Memes using the Latin phrase were tossed around in Reddit threads and quoted on posters at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with other Crusader and medieval symbols and imagery. While it gained popularity among fans of a video game called “Crusader Kings,” it has also become a rallying cry for far-right extremism, and can often be found in the chat rooms of Reddit and 4Chan – both online hotbeds for white supremacist views. It originated as a medieval battle cry and was used in the First Crusade, one of a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims in western Asia and Europe. If you’ve never heard the phrase “Deus vult,” that’s not surprising.

Federal prosecutors charged Gulick on Monday with three criminal complaints related to arson, vandalism, and possession of an unregistered destructive device. But the remnants of the man’s vandalism remained – the Latin phrase “ Deus vult,” which translates to “God wills it,” was left scrawled on the clinic’s facade.įBI agents quickly identified an 18-year-old suspect, James Gulick, by the car used to flee the scene and Gulick’s social-media posts expressing far-right extremist vernacular and antiabortion sentiment, according to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware. While the Molotov cocktail exploded in the building, it soon self-extinguished. According to court documents and video surveillance, the person spray-painted the front porch of the health clinic with the words of a medieval battle cry and threw an incendiary device through the window of the building.

Medieval experts say the appropriation of “imagined medieval symbols” is wrong and dangerous.Įarly last Friday, a young man arrived outside a Planned Parenthood facility in Newark, Delaware, intending to vandalise it. Gulick is accused of spray-painting the facility with the words “Deus Vult,” a medieval Crusader battle cry that has recently been appropriated by far-right groups.

Deus vult meme origin