ARN—THE KNIGHT TEMPLAR: CAPTAIN SWEDEN GOES ON CRUSADE

Crusades in reverse: "How can I help these people migrate to Sweden?"

by Colin Liddell

 What happens when the most cucked nations in Northern Europe pool their cinematic resources to make a film about the Crusades? Exactly what you would expect: the Muslims are actually pretty decent guys and the meanies are inevitably other Whites. To top it all, the "Captain Sweden" hero character even brings a posse of cool "kebabs" back to his home country to help him build and defend his ideal community. The film in question is Arn—The Knight Templar (2010), an English release cobbled together from the original Swedish version (2007) and its sequel (2008), which might be one reason it seems overlong (139 minutes).

Made with support from Denmark, Norway, Finland and Germany, this is the biggest budget film in Swedish cinematic history ($30,000,000) and the acting and production values are fairly high standard. Even the writing is good—it is based on a trilogy of novels by Jan Guillou, a French-Swedish journalist who had links to the KGB. Except for the intrusion of modern day PC touches, you might believe you are back in the 12th century. Also, Danish Director Peter Flinth has clearly been cribbing from Mel Gibson's stunning Braveheart when it comes to battle scenes. So, all in all quite a watchable movie, and one geared to pull in Europeans interested in their history and traditions.

But back to the modern-day PC touches. The story centres round the events leading up to the destruction of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (in 1187, following the disastrous Battle of Hattin), as well as late-12th-century Swedish politics. Historically, the destruction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the work of the talented Muslim Sultan Saladin, an ethnic Kurd who ruled over Syria and Egypt, and created the Kurdo-Turkish Ayubbid Dynasty (1171-1260).

The opening scene of the movie is telling. Some Muslims, including one who turns out to be Saladin himself, are being chased through the desert by a gang of bandits. Suddenly the Swedish Templar Arn de Gothia appears in front of them and charges straight towards them lance lowered. It looks like Saladin and his companions are about to be smashed. But, as Arn gallops towards them, he raises his lance, a sign of peace the fugitives instantly understand, lowering their own weapons in turn and allowing Arn to ride through them towards the bandits, whom he then proceeds to slaughter.

Arn and the Muslims then have a friendly camp fire sit-down, where Arn recognises Saladin. He had been travelling incognito from his Syrian territories to Egypt in order to organise an attack on the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the South. Of course, under the rules of chivalry Arn allows this "clear and present danger" to a project into which millions of European lives had already been poured to live.

Wow! In the first couple of minutes of the film, Arn manages to save Saladin and then spare him, thus ensuring the future Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. Nice work, Captain Sweden!

Next, through a series of flashbacks we see how Arn ended up in the "Holy Land," and are introduced to all but one of the film's villains, the evil Swedish Sverker clan, who the young Arn humiliates in a trial by combat and then "preemptively cucks" by bedding a young virgin, Cecilia , who had been promised in marriage to one of the Sverkers. After lovemaking in a Swedish meadow, she immediately becomes pregnant with what is destined to be their only child—got to drive home those low Swedish demographics again!

Arn and Cecilia: Because of Swedish rape laws
it is always best to let the woman go on top.

The Sverkers are shown as powerful in the church, which is itself shown to be largely corrupt. They use their clerical power to have Arn and Cecilia excommunicated for their illicit union, Cecilia to a nunnery and Arn to the "Holy Land" to serve in the ranks if the Knights Templar, a military order dedicated to protecting pilgrims against Muslim attacks. Here he soon makes a name for himself, and is even granted an Arabic nickname Al Ghouti (The Goth).

After helping Saladin survive, Arn partially redeems himself—in our eyes at least—by leading the Templar forces at the successful Battle of Montgisard (1177), where Saladin's invasion from Egypt is defeated.

The battle is presented as an ambush in a sandstorm, an obvious salve to Muslim honour, when in reality it was a crushing victory inflicted by a Crusader army, led by the 16-year-old King of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, who was suffering from leprosy, against a vast Muslim army, engaged in looting, raping, and pillaging the countryside of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Interestingly, this invading force also included a large number of Black Sudanese soldiers recruited by Saladin.

