We discuss the rise and fall of the British Empire, the competing visions of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill’s war…

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Suella reveals what really happened behind closed doors in government, why she believes Rishi…

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We explore the collapse of French institutions, mass migration, Islam, the erosion of national identity and the growing power of EU technocrat…

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We discuss immigration and border security, the relationship between the CIA and British intelligence, and whether Western governments have left themselves dangerously exp…

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Until now this was, for me, a holiday pleasure. Beirut, Sidon, Tyre — the strongholds of ancient Outremer. A bit of beach in the morning. Smash out a castle in the afternoon. Dream sitch. There they have certainly not forgotten about “the Franks”. In a Hezbollah mosque in Baalbek I was greeted at the door by a canvas of a medieval European knight being slain by scimitar-wielding Saracens. Message received. Over in Malta, last redoubt of the old firm, I climbed Fort St Elmo, where the Ottomans got Hospitaller-mogged. Mel Gibson is now making the film.

Crusades-pilling starts at home. Chancery Lane is today home to attorneys, lawyers and bitter memories of divorce. But it was built in 1160 by the Knights Templar to join the Old Temple in Holborn to the New Temple, which still stands. The Hospitallers’ priory is up the road in Clerkenwell, still home to the Knights of St John, two minutes from Fabric nightclub.

But you needn’t pilgrimage to London. Crusadesmaxxing is nationwide. Our national flag came to us, bit by bit, by way of the Templars. Our patron saint St George entered the hearts of Englishmen at the Siege of Antioch in 1098. There the warrior saint arrived with a blazing white banner, succouring the knights to victory. At the Battle of Arsuf less than a century later our allegiance to the warrior saint was sealed. There he joined King Richard’s cavalry charge in the humiliation of Saladin, Butcher of the East.

Next time you see a St John Ambulance outside the football turnstiles, remember what it is. Direct progeny of the Knights Hospitaller — the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem — raised to keep pilgrims and indigenous Christians from being carved up by Muslim brigands in the Holy Land. A thousand years on they patch up Christians and heathens alike. The history may have been memory-holed, but the logo hasn’t. The eight-pointed warrior-monk cross is still sewn to their high-vis jackets.

Explaining the Crusader comeback doesn’t take too much imagination. Hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, predominantly from Muslim-majority countries, is no doubt a part of it. When Pakistani rape-gang survivors like Ella Hill recount being told that white “kafir” girls are slags who “don’t obey Allah” and therefore had it coming, my blood boils. The stories match the abuse of Christians in the Holy Land a millennium ago. Today’s lanyard elites have ignored it. But the chain-mail elites did not.

Some write of Western Man’s reawakening thymos: the honour-seeking part of the soul that Enlightenment materialism, post-war philosophy and misandrist feminism have done their best to snuff out. Add to that the sense that the country is being vandalised by progressive elites who hate it. No wonder patriots, who rightly love their country, are looking elsewhere for examples of heroic leadership. Where better than the chivalry and courage of those medieval knights.

There is a sharper question to ask. Not why the Crusades are back. But why the Crusades were ever taken from us. How did they become a byword for the base savagery of human nature, or for the nadir of Christianity? Lisbon was freed from the Moors by the Dartmouth fleet of the Second Crusade. The 1816 Bombardment of Algiers was a mission explicitly launched to free Christian slaves in the Maghreb — I will call that the last Crusade and fight you in the comments. Valiant Englishmen. Remembered as thugs. Or not remembered. That did not happen by accident. It happened in four stages.

Its first flogging came in the Reformation. Luther lashed the Crusades to the papacy he hated. The friar changed his tune somewhat when the Turks laid siege to Vienna in 1529. How convenient. Then came the Enlightenment. Edward Gibbon wrote in his Decline and Fall…: “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.” Voltaire added that it was plunder and papal ambition, not defence or piety, that inspired the Christian soldiers. He was right about one thing — the road East was “ a road flooded with the blood of the Jews.”

Various pogroms of Jews, most famously the Rhineland massacres of 1096, are damnable. But it must be noted these were not papal Crusades. They were rogue mobs, condemned by popes and princes. Conflating these with the missions of Godfrey of Bouillon or Richard the Lionheart is as much a mistake as conflating the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade with the pious deeds of St Louis.

Then Steven Runciman, twentieth-century Byzantinist and best-selling Crusades historian, threw the third gauntlet-fisted hook. “The Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God.” That word “intolerance” — lifted from Karl Popper’s 1944 open-society thesis. “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.” That phrase “crime against humanity”. Now using the language of Nuremberg. Whether he meant it or not, Runciman was equating the Crusaders with the Nazis.

A final blow came in 2007. A report from the Department for Education noted that schools avoided the Crusades, even the Holocaust, because teachers feared offending some Muslim pupils or contradicting history taught in local mosques.

Evidently these arguments are no longer holding. The Crusades represent something for the English again. And quite right too. On my show, our latest Crusades episode — an interview with Raymond Ibrahim — reached one million views on YouTube in under four days. It may well become our most popular interview ever.

