I think those who have warned medievalists not to be opportunistic about current events in justifying our "relevance" are 100% right, so I want to avoid that. I also think it's important to point out some things about this, on the front page of the WaPo right now:

The headline is from a quote by police officer M. Fanone. Above it is a cropped photo from a moment during last week's riots/insurrection. So the newspaper has taken a person's description--informed by a hazy understanding of the MA --& "proved" it w photo "evidence" from the day

To point out the fallacies of this framing wd be to repeat what medievalists, esp medievalists of color have been saying for literally decades now. I mean, just this morning of was reading a well-over-decade-old article by Sharon Kinoshita that could gloss what's happening here.

So, I'm not gonna rehash that scholarship. What's important here is ceding ground to a police officer to frame the event, which interestingly enough is EXACTLY how white supremacists want it to be framed. They themselves believe they are on a crusade. There's more:

Here is how the quoted police officer is introduced in the article. Unless Fanone signed up to cop school or started his training on that very day, this is egregious for a number of reasons:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/dc-police-capitol-riot/?arc404=true

A later section heading describes Fanone as "saving democracy." So there's a narrative arc here that telescopes the events on 1/6/21 with his alleged birth as a police office on 9/11/2001. What's more, he's described as having 4 daughters, which

characterizes him as the defender of [white] women's innocence. Fanone is later quoted as saying, “It was body against body, just crushing, like a barbaric scene,” Fanone recalled. So, in sum:

We’ve got a cop “defending democracy,” metonymized as the neoclassical capitol. His birth as a protagonist in this story is in the wake of 9/11, his growth as a man indicated by his fatherhood to 4 girls, & his actions described as fighting agnst barbarians in a “medieval scene.”

The entire framing of this story is a ferociously revanchist one that reinscribes precisely the story that America likes to tell about itself. AND THIS IS THE VERY STORY THAT GAVE US THE INSURRECTIONISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Let me get back to the first tweet abt my trying not to be opportunistic abt this. I don't think more ppl need to take my classes to know this shit. Nor do I think that a journalist better educated in history wd have produced a better story. Rather, what I think

is that this story is the product of a SYSTEMIC problem, one that has so much complexity to it I can't cover here except to point out the deep commitment the story shows to allowing a police officer to frame the narrative. That'a a journalism problem; not a history problem. But

yes, I do think people should learn more history. Just as a generous rule, not because of this headline.