soiler, including the question of slavery in the territories, the conflict between Jeffersonian republican ideals and industrial capitalism, the Missouri Compromise, Bleeding Kansas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott v. Sandford case, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.

The author also skillfully weavs well-documented opinions amongst the books narrative, especially those from then-contemporary orators, manufacturers, educators, politicians, generals, common soldiers, journalists, and farmers, the book provides the proper context that led to the tragic American Civil War and how it effected those who lived in both of the North and the South. By citing the experiences of both the lives of Northern and Southern civilians, as well as the major players before and during the war, the author demonstrates how socio-political, economic, and cultural history is heavily intertwined with military history. Typically those who are just getting into history have the habit of over-focusing on wars considering the fact they tend to be flashy and dramatic events that can easily grasp one’s attention, but Battle Cry for Freedom reveals how important the study of cultural developments can be in order to understand how conflicts arise.

Lastly, McPherson chronicles the circumstances surrounding the American Civil War with a significantly neutral tone. The author makes it implicitly clear that he��s refraining from making any form of judgement calls towards any actions or viewpoints made by individuals from either side when discussing the series of events and instead lets the reader decide which perspective is the correct one. However, this devotion to an unbiased overview of the American Civil War does not prevent the book from being an excellent source of information when confronting known myths surrounding the wars origins. The book is an especially useful tool when it comes to debunking a specific pro-Southern interpretation of history that has considerably infected they way we view the Civil War known as “the Lost Cause of the Confederacy” or “the Lost Cause of the South.”

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, the Lost Cause myth is an enduring pseudo-historical interpretation of American history that takes a pro-Southern view of the war. This literary and cultural phenomenon originated from the written works of former Confederate generals, politicians, and lecturers during the Reconstruction years as a means for southerners to psychologically cope after their defeat in war at the hands of the Union army and to perpetuate racist and white supremacist policies, such as Jim Crow Laws, in the South. The primary tenant of the Lost Cause myth, which gained considerable prominence during WWI, was that, rather than fighting for the preservation and extension of slavery, Confederate soldiers are instead described as competent and noble defenders of “states’ rights” against “Northern Yankee aggression.” For anyone who is familiar with the Cornerstone Speech and the Fugitive Slave Act, this attempt at justifying the Southern cause is ultimately a foolish notion due to the fact that it lacks any scholarly merit.

Adherents to the Lost Cause myth also portray Confederate generals, especially Robert E. Lee, as representing the epitome of Southern chivalry and military competency who were only defeated by the Union due to the latter’s superior manpower and manufacturing capabilities. As a result of such pervasive rhetoric that overglorified those who fought for the Confederacy, measures to memorialize the rebel military commanders are war dead by constructing statues and monuments in dedication to Confederate soldiers increased dramatically in the late 1800s and early 1900s during formation of the Jim Crow-era South. This romanticization of the antebellum South made manifest through the construction of public monuments firmly tied this negationist interpretation of history to the enforcement of white supremacist policies that disenfranchised African Americans living in the South.

This is why there is no better time than now to reacquaint oneself with the complex and tragic history of the American Civil War and it’s lasting effect on our culture. With the recent controversy surrounding the protests against Confederate memorials and monuments that still stand all across the country and the fact that our very own president defends their existence as supposed symbols of our heritage, it’s important now more than ever to counter any myths and misconceptions about this horrifying conflict whose main cause undoubtedly involved the issue of slavery. Battle Cry for Freedom, therefore, is an excellent tool in this endeavor of combating Neo-Confederate propaganda and I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who is interested in learning about the history of the Civil War.

Top 8 Video Games for People Who are Interested in History.

While video games have largely be consigned by much of society as nothing more than escapist fantasy for unathletic nerds, they also have the ability to become important educational tools for individuals who have a growing interest in history. Video games excel in their capacity as a historical learning device due mainly to their capability of immersing players in certain historical settings and teaching them the cultural lifeways of those who existed in certain periods of the past through the use of certain game mechanics and narratives. As a video game hobbyist myself, I've decided to make a list of some of my favorite video games that have a strong emphasis on historical accuracy, most of which are derived from the roleplaying and strategy genres.

Just to make an important side note before I begin the list: no video game that features a setting that takes place in the past is perfect in its historical accuracy. Even in games where developers have explicitly stated that their primary focus was an accurate portrayal of the time period, it's incredibly rare for a single piece of media to get it one hundred percent right, whether it be in architecture, clothing, the events that take place, weaponry, language, or the food the characters eat. Despite this, inaccurate representations can still lead people to inform themselves with better information on the subject.

8. Assassin's Creed Series by Ubisoft

- TechRistic.com

Possibly the most historically innaccurate game on this list due to its mostly fictitious depictions of the two historical organizations that are represented in the game, the Assassin's Creed series is basically a Dan Brown novel meets parkour. The series plot involves an ideologically-driven feud between two secret societies that has lasted for thousands of years and conflicts between the two have ta among different historical events and settings. The two sides are the Templars, who believe power and control are the true means to achieve true peace, and the free-will respecting Assassins. In each game, you normally take on the role of a character in the modern day who relives the experiences of their Assassin ancestors using a device called an Animus, in order to prevent the Templars from attaining powerful artifacts constructed by a long lost and technologically advanced pre-human civilization, called the "Isu," and preventing a global catastrophe that's prophetized to occur in 2012.

The series is primarily known for it's open world environments and stealth and parkour mechanics that gift the player with a significant degree of freedom to explore the historical setting each game takes place in. Missions in the game normally involve an assortment of covert tasks, including theft, eavesdropping, and, of course, conducting assassinations against certain targets.

