“They're hoping that either other observers will get it and they'll agree. The use of historical imagery functions both as a dog whistle to fellow white supremacists, and as a convenient out when dealing with people who don’t share their views, says Gabriele. And in a particularly chilling video, an injured policeman lies curled on the pavement next to a discarded Betsy Ross flag. A variation of the Betsy Ross flag, where the 13 stars encircle Roman numerals for three, representing the three percent of Americans that anti-government groups believe fought against the British alone in the Revolutionary War. The Join or Die flag, for instance, featuring a bisected snake first drawn by Benjamin Franklin. But they want that kind of imagery.”Īmong the flags hoisted at the Capitol by insurrectionists, some were expected: the stars and bars of the Confederate battle flag the defiant “Don’t Tread On Me” exhortation of the Gadsen flag, revived in the 2000s by the Tea Party.īut there were other flags, familiar to most Americans only through textbooks, now appropriated by the seditionists. “None of those guys want to go live in a longhouse or anything like that. “It's very telling these are warrior images, at least in their heads,” he says. In the riotous crowd that stormed the Capitol-and that was overwhelmingly white and male-the “militant masculinity” of the Vikings has appeal, says Gabriele. “But at the same time, they're also calling on the associations that have built up around those images in the modern era.”

“They're jumping over a thousand years of history back to the Middle Ages or so,” he says. To Matthew Gabriele, chair of the department of religion and culture at Virginia Tech, far-right use of Viking and Crusader iconography is a form of “double nostalgia.” These are ancient Scandinavian symbols revived and twisted by 19th-century European nationalists and 20th-century Nazis, and their appropriation infuriates contemporary pagans and Heathens. The valknut, the Viking “knot of the slain,”was inked over his heart. The Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, emerged from his waistband.

Sloppy tattoos of Yggdrasil, or tree of life, covered his left pectoral. The self-styled “ QAnon Shaman”-with his fur robes and horned helmet possibly the most photographed insurrectionist of the day-bore his position on his bare chest.

Are valknut tattoos racist