Article Identitarian politics, precarious sovereignty Wan-Chuan Kao Department of English, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA. Abstract This essay investigates the intersection among postmodern neomedieval- ism, environmental activism, and nostalgic Southern pastoralism in crafting the ide- ology of American white supremacist groups, especially the fraternity formerly known as Identity Evropa that rose to international prominence in the aftermath of Char- lottesville 2017. It explores the intellectual underpinnings of Identitarianism in the work of Guillaume Faye, whose strategic deployments and polemical contortions of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ both mimic and coopt academic discourse within early medieval studies; the rhetorical elision of ethnicity and race provides a convenient cover for mainstreaming pan-European white nationalism and revisionist historiography. Iden- titarians, by upgrading ecofascist tactics and Malthusian logic, situate themselves at the nexus of late capitalist precariat and contemporary economic, environmental, and political crises. In contrast to Hedley Bull’s neomedievalism, Faye’s New Middle Ages is an archeofuturistic racialist imperium that rejects neoliberalism’s multiracial glob- alization, revives fictive ancestral values, and envisions a medievalized geopolitical sanctum of whiteness. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2020) 11, 371–383. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-020-00202-8 What is the terrorist assemblage of white supremacy in the United States today? 1 Specifically, what is the medievalism practiced by, and which in turn shapes, the racist machine of violence? In a viral photograph (Figure 1) – a terrorist assemblage – Peter Cvjetanovic unwittingly became the face of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. 1 I borrow the term ‘terrorist assemblage’ from Puar (2007). Ó 2020 Springer Nature Limited. 2040-5960 postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Vol. 11, 4, 371–383 www.palgrave.com/journals