In terms of backstory, the idea of a an advanced civilization that has existed before the dawn of man is pure fiction, despite what Graham Hancock and Erich von Daniken would have you believe. Nor were the Templars an organization hellbent on taking over the world or a secret society that has existed up to the modern day by infiltrating positions of power. However, even though much of the story is fiction, the historical figures, cities and landmarks, and historical events that appear and occur in each game are all historically accurate. The cities, for example, are recreated with startling accuracy and you can tell there was a lot of attention to detail to make each one look as lively as it did during the time period the game takes place in. What's more, you also get to choose from many different historical eras depending  on which game in the series you decide to play including the Third Crusade, the Renaissance, the Golden Age of Piracy, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Victorian England, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Classical Greece.

7. Hearts of Iron IV by Paradox Interactive

- steampowered.com

Hearts of Iron IV is a grand strategy wargame set during WWII that let's you play as any country between the years 1936 and 1939, including any of the Allied nations and members of the Axis powers. What truly makes this game intriguing is how it's sheer scale superbly recreates what makes modern warfare so distinct when compared to any other time period. Wars by this time were no longer determined by just a few major battles or sieges and instead involve massive, drawn out campaigns in which hundreds of thousands of men took part. The games succeeds in its representation of modern warfare by allowing you to take charge of a countries navel, air, and ground forces and making them highly customizable. For instance, the smallest units the player can control, called divisions, can be composed of up to 25 battalions, which can be classified as either infantry, mobile, armored, or artillery, and are manually assigned complex battle plans involving offensive land invasions, para drops, and amphibious assaults.

The game also stresses the importance of managing the production of resources. The game features a plethora of strategic resources, such as oil, aluminum, rubber, tungsten, steel, and chromium which are needed to produce equipment and need to be in constant supply through the construction of factories and refineries and making trade deals with other nations. Equipment, such as tanks, firearms, aircraft, and ships, can also be updated by starting research projects that are part of an expansive tech tree.

Lastly, Hearts of Iron IV can also allow you to create your own alternate history scenarios by giving you the ability to change the ruling party that governs your country. This normally involves a long and difficult process that utilizes a countries national focus tree, which allows the players to direct the development of their chosen nation, but the resulting changes in history make it worth it. If you chose Nazi Germany, for example, you can progress down a path of reinstalling the Kaiser as Germany's leader, transform Germany into a communist dictatorship, or have it fully embrace democracy.

6. Expeditions: Viking by THQ Nordic

- steampowered.com

Probably the least well known on this list, Expeditions: Viking is a role playing strategy game set, as the title implies, during the viking age. You play as a fully customizable character who has just been appointed as chieftain of your clans unassuming village. You're beset on all sides from conspirators who wish to topple you from power, and the only way to secure your position as Thegn is to gather a trusted band of loyal party members and to build a ship in order cross the North Sea in a quest for treasure in the British Isles.

Just like most RPG's, your customizable character has a set of attributes, such as strength, endurance, finesse, perception, and sense, that can aid them in their offensive and defensive abilities as well as their skills with certain weaponry. These attributes can also provide you with more accessible dialogue options, which, in turn, gives you more opportunities to solve problems that more closely aligns with your characters personality. The choices you make in these situations will effect your reputation with your clan and the morale of your hird, which becomes quite evident as your past decisions are frequently referenced in the story as it progresses.

Regarding the combat mechanics, the gameplay uses a hex grid turn-based system that emphasizes tactics and strategy and is highly influenced by table-top games, such as Dungeons and Dragons. There are dozens of status effects that can hamper or improve you or your enemies combat abilities by either using consumables or receiving injuries in combat, and you can use the environment to your advantage against a large force of enemy NPCs. Also, when you down an enemy they can be incapacitated rather than killed, which can effect the storyline.

Despite a few anachronisms that are present in the plot and setting, Expeditions: Viking is historically accurate and an immensely fun game to play if you enjoy turn-based combat.

5. The Total War Series by Creative Assembly

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Total war is a video game series that combines two gameplay modes: turn-based strategy and real-time tactical battles. Almost each installment in the series takes place in a separate historical setting, which includes feudal Japan, Medieval Europe, the Roman Republican period, the early modern period, and the Three Kingdoms period of China. The game begins with the player selecting a certain faction, each having it’s own unique benefits and disadvantages, and is given the objective of conquering a large amount of provinces which has be completed until certain amount of turns.

Generally, speaking, the game features two gameplay modes. One is an overhead, turn-based map where you have the ability recruit different units and agents, manage your economy, construct or upgrade civic or military buildings in the settlements you control, move your armies and navy in the campaign, engage in diplomacy, research projects in your tech tree, commit acts of espionage and assassinations, and check on your family tree. The second are 3D, real time battles that load whenever one of your armies on the campaign map make contact with one belonging to an opposing faction. In this mode you can order your units, which are composed of hundreds of individual soldiers, to create different formations and to plan complex tactics, such as ambushes and flanking maneuvers. The outcome of each battle can also be determined by the terrain, unit morale, and experience. The battle is won when one of the armies is either annihilated or forced to route, unless it involves a siege battle, in which a secondary objective is presented where the attacking force has to occupy a certain zone in the settlement, such as a plaza.

By involving these numerous factors in determining a battle in the form of game mechanics, the series perfectly encapsulates the importance of the use of force multiplication in warfare.

4. Europa Universalis IV by Paradox Interactive

- steampowered.com

Another great strategy game by Paradox Interactive, this sandbox grand strategy game, which is set between the Late Middle Ages and the Early modern age, is possibly the most difficult game I have ever played, despite it not giving the player any real victory conditions. The game functions like an interactive map that allows the player to control one of any 500 different nations or empires that has existed between the years 1444 and 1821 CE. This, in turn, gives the ability to change history by expanding the number of provinces you control though military might or by becoming a colonial power.

