Debating the ‘Crusade’ in Contemporary America

Abstract

The word ‘crusade’ is often used in contemporary American culture as if it were unproblematic. It moves freely through time, evoking the medieval past while simultaneously conjuring images of a certain kind of struggle in the present. Deployed by both the political right and left, the term and the historical events it is (sometimes) meant to evoke are in turn defended and condemned. This debate, however, misses the issues inherent in simply using the term itself — an anachronism from its inception, a neologism that obscures more than it clarifies phenomena both historical and contemporary. It is time to move beyond the word ‘crusade’, to archive it, and find better language to describe the particular types of conflict/struggle of which we speak.