Nearly a millennium after Pope Urban II transformed a political crisis into a sacred calling, the Crusades endure not as settled history but as a living rhetorical weapon. From the halls of Western governments to the manifestos of extremists, leaders across the ideological spectrum continue to invoke these medieval holy wars to frame contemporary conflicts as civilizational struggles ordained by God. What is being borrowed, however, is not history but myth — a selectively edited past that erases the Crusades' antisemitic massacres, intra-Christian violence, and cross-religious alliances in fav
Medieval Crusades' Legacy Weaponized in Modern Politics and Culture Wars
The Crusades resulted in millions of deaths, including massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland and thousands of Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem in 1099.