The games difficulty stems primarily from the fact that you’ll have to extensively micromanage your nations monthly income in the form of taxes, production, trade, and manpower, not to mention the almost constantly shifting web of alliances and assortment of military units you’ll have to pay attention and administer to in order to avoid getting annihilated by an opposing empire. The amount of income you receive each month is determined by an array of different modifiers including provincial development, the types of buildings you decide to construct, and your interaction with certain estates. The game also involves a more abstract form of income, called monarch power, which is gained primarily by hiring advisors and can be spent to improve your country’s level of technological innovation, quelling revolts, raising your empires stability, developing a province, etc.

Europa Universalis IV can also double as a potential teaching tool due to its relatively historically accurate representation of the borders between empires during the aforementioned time periods. The game also recreates the technological, political, religious, ideological, institutional, and trade developments that were occurring in Europe at the time which aided the European powers into becoming colonial empires.

3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance by Warhorse Studios

- epicgames

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an absolutely masterful attempt at developing a game with a primary focus on historical accuracy. Taking place in the year 1403 in the Kingdom of Bohemia, you play, interestingly, as the son of a blacksmith named Henry, instead of some high lord or an ambitious knight, whose life becomes upended when his town of Skalitz is pillaged and his family is murdered by a band of mercenary Cumans under the command of the King of Hungary and Croatia, Sigismund, who covets the throne of Bohemia. For the rest of the game you take part in an over-arching main questline that primarily involves avenging your parents deaths and retrieving a commissioned sword meant for the hetman of the King of Bohemia, Sir Radzig Kobyla, which was stolen by bandits.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance presents an open world environment that painstakingly recreates the region around Rattay, in what is now the modern-day Czech Republic, with an incredible amount of accuracy. For example, numerous castles, monasteries, and towns that still exist to this day are made to appear as they did during the Late Medieval Period. When it comes to clothing and armor, such as gambesons, chainmail, plate armor, gauntlets, leggings, boots, and tabards, they are, for the most part, accurately modeled, especially when it comes to how they would have been worn during the period, with the exception of a few minor discrepancies concerning the shape of breastplates. Also, the game features a realistic combat system using real-time physics and inverse kinematics and are based on techniques that were used in the 15th century.

Like most roleplaying RPGs, Kingdom Come deliverance features a customizable set of skills, branching dialogue options, and a nonlinear questlines, all of which can influence your reputation and lead to certain consequences down the line depending on your in-game choices. These elements also provide a sort of anthropological feel to the game, since they allow the player to explore socio-religious themes and motifs that were ever-present in Medieval society and architecture.

2. Ultimate General: Civil War by Game-Labs

- steampowered.com

Ultimate General: Civil War is a real-time, tactical strategy game that allows the player to lead a single army as a general from either the Union or Confederacy and take part in historical battles set during the American Civil War. Unlike the developers previous title, Ultimate General: Gettysburg, this sequel introduces a highly engaging semi-historical campaign mode that features almost all of the major battles that occurred during the Civil War, including Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg.

The campaign mode starts with the player being asked questions regarding your generals background, such as what type of commander was he (strategist, tactician or logistician), whether he commanded infantry, cavalry or artillery in the past, his rank, and his career after he the Mexican-American War. The players answers determine your gameplay experience, specifically the games difficulty, the effectiveness of each separate type of unit, and the amount of rewards you receive after each successive battle. The game also features an army management screen where, before and between each battle, you can recruit further brigades to you army, assign commanders of different ranks to your brigades, divisions and corps, purchase ammunition, and equip each infantry, cavalry and artillery brigade with different weapons that influence your military units firing range and reloading time.

Just like in the Total War series, your army’s performance in battle is heavily defined by their experience level, battlefield terrain, and how you maneuver your military brigades when engaging the enemy. Also, the design of each map are well detailed and accurately reflect the real battlefields that occurred during the Civil War in terms of both terrain and mission objectives. If you ever wanted a real-time strategy game set during the American Civil War this game has got you covered.

1. Crusader Kings II by Paradox Interactive

- steampowered.com

Crusader Kings II is possibly the most brilliant strategy game ever developed by Paradox Interactive due mainly to its focus on characters, allowing the player to change history, and it’s engaging representation of feudalism during the Middle Ages. In what is essentially a “dynasty simulator,” Crusader Kings II gives the player the ability to manage the complex politics of controlling a Medieval, historical dynasty between the years of 1066 and 1337 (with the earlier start dates being extended to 867 and 769 if you have the Old Gods and Charlemagne DLCs respectively) through conquest, diplomacy, and the occasional back-stabbing.

You start the game by either choosing characters from a list of pre-selected historical figures who are generally well known, like William the Conqueror or Genghis Khan, or, if you prefer to make things a little more interesting, you can go with a more obscure landed noble and drastically change the course of history. Whichever dynasty and historical figure who you decide to play as, how you succeed and advance in the game is entirely up to the decisions and choices you make. Crusader Kings II intentionally lacks any in-game objectives for the purpose of providing the player an unprecedented level of freedom to carve their own path in this medieval setting where violent dynastic feuds, brutal religious wars, and deadly infectious diseases were all too common. The only exception to this absence of an explicit mission system is the ability to accumulate as many prestige and piety points as possible, which increase depending on certain game mechanics, like character skill level, winning wars, the numbers of vassals you control, and the amount of titles you hold. It is only game over when your character dies without an heir of the same dynasty or the in-game date reaches 1453.

Crusader Kings II also cleverly reproduces the strategic importance of political marriages that were extremely prevalent during the Middle Ages. Marrying members of your dynasty to members who belong to another provides significant political advantages, including the procurement of a military alliance and potentially gaining a claim on another title in order to expand your collection of personal holdings which increases your income from taxes and the number of levies you can call on during times of war. Also, since there is a limit to the number of personal holdings you can directly control, you can grant some of your demesne to vassals in exchange for a cut in their taxes and levies, though there is also a risk of your vassals of sparking a rebellion. Another means of expanding one’s territory is through the use of declaring religious wars on a neighboring demesne that is lorded over by a feudal lord that belongs to a different religion than your own.

