The accused New Zealand shooter and an all-white Europe that never existed

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/03/16/accused-new-zealand-shooter-an-all-white-europe-that-never-existed/

The accused New Zealand shooter and an all-white Europe that never existed
Brenton Tarrant covered his arsenal with symbols and names that medieval historians say are being misused by white supremacists
By Gillian Brockell
March 16 at 1:38 PM

...

“White supremacists imagine the Middle Ages as a time when Europe was all white, separated from its neighbors and in constant conflict with those that it deemed to be outsiders,” Sturtevant said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In medieval Sicily, Christians, Muslims and Jews were “living and working together side by side,” Sturtevant said. In 7th-century England, the well-respected archbishop of Canterbury was from Turkey, and his favorite abbot was from North Africa. There were Ethiopian embassies across southern Europe, including Rome. Pilgrimage books listed travelers as hailing from “India” — though this was probably just a fill-in for anywhere in the Middle East.

Medieval European artists also accurately depicted black people (read: not like blackface caricatures), indicating it wasn’t uncommon to see them. (Check out the Twitter account @medievalPOC for numerous examples.)

“Definitely racism did exist, but it was a lot weirder” — more geography-based than skin-colored-based, he said. “It was more about being racist against the people over the river.”

The idea that [medieval societies] are this paragon of unblemished whiteness is just ridiculous,” Sturtevant said. “It would be hilarious if it weren’t so awful.”

[uriel1972]

1. Reality does not matter...nt

[ck4829]

2. Shakespeare's Othello, you can see black people among white people in the paintings of Bosch

Those are examples that I can say off the top of my head as well.

It's now becoming dangerous, people are dying because of this far right, nationalist myth.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. American slavery was odd about picking a certain color

of people to enslave at the exclusion of all others. Indentured servitude included whites as well as blacks and many Indians were enslaved at first, but that all changed and it became common practice to enslave black people only. That created an underclass based on color, very unusual in Western history. Other empires had taken slaves wherever they had taken prisoners when they conquered a land, so there were slaves of all colors in the Roman Empire, for instance. Creating slavery based on color and race made white people in America obsessed about race and has brought us to where we are today.

[mitch96]

4. Like most of these guys they bend history to fit their narrative... uffda........... nt