If you were to see a group of nice young men, all very fine people, carrying flags and shields

with the Jerusalem cross, the Celtic cross, the red cross of the Knights Templar, and

the Black and White Knights Templar Cross, and they explained to you that these things merely

symbolized their Christian faith.

Would you believe them? Or might there be a second hidden meaning?

We're going to look into that right now. Unskeptoid.

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Each episode, our Peabody Award-winning show travels beyond the headlines to answer the question,

how did we get here?

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You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Crusades imagery and white nationalism.

Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.

If there was a parade of neo-Nazis or some other white nationalist extremists marching down the street,

exercising their First Amendment rights, of course,

what kinds of symbols would you expect to see on their banners and tattoos and shields?

Swastikas, obviously.

Confederate flags, of course.

But from there, the symbology of hate groups gets less familiar.

There is the Blood Drop Cross of the Ku Klux Klan. There is the Celtic cross, the double-bolt

...