By making marriage alliances, religious conflicts, and dynastic disputes central to the game, the developers expertly recreated the chaotic lawlessness that heavily characterized the Medieval Age.

Proactive Instead of Reactive: The Flawed Concept of the First Crusade as a Defensive War

It goes without saying but its undeniable how the Crusades have firmly implanted themselves into modern culture, despite the numerous other conflicts that have occurred in the nearly one thousand year-long Middle Ages. Our persistent fascination with them can be seen whenever they are constantly represented in popular media in the past few decades, whether it be Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, History Channel’s Knightfall, DC Comic’s Batman, and video games, such as Ubisolft’s Assassins Creed and Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings II. The concept has become so ingrained in our collective understanding that the very terminology of the word “crusade” has evolved to the point that it had begun to lose it’s religious origins and is now included to mean striving for a cause that is commonly considered as just even when such a cause isn’t religious in nature.

There is a completely apprehensible reason for such a profound resonance among today’s collective imagination: the very idea of the Crusades have become extremely fascinating due to the incredible amount of devotion exhibited by the Frankish knights who answered the call. This extreme level of enthusiasm that imbued itself in these holy wars led to thousands of Latin Christians in taking up arms and undertaking a horrendously perilous journey across thousands of miles when traveling just fifty was considered a highly rare occurrence at the time. The existence of a astoundingly high level of religious fervor that characterized the First Crusade allowed its participants to accomplish unimaginable feats of bravery, fortitude, and resilience, including traversing though hundreds of miles of exceedingly arid terrain and brutally carving through the territory of at least three hostile Muslim states in order to reach their much-anticipated goals. Those goals being, of course, the retaking of Jerusalem, which had been conquered by Muslim forces centuries earlier, and the complete salvation of their very souls.

- Frankish knights and men-at-arms. - Osprey Publishing

However, significant historical events that have occurred centuries in the past and have such a momentous effect in the current zeitgeist have the tendency to become subjected to frequent instances of oversimplification, misrepresentation, misappropriation, and even manipulation by individuals through either intentional or ignorant means. The Crusades are no different. In this case, the reason for such a shrewd reshaping of the memory of the holy wars is usually for the purpose of fueling certain ideologically driven agendas that are commonly spread by the repetition of numerous misconceptions about the campaigns for the holy land during the 11th and 12th centuries. One of the most prevailing misconceptions that has a habit of popping up in discourse, especially on the internet, is the claim that the First Crusade (1096-1099) was primarily a defensive war, in which Latin Christianity initiated the conflict by leading armies of rigidly honor-bound, chivalric knights as a response against wanton Muslim aggression that took the form of a “jihad” or a recent catastrophic lose of Christian territory. The claim is used time and again on far right blogs and YouTube videos that display disingenuous maps and poorly researched lectures, like those of Bill Warner, that fail to consider important political and religious divisions between Muslim powers during the medieval period. It is an extremely gross oversimplification of a conflict whose origins, which were highly determined by political, theological, cultural, and historical developments that were occurring internally in both Christian Europe, as well as in the Muslim world, largely dispels the culturally idealistic narrative that the First Crusade was a justifiable reaction to the provocation of Muslim jihad.

In the late 11th century, the political sphere in western medieval Europe existed as a highly fragmented state of affairs. Land was severely divided among a landed, warrior elite descended from the same Germanic “barbarians” who had conquered sections of the former Western Roman Empire centuries prior and who constantly came into conflict with one another over territory due to a myriad of petty feuds, dynastic rivalries, and succession disputes. In order to accomplish their aims, these feudal lords relied on a class of mounted, professional soldiers known as “knights,” who, unlike their modern depictions as a noble class of warriors with a rigid code of honor based on protecting the weak from persecution, constantly pillaged and burned nearby peasant communities in the countryside, especially those that were under the lordship of rival warlords. Further facilitating these incessantly high levels of warfare at the time was the lack of central authority monarchies had over their vassals who were only bound to their kings due to fragile oaths of fealty and could pursue their own territorial ambitions with impunity. This lack of any central control over the power of the warrior nobility coupled with the nearly unending warfare between the feudal lords caused violence and lawlessness to become endemic to the continent. The last time western Europe saw a significant degree of territorial unity was in 800 CE when the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, was crowned Emperor after successfully capturing large swaths of terrain of what is now France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Northern Italy. However, by the late 11th century, Charlemagne’s reign was seen by the European populace as nothing more than a fading memory of a bygone age of momentous political security.

- Medieval Europe at the time the First Crusade was announced. - Crusader Kings II from Paradox Interactive

Similar to the near-powerless feudal monarchs of Europe, the head of the Latin Christian church, the Pope, was having difficulty exerting papal authority over the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Europe. The Pope at this time was nothing more than a religious figurehead who could exert little-to-no authority over the rest of the church hierarchy, including the bishops who, at this time, had stronger ties with local secular rulers, such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France, than they did with the papacy. A number of these monarchs had the ability to appoint high church officials to oversee cities and monasteries and sold church offices to members of the royal nobility, in a practice known as “simony,” who sought highly privileged careers in the church. This is despite the fact that, theoretically speaking, the appointment of ecclesiastical offices was the church’s undertaking. Many members of the church also held a seething contempt for the majority of knights who regarded them as overly vain, violence-prone rogues due to their savage treatment of the peasant population which became so entrenched in European life that religious clerics, such as Bernard de Clairvaux, went so far as to accuse them of “fighting for the devil.”

