"At the same time, however, the study of Anglo-Saxon played a part in the more general cultural belief—prevalent at the time—in the superiority of northern European or “Anglo-Saxon” whiteness. In 2017, as the American neo-Nazi movement that calls itself the “alt-right” is resurrecting medievally tinged celebrations of “European heritage” as part of its racist agenda, twenty-first-century Anglo-Saxonists need to confront the racism inherent in the history of the discipline. The challenge is to communicate Anglo-Saxon history as part of a multicultural and inclusive public discourse...
Before the war, Southerners tended to identify with the Normans and their feudalism in a historically inaccurate way that seemed to justify slavery and celebrate an idealized, implicitly white Southern womanhood, defining a distinctly Southern form of “chivalry.” After the war, Southerners switched their Norman Conquest allegiance to the Anglo-Saxons, the losers, the invaded, who still managed to hold onto their core identities and customs in the face of occupation. One odd effect of this Southern Anglo-Saxonism is the use of Anglo-Saxon names in the Deep South; as one example, the 1880s Mississippi congressman Ethelbert Barksdale was named after the first Anglo-Saxon Christian king of Kent, who ruled from 589 to 616 C.E."
Related: classics dealing with the same thing
FB: "A number of contemporary medieval scholars have called attention to the ways that earlier nineteenth-century medievalism and racism are being rejuvenated by the American neo-Nazis, who claim to glorify the “greatness” of their “European heritage.” Crucial to the academic argument against this movement is vociferous insistence that the Middle Ages were never a celebration of white male aristocratic heroism, despite American popular perception of white knights in shining armor riding their warhorses through England and France."
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