Far-right Appropriations of the Medieval Military Orders

Abstract

In April 2016, Nick Griffin, former leader of the far-right British National Party, visited Prague, where he was filmed wearing the robes of a Knight Templar. He had joined the Knights Templar International, a far-right organisation that purports to emulate the medieval Templars. The Templars were the first military order, religious fraternities of soldier-monks which fought in the crusades. Because of their warfare against Muslims, the military orders have attracted much attention from the far-right. Three groups similar to the Knights Templar International have been established in the past few years, all of them far-right organisations modelled upon the military orders. This paper examines how these imitation orders use the memory of their medieval predecessors and what attracts them to this history and that of the Templars in particular. It discusses the ways in which these groups use the memory of the military orders, and how these appropriations in turn fuel Islamist discourses about fighting against modern-day crusaders. In both cases, it will be shown that the history was more complex than the one these groups construct. It also argues that representation of the Templars in pop culture has created a view of them as noble, pious knights - a view that, by association, is used to fuel violence on the far-right.