By the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), however, the papacy, who saw themselves as having the God-given role to protect Christendom from the corrupting influences of the secular world, had started to attempt reforming the church and knighthood by reasserting their supreme authority over religious affairs through the use of excommunication and by advocating the need of sacral military sponsorships, known as “holy wars.” By calling on Christian rulers to help defend the church, popes that had focused on reform had hoped to redirect the violence caused by the martial enthusiasm of the feudal warlords to be used towards combating the papacy’s and Christendom’s supposed enemies, mainly the Holy Roman Emperor and Muslim forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. These initial proactive measures of forming an military wing of the church under Pope Gregory fell flat on account of his confrontational methods, but one of his reformist-minded successors, Pope Urban II (1088-99), succeeded is calling for a crusade for the Holy Land at the Council of Clermont (1095) after Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenos requested military aid against the Seljuk Turks. This was achieved mainly due to the religious atmosphere of Latin Europe, the gradual acceptance of religiously ordained violence, and the strategy the papacy used to market the crusade.

- Pope Gregory VII was the first leader of the papacy to experiment in the implementation of an armed wing of the church. - Wikipedia

Unlike the fragmentation that characterized the political sphere of western Europe in the late 11th century, the same region was undergoing a period of an unprecedented level of spiritual unity. By 1095, the pagan peoples who once raided, pillaged, and settled all across the interior and coastline of the continent, such as the Tengri Magyars and Norse Vikings, had become largely Christianized, which led to Christianity becoming the most widely established religion in the West and to European society in becoming highly centered around the notion regarding the importance of religious devotion:

“This was a setting in which Christian doctrine impinged upon virtually every facet of human life–from birth and death, to sleeping and eating, marriage and health–and the signs of God’s omnipotence were clear for all to see, made manifest through acts of ‘miraculous’ healing, divine revelation and earthly and celestial portents.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011) 

While this religious doctrine stressed the importance of love, charity, and tradition, it also led to the formation of a perilous anxiety, especially in the mindsets of the warrior nobility, which was brought on by the constantly reminded belief that one was destined to either eternal salvation or eternal damnation in accordance of an individuals acts in life:

“The Latin Church of the eleventh century taught that every human would face a moment of judgement–the so-called ‘weighing of souls’. Purity would bring the everlasting reward of heavenly salvation, but sin would result in damnation and an eternity of hellish torment. For the faithful of the day, the visceral reality of the dangers involved was driven home by graphic images in religious art and sculpture of the punishments to be suffered by those deemed impure: wretched sinners strangled by demons; the damned herded into the fires of the underworld by hideous devils.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

It is not surprising, then, that the feudal nobility became intensely obsessed with the idea of repentance of ones sins and purity of ones soul, as the inherent contradiction of having both blood on ones hands and being a committed Christian was not lost on them. For feudal lords and their knights who believed they were destined for hellfire due to their rapacious brutality, there were multiple gestures they could make in their path to atone for their sins. These acts included devoting ones life to a impoverished existence in the form of monasticism, giving alms to the poor and donating to religious houses, and taking part in a pilgrimage to one of the many holy sites of Christendom, namely Jerusalem or Rome. The last being especially compelling due to the journey to sacred locations normally being fraught with danger.

- Medieval depictions of hell, like those found in Giotto's The Last Judgment from 1307, filled the hearts and minds of the faithful with the fear of losing their souls to eternal torment. - Web Gallery of Art

In the 11th century, there was also a growing theological development that was accepted by a greater following as time went on: religiously sanctioned warfare. Christianity may seem like a pacifistic faith, at first, due to one of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament clearly stating “Thou shall not kill,” but many Germanic European Christians had understood the notion that some acts of violence were justifiable, specifically on defensive grounds, and an inescapable part of life if still sinful. There were also many who believed that the papacy may even sanction violence, since in the past bishops of the church would commonly bless weapons and armor and, at least during the time of Charlemagne, direct military campaigns with the express purpose of converting pagans. The concept of papal sponsorship of warfare was found potentially attractive to secular lords and knights who were suffering from “damnation anxiety” for being too well-accustomed to violence on account of Pope Gregory VII, who heavily promoted the idea, claiming that those participating in a holy struggle to defend Christendom would receive the same spiritual rewards as those who participating in a religious pilgrimage.

Despite such a powerful religious atmosphere in Europe at the time, Pope Gregory was mainly unsuccessful in sponsoring an armed pilgrimage to the East, since the idea of the Pope leading an army in person was considered too radical for its time. It did, however, establish an important precedent that would relied upon in a more indirect and refined manner by later popes, namely Pope Urban II, who waited for an opportunity to present itself to make the notion of an armed pilgrimage to the east, now called a “crusade,” into a reality and to spread the papacy’s sphere of influence. As already mentioned, Pope Urban II was offered a chance to expand Rome’s authority outside the confines of central Italy and to redirect the widespread violence spawned from the many petty feuds between noble houses against a common foreign foe by calling for a holy war when, while presiding over an ecclesiastical council in the Italian city of Piacenza during the spring of 1095, ambassadors representing the Greek Christian Byzantine Emperor arrived requesting military aid against Muslim forces. By 1095, the Byzantine Empire lost roughly half of its size, including almost all of Anatolia, when it suffered a catastrophic loss at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 against the Muslim Seljuk Turks and was seeking to regain its lost territory. Using the defense of eastern Christendom as a pretext, Pope Urban called for a crusade by autumn during a special sermon at the Council of Clermont in southern France in a room full of hundreds of spectators, including archbishops, bishops, and abbots. According to accounts, Pope Urban not only sent a call to aid the Greek Christians from the impending threat of Islam. He had also included a secondary aim: sending a military expedition to the holy city of Jerusalem. A site considered the most sanctified in all Christendom, its inclusion as one of the grand objectives for the First Crusade, as well as the admittance of the guarantee of heavenly salvation for those who participated, resonated deeply among the hearts and minds of God-fearing knights all across western Europe.

