77 shares In this August 12, 2017 photo, James Alex Fields Jr., center left, holds a black shield in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist rally took place. Fields was later charged with second-degree murder and other counts after authorities say he plowed a car into a crowd of people protesting the white nationalist rally earlier in the day. (Go Nakamura via AP) THE CONVERSATION via AP — From Charlottesville to the Capitol, medieval imagery has been repeatedly on show at far-right rallies and riots in recent years. Displays of Crusader shields and tattoos derived from Norse and Celtic symbols are of little surprise to medieval historians like me who have long documented the appropriation of the Middle Ages by today’s far-right.