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Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator, gained a particular worldwide notoriety because of two things: the news that he would be the next Secretary of Defense, and the photos of his tattoos. Publishing the photos of his tattoos, social media accounts and even media outlets attracted the attention of many right-wing males and feminists, who were very interested in taking a closer look at the ink that covered his bare torso and prominent biceps. The “Deus vult” on his biceps and the Jerusalem cross on his chest were the center of attention. To me, what stood out as something very strange to have tattooed was a rifle, placed right below an American flag.

In any case, the cross and the motto are related to the Crusades. Since the Crusades took place under Catholicism, liberals in the United States were very distressed and rushed to point out the white supremacism contained in the symbolism. The number one enemy of liberalism, in the English-speaking world, is Catholicism; so it makes sense that they would react hysterically to Catholic-themed tattoos and leave aside the rifle tattoo.

A curious fact is that Pete Hegseth is not Catholic, but Protestant. He was “brought up by Christian parents whose beliefs paralleled the Baptist church” and said that “about 2018 [he] entered the Colts Neck Community Church with [his] wife (who was wary of what evangelical Baptists were like), and faith became real. Within 20 minutes we felt at home. The pastor spoke about his broken family past—I’m broken, you’re broken, we’re all broken”. We shall assume that this wife is his current wife, since in 2017 he divorced his second wife and in 2019 he married his third.

Given the name of the church, we can visit its website and see that it is just another one of those U.S. churches that resemble a company that sells self-help in meetings that resemble those of Alcoholics Anonymous, plus little parties for socializing. What can customers expect there? According to their website, “you will be greeted with a warm smile and the positive, friendly atmosphere will feel contagious. Come as you are! We are a community of people who are casual in their dress, but not in their devotion to Jesus. We are concerned with you and not your clothes. Bring the kids! We want church to be a safe, fun and life-giving environment for your kids.” It seems that the daydreams of Crusades are something personal. An aesthetic thing, a whim of Pete Hegseth.

In my opinion, the most relevant thing to note about Hegseth is that he is a Christian Zionist who adheres to Netanyahu’s official discourse, according to which Israel, represented by Jerusalem, is both a matrix and an outpost of a so-called Western Civilization. That is why this Protestant appropriates the Crusades: they are figured as a trip to the Middle East with the aim of fighting brown Muslims. Just as the Crusaders went to kill Moors in the Holy Land, the U.S. military goes to the Middle East to kill those dark-skinned people who may be Christians but are usually Muslims.

But of course this revival of the Crusades is nonsense, and for several reasons. The most basic of all is that Protestantism, founded by Luther at the dawn of Modernity, is based on the idea that the Church has been corrupted and that it is necessary to return to the letter of the Bible, or at least to the times of Patristics, to rediscover pure Christianity. The Church of the Popes is the “Whore of Babylon”. The Middle Ages are corrupt to the core. If the Crusades are medieval, and if they are ordered by the papacy, then they must be a spurious thing for any Protestant – otherwise, the Reformation would make no sense.

One thing that both the Church and Luther (at least towards the end of his life) had in common was their aversion to Judaism. The idea of ​​conquering the Holy Land to hand it over to the Jews is quite recent in the history of Christianity, and it makes the idea of ​​reviving the Crusades for this purpose even more fanciful.

Thus, we can only conclude that Hegseth has little culture and that he interprets History in a freestyle manner. Since I am Brazilian, I can think of a national sub-celebrity, the YouTuber Paulo Kogos, as a related example: he is the son of Jews, was raised as a Jew, is a Zionist, but goes around dressed as a crusader (literally) and considers himself more Catholic than the Pope, because the Pope is a communist and the See is vacant. I have already taken the trouble to read one of his books and review it. In his freestyle sedevacantism, Kogos considers Peter Faber a saint, even though he was canonized by Francis in 2013… Before social media, sedevacantism consisted of a small group of Catholics who believed that the See has been vacant since the death of Pius XII. With social media, sedevacantism has become a thing for ignorant pedants who make the “free examination”,  typical of Protestants, but with a broader temporal scope, including medieval saints and 16th-century Jesuits.

Well, given this context, the accusation of white supremacy makes perfect sense. As we have seen, Zionist propaganda leads the general public to believe that every Jew is Ben Shapiro: religious, right-wing and very white-skinned. Racism is much less scientific than it seems, since Polish Jews are now accepted because they are very white, but Slavs, even though they are very white, continue to be considered inferior – except when they are Ukrainian.

“Islamophobia” is, in fact, a thin disguise for racism. When the Crusaders went to Jerusalem, their intention was not to kill Arabs and Bedouins; it was to bring the place under the control of Christianity. Muslim kingdoms used to admit a greater religious plurality than Christian kingdoms. Ever since Christianity existed, there have been Christians in the Middle East. Thus, even though the Crusades were defeated, there are Christian communities there that are much older than the discovery of America and the invention of Protestantism. Nevertheless, “Western Civilization” destroys the lives and buildings of Arabs, regardless of whether they are Christians or Muslims, churches or mosques.

A more recent example of this false equivalence between Arabs and Muslims occurred with the reaction to the alleged “pogrom” in the Netherlands: when Israeli hooligans were beaten, the European right called for the deportation of Muslims, who were all “anti-Semites”. The Israelis’ chants were against the Arabs of Gaza, not against the Muslim religion. After decades of globalization, many descendants of Arabs and North Africans, Muslims or not, were born in Europe and have citizenship. If it were up to this Right, Dutch citizens will have to “return” to places where they have never set foot. It is a way of using a “religious” criterion to defend ethnic cleansing, regardless of citizenship.

Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning that Luther himself could, if he had been less educated, have defended the Crusades based on a racial criterion. Luther was racist against Semites in general, whether they were Arabs or Jews. When attacking the Spaniards, who at the time were the greatest European power, he accused them of being Marranos and Mamelukes, and said that they had a conspiracy with the Turks to dominate and humiliate Germany. (On this subject, see María Elvira Roca Barea and her Imperiofobía.) Netanyahu himself, according to Max Blumenthal, has been exploiting for decades the fear that Hispanics (who are Christian) will claim territory in the United States, so that the country will treat them as the equivalent of the Palestinians in Israel. From very early on, therefore, Protestantism has lent itself to agendas of racial supremacism. Thus, the Crusades, led by barbarian warriors who were converted, appeal to Protestants who want to romanticize the blond warriors who kill brown men.

In the end, it is pure barbarity, disguised as Christianity.