However, the inclusion of these two spiritually profound goals still presented a serious problem to Pope Urban II. There was no recent horrible atrocity or urgent threat of Muslim invasion towards Latin Christendom in which to draw upon in order to produce a greater sense of legitimate justification and raging hunger for vengeance to encourage knights to cross thousands of miles to retake the holy city of Jerusalem:

“Recent history offered no obvious event that might serve to focus and inspire a vengeful tide of enthusiasm. Yes, Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims, but this had been the case since the seventh century. And, while Byzantium may have been facing a deepening threat of Turkish aggression, western Christendom was not on the brink of invasion or annihilation at the hands of Near Eastern Islam.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011) 

It’s also important to note that the hostility between Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Seljuk Turks wasn’t religious in nature and the former was also involved in frequent clashes with its Christian Slavic neighbors:

“The reality is that, when Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christianity had largely coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity. There may have been little love lost between Christian and Muslim neighbors, but there was, in truth, little to distinguish this enmity from the endemic political and military struggles of the age.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

So how did Pope Urban II rectify the problem with the lack of a recent nearby tragedy to exploit in order to boost enthusiasm for his militarized religious pilgrimage? He did this by demonizing Muslims in the Near East to absolutely morbid degrees and exaggerating any sort of negative treatment of Christians may have endured under the rule of Islam:

“Muslims therefore were portrayed as subhuman savages, bent upon the barbaric abuse of Christendom. Urban described how Turks ‘were slaughtering and capturing many [Greeks], destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God’. He also asserted that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being abused and exploited by Muslims, with the rich being stripped of their wealth by illegal taxes, and the poor subjected to torture.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

He further dehumanized Muslims by describing them as bloodthirsty abominations who took sadistic glee in enslaving and violating Christian women and disemboweling Christian pilgrims who headed for the holy land. It is unsure whether or not Pope Urban II truly believed in his own propaganda, but his incendiary rhetoric and his promise of the remission of sins for those who took part in the holy venture certainly captivated his audience and succeeded in persuading many atonement-seeking knights that fighting Islam was preferable to fighting fellow Christians. He was so successful in his proclamation of a crusade that when news spread of it throughout Europe by word of preachers he managed to recruit both a sanctioned and unsanctioned army in the tens of thousands strong. By 1099, the former led by Bishop Adhemar de la Puy and Count Raymond of Toulouse and numbering around 50,000 footmen and knights miraculously managed to retake Jerusalem after months of fighting, the dwindling of resources, and threats of desertion.

- The Council of Clermont started a deadly dehumanization campaign against Muslims in the Near East. - Wikipedia

Interestingly, this vast, primarily Frankish army wasn’t even what Emperor Alexius had hoped for when he had asked the papacy for military aid against the Turks. He was expecting, at most, a few thousand freelance knights he could comfortably incorporate into his own forces to safeguard his remaining territory and retake parts of Anatolia. When the massive crusader force finally make it to Constantinople, Emperor Alexius tried to demand its leaders, with varying degrees of success, to swear an oath of vassalage to him and return to the Byzantine Empire any territory they took from the Turks.

Evidently, nothing about this dehumanizing speech about Muslims viciously terrorizing Christians inhabiting the Near East could be farther from the truth. First of all, while Islamic society may have far from an ideal progressive paradise by modern standards, one of the reasons it was so successful in it’s growth after the caliphs (the successors of the religion’s founder, the Prophet Muhammed, and leaders of all of Islam’s religious and political affairs) began conquering large swathes of territory outside the Arabian peninsula during the 630s was the relatively tolerant approach it took to treating non-Muslims that resided in territory it had subjugated. Rather than leading mass conversions of the people the caliphs had surmounted, non-Muslims, specifically those with common monotheistic religious roots to Islam, such as Jews and Christians, were labeled as “Peoples of the Book” and where allowed to practice their faiths in exchange for the payment of a poll tax. In all honestly, it was an era of unmatched religious tolerance for its time:

“Most significantly, throughout this period indigenous Christians actually living under Islamic law, whether it be in Iberia or the Holy Land, were generally treated with remarkable clemency. The Muslim faith acknowledged and respected Judaism and Christianity creeds in which it enjoyed a common devotional tradition and a mutual reliance upon authoritative scripture. Christian subjects may not have been able to share power with their Muslim masters, but thy ere given freedom to worship. All around the Mediterranean basin, Christian faith survived and even thrived under the watchful but tolerant eye of Islam. Eastern Christendom may have been subject to Islamic rule, but it was not on the brink of annihilation, nor prey to any form of systemic abuse.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

It’s also far from accurate to suggest that Islam in the late 11th century existed as a singular religious-political, monolithic realm that constantly waged its own holy war on non-Muslim neighbors in the form of a “jihad.” Not unlike western Europe, by the late 11th century the Near East was a fragmented assortment of political and religious holdings and the tensions between them had increased in intensity ever since the fall of the expansive Umayyad caliphate during a bloody coup in 750. After the Abbasid dynasty took over and moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, the caliphs authority gradually began to devolve over time to the point they became nothing much more than nominal figureheads who held power only in theory. When the First Crusade was announced in 1095, the Near East was politically and religiously divided between two rivaled forces: the Sunni Seljuk Turks and the Shia Fatimid caliphate. Descended from nomadic tribesmen known for their armies of mounted archers, the Seljuks conquered much of what is now Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, declared themselves sultan and effectively became the overlords of Sunni Islam and the defenders of the Abbasid Caliphate. However, during the time the crusaders reached the Near East, the Seljuk’s territory was itself in disarray over the succession of the title sultan which led their empire to fracture. Their primary adversaries, the Shia Fatamids, were a rival dynasty who claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammed’s daughter, Fatima, who had conquered large portions of territory that used to be part of the domain of the Abbasids including North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and Egypt.

