When You Deus Vult Just Right

1. When You Deus Vult Just Right Side

Medieval memes The far right’s new fascination with the Middle Ages. Helmeted crusaders cry out the Latin war-cry “Deus vult!” from memes circulated on Reddit and 4Chan. Images of Donald. Deus vult ('God wills it') (variants Deus le volt, Dieux el volt; Deus id vult, Deus hoc vult, etc.) is a Catholic motto associated with the Crusades, more specifically with the First Crusade of 1096–1099. The phrase appears in the Vulgate translation of the Christian Bible. Just enter your email below. Yes, Christians may have used “Deus Vult” as a battle cry to justify their slaughter of Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land, but to me, it means something.

Deus vult ('God wills it')^[1](variants Deus le volt, Dieux el volt; Deus id vult, Deus hoc vult, etc.^[2]) is a Catholic motto associated with the Crusades, more specifically with the First Crusade of 1096–1099. The phrase appears in the Vulgate translation of the Christian Bible.^[3]

First Crusade[edit]

The battle cry of the First Crusade is reported in the Gesta Francorum, written by an anonymous author associated with Bohemond I of Antioch shortly after the successful campaign, in 1100 or 1101. According to this description, as the Princes Crusade gathered in Amalfi in the late summer of 1096, there assembled a large number of crusaders, armed and bearing the sign of the cross on their right shoulders or on their backs, crying in unison 'Deus le volt, Deus le volt, Deus le volt'.^[4] The Historia belli sacri, written somewhat later, c. 1131, also cites the battle cry.

The battle cry is again mentioned in the context of the capture of Antioch on 3 June 1098. The anonymous author of the Gesta was himself among the soldiers capturing the wall towers, and recounts that 'seeing that they were already in the towers, they began to shout Deus le volt with glad voices; so indeed did we shout'.^[5]

Robert the Monk in c. 1120 re-wrote the Gesta Francorum because it was considered too 'rustic'. He added an account of the speech of Urban II at the Council of Clermont, of which he was an eyewitness. The speech climaxes in Urban's call for orthodoxy, reform, and submission to the Church. Robert records that the pope asked western Christians, poor and rich, to come to the aid of the Greeks in the east:

When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, 'It is the will of God! It is the will of God!' When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.' Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!^[6]

Robert also reports that the cry of Deus lo vult was at first shouted in jest by the soldiers of Bohemund during their combat exercises, and later turned into an actual battle cry, which Bohemund interpreted as a divine sign.^[7]

Other uses[edit]

Latin expressions containing the phrase Deus vult [..] ('God wills [..]') includeDeus vult omnes homines salvos fieri ('God wants all men to be saved', a paraphrase of 1 Timothy 2:3–4), ^[8]and Quos deus vult perdere dementat prius ('Those whom a god wishes to destroy, he strikes with madness first').

Deus lo vult is the motto of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a Roman Catholic order of chivalry (restored 1824).^[9]

George Flahiff CSB in 1947 used Deus Non Vult as the title of an examination of the gradual loss of enthusiasm for the crusades at the end of the 12th century, specifically of the early criticism of the crusades by Ralph Niger, writing in 1189.^[10]

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, a Protestant Episcopalian, used the expression for his argument of 'the dominion of Christ' as 'essentially imperial' and that 'Christianity and warfare' had a great deal in common: ''Deus vult!' say I. It was the cry of the Crusaders and of the Puritans and I doubt if man ever uttered a nobler [one].'^[11]

The phrase 'Deus vult' has been referenced in its historical context in the video game Crusader Kings II (2012), and later developed into an Internet meme, gaining popularity among Donald Trump supporters during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The phrase became 'a kind of far-rightcode word, a hashtag proliferated around alt-right social media and graffiti.'^{[12][13][14][15]} Several mosques and other places were defaced with the phrase in 2016.^[16][17][18] After this, the supporters of brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has used the phrase in the same context.^[19][20]

See also[edit]

• Baruch Hashem 'with the help of Heaven'
• Deo volente 'God willing'
• Inshallah, 'God willing' and Allahu-Akbar, 'God is Great' in Arabic