Something is stirring.

Deus vult.

WM

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We explore woke ideology at Cambridge, free speech, DEI, and the decline of meritocracy, as well as why young women are moving further left politically while young men appear to be taking a different path. We also discuss social media, the crisis of motherhood and dating, the tradwife phenomenon, Sydney Sweeney, declining national pride, AI in universities, and why Maeve believes her generation is becoming increasingly divided, isolated, and disillusioned.

Rather predictably, Macklemore, real name Benjamin Haggerty, has the support of his Generation Gaza music peers. Solidarity came from fellow support acts on the tour, Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham, and Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas. The latter is also ginger. This may help explain things.

Even Sheeran’s actual backing band – Beoga – have pulled out of the stadium run. Beoga, like Aaron Rowe, are from Ireland, perhaps the nation with the highest per capita infection rate of Israel Derangement Syndrome. And though they may not be openly ginger, their Irish heritage makes them likely carriers of the regressive red gene.

Now I feel for Sheeran. The row began at his MetLife Stadium show last week, when Macklemore used his opening slots to splurge the hackneyed “Free Palestine” platitudes we’ve all grown tired of. But, crucially, “To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters … being against genocide, in no way is a criticism of you,” he lectured.

Except, of course, a false accusation of genocide against the one Jewish state in a war they did not start is very much the ugly ancient blood libel repackaged. And the accompanying video of the horrors of the Gaza war might not be everyone’s idea of a family night out.

Backlash followed – P!nk shared a condemning post and the Israeli-American Council launched a petition for his removal. Macklemore said Sheeran told him Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, would bar him from playing his Gillette Stadium. Kraft confirmed as much. Messina Touring Group – Sheeran’s tour promoters – announced that venues would not allow the remaining concerts to go ahead with Macklemore on the line-up. So he was pulled.

Sheeran insisted the decision was the promoter’s, not his. For the English mega-star it’s lose-lose. “I am not complicit. Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum.” The Sheeran dog-pile of the deranged far-left activists who dominate music has expanded to include politician AOC, mentally disabled omni-cause campaigner Greta Thunberg, and Hacks actress Hannah Einbinder, who noted “as a ginger” she hoped he got a “really bad sunburn.”

If Sheeran pulls the gig, as they are insisting, he punishes the fans, the crew, his staff and the countless other workers counting on the tour. If he goes ahead, he retains the opprobrium of his peers. Already Classic Hits Radio has pulled him from rotation in Ireland. Even if it were possible to keep the Israel-bashing rapper on the tour – Sheeran would have to face the continued backlash of fans, especially Jewish fans, who may or may not enjoy being accused of blood libel out at a pop concert.

Macklemore’s blood libel is nothing new. He was swept up in the Islamist propaganda from the start of the Israel–Hamas war. Before Israel had even begun their response to the horrors of 7 October he was already describing it as an “unfolding genocide”. Meanwhile ignoring Hamas’s responsibility as they kept those hostages hidden away in the labyrinth below the sand.

Herein lies the problem. Macklemore’s acute mental afflictions were known long before he was booked onto Sheeran’s mega-tour. If Kraft had objections, they should’ve been made before the tour was announced. Even Sheeran should’ve known better.

I remember a short run of shows my band Mumford & Sons headlined back in 2019 with Portland, Oregon band Portugal. The Man in support…

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A quarter of a century since the planes hit the Twin Towers. A quarter of a century of wars, terror attacks, migration, integration, counter-terrorism, culture wars, and increasingly fraught arguments over religion and identity.

And yet, 25 years later, one question remains stubbornly unresolved:

Is Islam compatible with the West?

For some, the answer is obviously yes. Millions of Muslims live peacefully across Britain, Europe, and America, participating in and contributing to Western societies, including those who fight in the IDF in Israel.

For others, the answer is far more complicated. Profound tensions between certain interpretations of Islam and Western traditions of free speech, secular government, religious pluralism, women’s rights, and individual liberty.

Perhaps the problem is the question itself. What do we mean by “Islam”? What do we mean by “the West”? And what exactly does “compatible” require?

These are questions too important to be reduced to slogans, accusations, or 30-second clips on social media.

So this Friday, for the first ever live edition of The Winston Marshall Show, we’re going to debate them properly.

At London’s Emmanuel Centre, I’ll be joined by Maajid Nawaz and Raymond Ibrahim, two formidable thinkers who approach this subject from sharply different perspectives. We’ll discuss Islam, integration, history, liberalism, extremism, and what the future holds for Western societies.

The point is to have the debate; to get closer to answering the question.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, there can be few better moments to ask one of the defining questions of our age.

Is Islam compatible with the West?

Come and decide for yourself.

This Friday, 11th September 2026, at Emmanuel Centre, London

For you loyal substackers, get 20% using code WINSTON

Get your tickets here: https://winstonmarshall.eventbrite.co.uk/

See you there,

WM