-  The Seljuk Empire and the Fatamids were the mst powerful Muslim states in the Near East during the late 11th century. - istanbulclues.com

The schism that resulted in the Sunni-Shia split is traced back to a dispute regarding the legitimacy of Muhammed’s successors. Adherents of the Sunni sect subscribe to the belief that Muhammed’s legitimate successor was his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and that all rightful caliphs are those elected by members of the Muslim elite. Shia Islam, on the other hand, contends that only descendants of Muhammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and his daughter, Fatima, can be proclaimed caliph. Both sects regarded the other as believers in a dangerous heresy and constantly squabbled for territory in the Levant, which fostered a high degree of religious and political disunity in the Near East that aided the crusaders in their taking of Jerusalem.

As time moved ever farther from the era of rapid Muslim conquest and expansion that characterized the 7th and 8th centuries, enthusiasm for Islam’s own version for a holy war, a jihad, gradually began to wane to the point that by the near end of the 11th century it entered a period of relative inactivity. In the classical sense, a jihad, which literally means “struggle” or “striving,” was interpreted by Sunni Muslim jurists during the early period of Islam’s history as an endless holy war to be waged on non-Muslims and endorsed by the caliphs until all accepted the rule of Islam. Similar to the Christian crusades, it was considered a holy obligation that all Muslims should take part and those who contributed to a jihad rewarded with entry into heavenly Paradise. However, as Muslim Arabs began to trade with Christian communities and largely abandoned their nomadic roots, calls of jihad against Christendom started to lose substantial momentum and instead were turned against rival Muslim sects that Sunnis considered heretical: 

“As the centuries passed, the driving impulse towards expansion encoded in this classical theory of jihad was gradually eroded. Arab tribesmen began to settle into more sedentary lifestyles and to trade with non-Muslims, such as the Byzantines. Holy wars against the likes of Christians continued, but they became far more sporadic and often were promoted and prosecuted by Muslim emirs, without caliphal endorsement. By the eleventh century, the rulers of Sunni Baghdad were far more interested in using jihad to promote Islamic orthodoxy by battling ‘heretic’ Shi‘ites than they were in launching holy wars against Christendom. The suggestion that Islam should engage in an unending struggle to enlarge its borders and subjugate non-Muslims held little currency; so too did the idea of unifying in defence of the Islamic faith and its territories. When the Christian crusades began, the ideological impulse of devotional warfare thus lay dormant within the body of Islam, but the essential framework remained in place.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

In review, the belief that the First Crusade was a purely righteous backlash against a supposed existential threat posed by Islam is shown to be largely insufficient in evidence after explaining the politically divided state of both western Europe and the Muslim of the 11th century, the unbalanced power dynamic between the Latin Church and secular monarchies, the proactive efforts the papacy attempted in directing holy war, and the generally tolerant treatment towards Christians living under Muslim rule. The purpose of revealing the multiple religious and political complexities that expedite momentous instances of historical conflict is to expose the faultiness of oversimplifying the origins of the crusades which only leads to the manufacturing and reinforcing of historical misconceptions that have the tendency to glorify or mythologize historical events. This construction of an imaginative view of the crusades can be quite dangerous since those that perpetuate it have the penchant of selecting certain elements that fits more comfortably with a groups ideological agenda while glossing over some of the worst cases of religious violence, some of which would be considered examples of genocide by today's international human rights laws. These include the bloody Rhineland massacres, when member’s of the unsanctioned People’s Crusade slaughtered Jewish communities along the Rhine, and the massacre of Jews and Muslims that occurred when the crusaders had taken the city of Jerusalem.

This semi-mythological and overglorified view of the Crusades, however, was not always thus. After the Reformation and during the European Enlightenment, the Crusades became largely re-appraised by scholars and theologians, which led the holy wars to lose their fanciful descriptions and become considered as a significantly dark and exceedingly violent period in European history. It was seen by Enlightenment scholars as a prime example of the vile barbarity and terrible oppressiveness unrestrained religious devotion can ultimately produce if left unchecked. By the 1800s, this hostile attitude towards the Crusades had begun to change during the rise of European imperialism and nationalism. Scholars during the 19th century, such as French historian Joseph Francois Michaud, started a trend that became exceedingly difficult to dislodge from European perspectives. They romanticized the crusaders as daring adventurers who were given the noble task of “civilizing” Asia and interpreted the crusades  as admirable cases of “proto-colonization.” This misrepresentation that overlionizes the Crusades was the beginning of the subject falling sway to the phenomena known as “historical parallelism.”

Historical parallelism is “the desire to see the modern world reflected in the past.” (Asbrigde 2011) Today the concept is being used in a manner to draw a false comparison between the medieval and modern worlds through the utilization of historical inaccuracies surrounding the separate time periods and the misappropriation of crusader imagery as a tool for propaganda purposes. These efforts have increased strikingly in the past few years due to the growing influence of ultra-nationalism in the West that has been increasing since the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Neofascist protestors in Charlottesville, for example, wore shields that were unsubtly emblazoned with the Templar Cross while others have been chanting the infamous medieval crusader phrase “Deus Vult!,” which means “God wills it!” in Latin. Interestingly, the process of appropriating the crusader period isn’t just monopolized by the hard right in the West. Radical Islamic organizations and leaders for decades, such as Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden, have frequently referenced the Crusades as a means of condemning the West and portraying Western military forces, especially those that have intervened in the Levant, as modern-day crusaders that are hell bent on invading Islamic territory and that the only response to such a Christian invasion is violent “jihad.”