References[edit]

1. ^manuscripts of Gesta Francorum variously have Deus le volt, Deus lo vult, as well as the 'corrected' forms Deus hoc vult and Deus vult. Winter (1890) cites Barth: 'Barbaro-latina vulgi exclamatio vel et tessera est. Videri autem hinc potest, tum idiotismum Francicum propiorem adhuc fuisse latine matrici'.Winter (1890) comments that the presence of the Romance article (lo, le) was very likely part of the original motto as shouted in Amalfi, as both the author of Gesta Francorum and that of Historia Belli Sacri report it.
2. ^Mrs. William Busk, Mediaeval Popes, Emperors, Kings, and Crusaders, Or, Germany, Italy, and Palestine, from A.D. 1125 to A.D. 1268, Volume 1 (1854), 15, 396.
3. ^Jacobs, Henry Eyster; Schmauk, Theodore Emanuel (1888). The Lutheran Church Review, Volumes 7–8. Alumni Association of the Lutheran Theological Seminary. p. 266. access-date= requires url= (help)
4. ^Deferunt arma ad bellum congrua; in dextra vel inter utrasque scapulas crucem Christi baiulant; sonum vero 'Deus le volt', 'Deus le volt', 'Deus le volt'! una voce conclamant. Gesta Francorum IV.1 (ed. C. Winter 1890, p. 151.)
5. ^Gesta Francorum 20.7, ed. C. Winter 1890, p. 304; some manuscripts also mention cries of kyrie eleison.
6. ^Robert the Monk: Historia Hierosolymitana. in [RHC, Occ III.]Dana C. Munro, 'Urban and the Crusaders', Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, Vol 1:2, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895), 5-8 (Medieval Sourcebook).
7. ^C. Winter 1890, p. 151, note 10, citing Historia Regum Francorum mOnast. S. Dionysii (ed. Waitz in Mon. Germ. SS. IX p. 405), and for battle cries of the crusaders in general: Ekk. Hieros. p. 90, 234; Röhricht, Beiträge II, 47.
8. ^Vulgate: hoc enim bonum est et acceptum coram salutari nostro Deo qui omnes homines vult salvos fieri et ad agnitionem veritatis venire (KJV: 'For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth');Saint Augustine, lib. De spiritu et littera 33: 'Vult autem Dominus omnes homines salvos fieri';Gilbert de la Porrée: 'recte dictum est 'omnes vult Deus salvos fieri' (Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta's Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation During the Periode 1130-1180 (1982), p. 123); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a.19.6: 'Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri'.
9. ^Luigi G. De Anna; Pauliina De Anna; Eero Kuparinen, eds. (November 29, 1997). Tuitio Europae: Chivalric Orders on the Spiritual Paths of Europe : Proceedings of the Conference 'The Spiritual Paths of Europe--Crusades, Pilgrimages, and Chivalric Orders'. Turku: University of Turku. p. 65. ISBN9789512913008.
10. ^George B. Flahiff, 'Deus Non Vult: A Critic of the Third Crusade', Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947), 162–188, doi: 10.1484/J.MS.2.306566.
11. ^Mahan, Alfred Thayer (1972). 'Some Neglected Aspects of War'. In Karsten, Peter; Hunt, Richard N. (eds.). Unilateral Force in International Relations. New York: Garland Publishing. p. 12. ISBN9780824003487. OCLC409536.
12. ^Ishaan Tharoor (November 16, 2016). 'ISIS wants to fight a holy war. So do some Trump supporters'. The Washington Post.
13. ^Murdock, Jason (April 6, 2018). ''CRUSADER KINGS 2' USED ALT-RIGHT BATTLECRY TO PROMOTE FREE STEAM DOWNLOAD'. Newsweek. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
14. ^Caffier, Justin (January 26, 2017). 'Get to Know the Memes of the Alt-Right and Never Miss a Dog-Whistle Again'. Vice. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
15. ^Frank, Allegra (February 10, 2017). 'For Honor's accidental alt-right connection'. Polygon. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
16. ^Christopher Mathias (2016-10-21). 'Two Arkansas Mosques Defaced With Racist, Islamophobic Graffiti'. The Huffington Post.
17. ^Noel K. Gallagher (November 3, 2016). 'Graffiti of Crusades' rallying cry investigated as possible hate crime at USM'. Portland Press Herald.
18. ^Ashitha Nagesh (2016-12-17). 'Vandals spray paint mosque with anti-Muslim slogans from the Crusades'. The Metro.
19. ^Pachá, Paulo. 'Why the Brazilian Far Right Loves the European Middle Ages'. Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
20. ^Rudnitzki, Ethel; Oliveira, Rafael (2019-04-30). 'Deus vult: uma velha expressão na boca da extrema direita'. Agência Pública (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2019-06-20.