The Battle of Montgiscard

In the movie, Saladin is presented as an Islamic ideal of a humane and chivalrous sultan, a not uncommon idea among the "Eternal Liberal" who has long infested Western culture. But, actually, as was not untypical in his day, he was a brutal thug, with the kind of morals that would have made a Mexican drug lord blush. One of his favourite ploys was to unleash his army to rape, murder, and pillage the civilian population to draw the Crusaders into battle with him on favourable terms, a technique that paid off handsomely in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, when a Crusader army drawn on a march across arid terrain in the middle of summer, and clearly suffering from dehydration, was annihilated by the Ayubbid army attacking from Syria.

And while the movie presents a bond of trust between Arn the Templar and Saladin the Sultan, the reality was far from the case. After his great victory at Hattin, which led to the surrender of the Christian city of Jerusalem, Saladin ordered the immediate beheading of all the captured Templar knights, except for the Grand Master of the organisation, for whom he hoped to receive an exorbitant ransom.

Saladin is played by an Indian actor. 12th-century Kurds were a lot Whiter.

In the movie the defeat of Hattin is down to the incompetent Grand Master Gerard de Ridefort, the only other villain in the movie. He is played as an arrogant sod who routinely sneers at everything Muslim and "foreign," and expresses surprise when he sees Arn speaking perfect Arabic. He is basically the oft-repeated meme of the spiritually desiccated, unnatural, intolerant White man out of his depth and out of harmony with his environment. When the Christian army is destroyed by the Muslims, who it is implied are more in sync with the environment (i.e. they use camels and avoid marching around in the midday sun in chain-mail) we are invited to believe that he has merely got his comeuppance, notwithstanding the destruction of Christendom's holiest project.

Arn also fights in the tragic battle, this time in a subordinate position, with his sage advised being ignored all the way to disaster by the evil Gerard de Ridefort. He is badly wounded but instead of being butchered, as all Templar prisoners in fact were, he is lovingly cared for by the Muslims and restored to health.

The Third Crusade united Europe against Saladin.

The film doesn't focus on the events that followed from the Battle of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem, namely the Third Crusade, which pitted the kings of France and England against Saladin, but the novels by the communist author do. While Saladin is presented here as humane and merciful, much is made of the savagery and cruelty of King Richard the Lionheart, who butchers 5,700 prisoners that Saladin was intending to pay ransoms for. Arn, in the retinue of Saladin, is disgusted by his fellow Christian's action, telling Saladin that Richard will only be remembered as a "slaughterer" and that he will never capture Jerusalem. He then shows his assent to the Islamic fate of the "Holy Land" by embracing Saladin and starting his journey home to Sweden.

But while Middle Eastern lands are only for Middle Easterners, Sweden it seems, even in the late 12th century, is for everyone. In the latter part of the film—actually based on the Swedish sequel—Arn returns to Sweden with an entourage of Muslims. For me this was the most "Captain Sweden" part of the movie and absolutely ludicrous. Only historical illiterates who had been brainwashed by the modern education system could take this in their stride, as any Muslim venturing into European lands would have been killed on sight at that date.

Not only that, but finally reunited to Cecilia after 20 years, Arn and his "kebab" posse set about building a perfect little multicultural paradise in the Swedish woods. All is well, until the evil Swerker clan, who have been deposed from power, make an appearance with their Danish enemies in an attempt to regain the throne of Sweden and put an end to Arn's "Little Damascus." This leads to one more battle, where Arn is victorious but mortally wounded, finally dying in the arms of his beloved Cecilia.

Like a true Swedish paragon, he has contributed to a dysgenic birthrate, unwittingly ensured the destruction of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, and brought a group of young male Muslims to his homeland to do what can only be surmised at.

An enjoyable but deeply pernicious film. View with caution and a sense of detached disdain and amusement.