Giants, King Arthur, Olympic Athletes, and Misogynoir

In the (fictional!) History of the Kings of Britain (1136), Geoffrey of Monmouth invents Arthurian legend, drawing on (and vastly embellishing) an earlier collection of Biblical, Greek, and Norse lore and legend combined with geographical and historical information. 

According to Geoffrey, giants from Africa settled the British Isles and built Stonehenge. Later migrants, humans descended from the Greek Aeneas, slaughtered the giants, pitching their leader, Gogmagog, off a cliff to his death.

In naming the giant leader Gogmagog, Geoffrey draws on a long series of narratives about villains. In the Hebrew Bible, Gog is the leader of the armies of Magog, who threaten the Israelites but are vanquished by God (Ezekiel 38, 39). In the Book of Revelation, Gog and Magog become nations that join Satan in attacking the saints, but are consumed by fire from God (Rev. 20.8-9). 

In the Middle Ages, Africa and Asia were sometimes distinguished, and sometimes collapsed into one, but always described in ways that emphasize difference. Medieval maps typically locate Gog and Magog in Asia; the Hereford World Map (1300) names them twice, and identifies them with both “barbarous and filthy” Turks and “the cruellest people among the Scythians.” 

Geoffrey’s identification of Gogmagog as African rather than Asian connects with numerous texts and images that imagine monsters in Africa: the Hereford World Map places Gog and Magog in Asia, and identifies them explicitly in negative terms, it also contains several drawings and descriptions in Africa of monsters and human-animal hybrids.

So when Geoffrey says that Gogmagog is a giant from Africa, he associates him with a long trail of negative, and even Satanic, associations.

Fox Nation has just devoted an entire episode to resurrecting Geoffrey’s fantastic claim. An article promoting the episode says Geoffrey’s makes the first written reference to Stonehenge when he calls it “chorea gigantum” — a circle, or dance, of giants. But Henry of Huntingdon scooped Geoffrey in his Historia Anglorum (1129). Henry writes that no one can figure out how or why the huge stones of  “Stanenges” were set upright.

The demographic that follows Fox is also the one that made recent attacks on female Olympic athletes of color as “trans” go viral. White misogynists have a problem with capable women, and they have a huge problem with capable women of color. It’s why Serena Williams endured years of racist attacks; she was called monstrous and depicted as an animal or a man.

The folks at Fox do nothing by accident. Moya Bailey, a Northwestern University professor, coined the word misogynoir to reference the “unique anti-Black racist misogyny that Black women experience.”  

Highlighting the idea that Stonehenge was built by African giants led by a guy whose name is synonymous with evil makes perfect sense in the context of Fox’s ongoing programming. Network hosts and the people they platform make ad hominem attacks on black women politicians, and misrepresent and lie about their record, rather than addressing policy and substance. Fox articles refer repeatedly and uncritically to a discredited Russian test claiming Imani Khalif is not a woman.

It all connects back to very, very old narratives about monstrosity.