• B. Lacroix, 'Deus le volt!: la théologie d'un cri', Études de civilisation médiévale (IXe-XIIe siècles). Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande, Poitiers (1974), 461–470.

Seventy years later and Nazis still haven't figured out how to be funny.

Memes and the alt-right go together like peanut butter and jelly that's been spread into the shape of a swastika. Internet memes are, by and large, the currency in which these young nationalists trade, eschewing the stuffy, articulated treatises of Mein Kampf in favor of more virality-friendly catchphrases and image macros to be proliferated around image boards and subreddits.

Additionally, the movement is in and of itself a semi-self-aware meme that seems to only exist within the safe, anonymous spaces of the internet. Just as memes tend to be cringey and ineffective when taken offline, one of the alt-right's most publicized IRL events, the 'DeploraBall' was widely regarded as a colossal shit-show due to the physical and ideological infighting.

Shit-posting for keks is also trickier to dismiss when done out in the real world without the mask of anonymity. White supremacist and human punching bag Richard Spencer, the poster child of the alt-right, has claimed his 'Heil Trump' chanting at a post-election rally was done in the spirit of 'irony.' This jives with Spencer's calls for 'peaceful ethnic cleansing' at the 2013 American Renaissance conference but serves to highlight the notion that darker machinations often lay beneath the group's claims of simply wanting to troll SJWs.

We've put together a field guide of some phrases and memes white supremacists share with one another so that, if you happen across one in the wild, you'll be able tell whether your old college friend, Gary, is simply a fan of 11th-century history or secretly wishes to eradicate all non-whites.

Pepe the Frog

If Richard Spencer is the human mascot of this group, Pepe the Frog is its meme version. Much has already been said about the amphibian cartoon's ascension from fringe web-comic character to neo-Nazi mascot, including by the Clinton campaign.

Despite the disingenuous incredulity offered by the alt-right (and garden variety Trump supporters) after the ADL added Pepe to its official list of hate symbols, there is no reason to believe that anyone using the character today is at all unaware of the Nazi sentiments attached to it and should therefore be regarded as complicit in spreading said sentiments with his or her usage of the cartoon. Plausible deniability divorced itself from Pepe usage a long time ago. The swastika was once an innocent religious symbol, too. People have a tendency to ruin nice things.

Cuck/Cuckservative

Another one that's been coveredto death so we needn't spend too much time on it. Trump supporters have long called those they disagree with 'cucks,' because wanting everyone to have access to healthcare is apparently akin to letting a stranger fuck your wife.

The white-supremacy twist on this oldie but goodie is the additional fear mongering of the cuckoldry being carried out by a person of color. Louis CK became 4chan's public enemy #1 target for race-based cuck meming in 2014 by daring to have stand-up material that broached the subject of white privilege.

Be careful about accurately judging intent and seriousness if you hear someone use 'cuck' these days. As 'normies' gained familiarity with 'cuck' as an alt-right insult, the term began its toothless third stage of life as lefties playfully and sarcastically insult one another with it à la the 'thanks, Obama' meme.

Deus Vult

Screencap via YouTube user Starbot Dubs

Crusader iconography has long been tied to Islamophobia, so white supremacists didn't have to tweak much when they lifted this Latin battle cry from Pope Urban II's first crusade. Translating to 'God wills it,' deus vult reemerged, after nearly a millennium of hibernation, in a 2015 YouTube video of Christian Syrians bombing ISIS. Since then, alt-right message boards have glommed onto the words, using them as if they were a divine permission slip for wishing death on Muslims. Vandals even tagged the phrase on a mosque in Scotland in December.