While the crude and shameless “borrowing” of crusader symbolism is far from a recent development among alt-right groups and Islamic propagandists, its urgent now more than ever to confront such mistruths that these organizations have the habit of spreading, especially on video sharing sites such as YouTube. In the case of the Crusades, the proliferation of historical falsehoods results in the formation of a false, fatalistic “us vs them” narrative between European and Muslim civilization that characterizes both cultures as if they are locked in never-ending antagonism with each other since medieval times. This agenda-driven endeavor to revise the Crusades as a war fought along ethnic lines is a barely disguised attempt to justify prejudice against Muslim immigrants, including recent Muslim refugees who are desperate to escape from the civil wars that have been plaguing parts of the Middle East. Thankfully scholars, such as historian Christopher Tyerman with his new book The World of the Crusades, have been diligently fighting back against this tide of virulent misinformation with imperative efforts to clarify and correct our understanding of the Crusades through the use of Twitter threads, Op-Eds, blog posts, and books. Their push to reverse this negative transformative effect the internet has had on historiography is undoubtedly an uphill battle but their struggle will hopefully prove how important history as field of study is in this post-9/11 world.

Sources:

Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land. 2011.

Asbridge, Thomas. The First Crusade: A New History. 2005.

Phillips, Jonathan. Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades. 2010. 

When the medieval grand strategy game you're playing becomes a little too historically and uncomfortably accurate.

Just a little disclaimer before I lend my opinion on the subject: I’ve suffered from recurring phases of depression, seasonal affective disorder, crippling panic attacks, and OCD, a lot of which is stemmed from stressful events both past and current, for the past 13 years now and I’m currently seeing a therapist. I also have tourettes syndrome, albeit a mild case of it.

For the most part, I enjoyed your post and I consider you highly courageous for opening up to the fact that you’ve been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

So believe me when I say that even though I haven’t been diagnosed with PTSD it’s important for people to understand the need for empathy and that such disorders shouldn’t be considered “just in the person’s head.”

However I’ve been noticing a recurring assumption being made in posts such as this that deal with memes and jokes that make light of touchy subjects: what makes you think that those who make jokes regarding triggers haven’t gone through dramatic experiences themselves? This is not to suggest that you’re being insensitive or willfully ignorant. I just believe it’s an idea that gets very overlooked.

Many people, myself included, understand that sometimes one of the best ways for dealing with serious stressful situations and mental distress is to make light of it. It’s based on the idea that any topic can be joked about. It all depends on what the exaggeration is and the context. In fact, for me at least, I feel that understanding and joking about how absolutely silly and ridiculous it is how the brain functions is part of the healing process. It’s a way to both healthily make fun of ourselves and to remind us that the world isn’t really as terrible as it is woefully out of our control. And sometimes that’s for the best.

I’ll keep this next bit a little shorter since I’m not entirely familiar with your opinion on the topic.

Even though you really didn’t go into detail about it, I still think it’s important to give my opinion on the subject dealing with the problems of trigger warnings. Now I’m not going to make the same old tired argument that it can potentially threaten our freedom of speech. My point is a little more simple but just as significant: they don’t work. And not only do they not work but they can also be considerably damaging since it encourages isolation and avoidance. I find it a horribly misguided attempt at trying to make people feel more comfortable or safe.  

I know it’s hard so I hope you feel better in the coming months. Take care.

“Triggered”

I started writing a tweet, but it turns out that 140 characters is a poor method to discuss complex issues. Who knew? This isn’t intended as a lecture (and I hope it doesn’t come across as one.) It’s more of an anecdote; part of my quest for authenticity and wholehearted living.

Though it’s already fading from twitch chat in favor of newer, danker memes, I’ve noticed “triggered” popping up in streams, chats, and comment threads for a while now. As far as I understand, at worst it is a snarky pushback at the concept of hyper-sensitivity as a cultural currency. But often it’s internet shorthand for “this sucks” or “I’m frustrated.” It’s an especially potent meme because if someone says “hey, not cool, dude” they can just parrot it again and poof! A perpetual meme-tion machine. Babyrage ensues.

I’ve mentioned this a few times on social media, but in early 2015 I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I haven’t really discussed the root of it, and I’m not/may never be ready to do so, but I hope that you’ll believe me when I say it flat-out sucks. PTSD for any reason is shitty, and miserable, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

What I’ve learned is that the fight-or-flight control center of my brain froze the trauma in carbonite, and as a result it can’t get to my long-term memory. Any time something (a silhouette, a song, or seemingly nothing at all) reminds my fight-or-flight center of that frozen-in-time memory, I’m warped back to the emotional state I was in during the trauma, despite being entirely safe (and knowing it.) This is called being triggered. (Or, a more official definition: the Department of Veterans Affairs says “You may see, hear, or smell something that causes you to relive the event. This is called a trigger.”)  

I absolutely believe that “triggered” is overused in the zeitgeist. I can see how it feels non-malicious or inconsequential; as harmless as calling someone salty or a sellout. I suppose I just also want people to understand that even if the intent is to poke fun at one group, there’s another group of people with a really shitty brain thing who are getting caught in the crossfire. PTSD isn’t specific to any group: it doesn’t discriminate based on the subreddits you subscribe to.

When I hear “triggered” from my favorite streamers and gaming buddies, it feels like I’m shrinking. It takes me out of enjoying our hobby, and my gears start turning on my Thursday-evening therapy session that is either looming or has just passed. It trivializes the concept, which steadily perpetuates the powerless feelings that my original trauma created: you’re being too sensitive. Your feelings don’t matter. Be quiet. It’s all in your head.

I don’t expect every space to be safe, or for others to bend over backwards to help me out. But please believe me when I say it’s much more enjoyable to spend time, money, and mental bandwidth on the hobbies I love versus defragmenting the trauma in my brain. I play games to connect with friends, to decompress, to counteract the stresses of daily life. So the echoes of “triggered!” are simply a jarring reminder that the world is a shitty place.

Ultimately people using the meme and myself/people like me are on the same team. I mostly hear it said without malice: a casually chuckled “triggered!” in an awkward moment or frustrated “triggered” groan after their teammate blows it for the seventeenth time. It’s not about me; I know that. It’s a joke, a fleeting meme.

It’s just that these particular “shots fired” are an AOE with friendly fire enabled.

Thanks for reading, internets.  <3