As with Pepe, the window is rapidly closing on claiming innocence when using the phrase.

Moon Man

Borrowing the crescent moon 80s McDonald's ad character, Mac Tonight, white supremacists co-opted this wholesome fast-food mascot (ironically based off of black music icon, Ray Charles) as a face for text-to-speech rap song 'parodies' (that aren't worth linking to) that explicitly describe myriad gruesome scenes of murdering black people, while dredging up every epithet you can think of. It's like if Stephen Hawking's computer and Weird Al had a really racist child that had an internet connection but no creative talent.

This is just a meme meant to get a rise out of you, of course. There's no true animus there, right?

(((Triple Parentheses)))

Perhaps you've noticed a number of your favorite Twitter accounts surrounded by triplicate parentheses. This is the result of a concerted solidarity effort to take back and render ineffective an alt-right tactic of marking—starring if you will—Jewish journalists.

Conceived of on neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Shoah, these parenthetical 'echoes' were written around the names of Jewish journalists and public figures when mentioning them on Twitter. The idea was to aid anti-semitic Twitter search efforts. Twitter has since updated their search function to drop the parentheticals, thereby rendering this hateful branding tactic pointless. You can still see it, as used in the video title below, as a sort of racist vestigial organ.

When You Deus Vult Just Right Side

'Global Special Interests'

All you need to know is that when Donald Trump uses this phrase, a contingent of his base hears 'Jews.' So now you know to be a bit concerned if cousin Wendy starts peppering that into the family newsletter come Christmas.

Operation Google

We've all encountered that one person who feels personally slighted by his (yes, his) inability to publicly use the n-word while black people have carte blanche. 4chan, that shitty friend writ large, pulled a code-word scheme straight from the KKK playbook after Google launched a program meant to filter out such obscenities in searches.
Cries of 'CENSORSHIP!' rang out, and the crafty teenagers quickly formulated a code of replacing filtered racial slurs with tech company names (Jew = Skype) and Fight Club references (trans person = Durden).
The spurious logic behind this scheme was that if enough of them started calling black people 'googles' online, the tech behemoth would eventually have to censor its own pages. That never happened, of course. Instead, a couple dumb Tweets like the one below cluttered up Twitter for a minute.

WE WUZ KINGS

The Black Egyptian Hypothesis is a widely disputed theory that the Egyptian pharaohs (and citizens they ruled) were more dark-skinned than how we picture them today. Despite this being a fringe theory, the alt-right has adopted it as another weapon in their arsenal for denigrating black folk.

Typical Kings/Kingz/Kangz memes revolve around low-effort posts wherein the poster mockingly asserts that, were it not for (implied nonexistent) white oppression, black people would be royalty.

Dindu (Nuffin)

Look for this phrase primarily in comment sections of stories about slain African Americans. 'Dindu nuffin' (often abbreviated as 'dindu') is a bastardization of 'didn't do nothing,' in reference to the claims of innocence that parents, friends, and community members make about the victims of unlawful police shootings.

Even in cases not involving police or criminal acts, black people, simply referred to as 'dindus,' are still the targets of alt-right memes. The presumption of guilt every time a black person is injured or accused of a crime is the small price these white supremacists are willing to pay for the opportunity to mock grieving mothers.

Free Helicopter Rides

'Death flights' were a common form of extra-judicial execution during the Dirty War in Argentina and following the 1973 Chilean coup wherein dissidents were flown over the ocean in an airplane or helicopter and pushed to their death. From 1976 onward, thousands of political opponents to Argentina's Admiral Luis María Mendía and Chile's Augusto Pinochet were murdered in this manner.

This wanton disregard for human life is hilarious to many in the alt-right. Starting in mid 2015, certain boards began suggesting progressive political opponents be given 'helicopter rides.'

Die-hard fans of this murder meme can even purchase whimsical 'Pinochet's Helicopter Tour' T-shirts (which we won't link to) that will fit even a 3XL-sized Übermensch.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

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