Why The Crusades Were Awesome, Actually
Credibility score: 35/100 — Low Credibility. High BS alert! Many claims lack evidence or are misleading.
BSmeter analyzed "Why The Crusades Were Awesome, Actually" and rated it 35/100 for credibility (a BS score of 65/100 — low credibility), on 2026-07-16. Its weakest claim — "Claims the standard story is 'crazy Christians attacked peaceful Muslims for no reason' — straw man" — scored 20/100 and was flagged as straw man. 24 claims were checked against the video transcript. Scores are produced by BSmeter's AI analysis of the transcript, not independent human verification.
Claims analyzed
Kingdom of Heaven shows Crusaders as bloodthirsty — sets up 'fair portrayal' expectation only to knock it down — Emotional Button (45/100)
Opens by promising nuance then immediately slams the film for bias — emotional framing before any evidence appears 😈
Claims the standard story is 'crazy Christians attacked peaceful Muslims for no reason' — straw man — Straw Man (20/100)
Builds a cartoon version of the 'standard narrative' — Christians randomly attacking enlightened Muslims — then knocks it down.
Islam uniquely kept slavery alive to this day — cherry-picked history as moral proof — Cherry-Picked (20/100)
Singles out Islamic slavery as eternal while skipping the same practice across Christian, Roman, and African societies for centuries. 🍒
Islamic policies alone caused Christian decline — omits conquest, taxes, and wars — Missing Context (45/100)
Blames 'Islamic policies' for the shrink while skipping the Arab conquests and jizya that actually did the work.
Islamic piracy alone crashed Europe for 400 years — erases Viking, Byzantine, and internal factors — Missing Context (45/100)
Puts the entire Mediterranean collapse on Muslim pirates while ignoring Vikings, civil wars, and the actual timeline of trade.
Europe's Dark Ages were caused by Islam's Golden Age — direct causal claim with zero receipts — Confidence Mismatch (45/100)
Calls it 'the true reason' like it's settled fact when historians still argue about what even counts as the Dark Ages.
846 Rome raid as the first crusade trigger — treats one raid as the origin story — Cherry-Picked (45/100)
Starts the clock at 846 like nothing happened before, ignoring centuries of earlier raids and wars on both sides.
Cordoba's expansion as pure aggression — erases the back-and-forth of prior conquests — Missing Context (45/100)
Presents the northern push as unprovoked while the caliphate itself sat on land taken from Christian kingdoms decades earlier.
Seljuk arrival framed as sudden threat — skips prior Byzantine-Seljuk relations and internal Christian wars — Missing Context (45/100)
Drops the Seljuks into Anatolia like they appeared from nowhere, ignoring decades of alliances, raids, and Byzantine infighting.
Islam rendered Armenian homeland unlivable — loaded language framing conquest as total erasure — Loaded Language (45/100)
Calls the region 'unlivable' after Turkish conquest — emotional word doing the heavy lifting, not the evidence.
Turkish conquests larger than France in 35 years — cherry-picked scale without context of prior Byzantine holdings — Cherry-Picked (20/100)
Throws out 'larger than France' to dramatize the threat — ignores how much of that territory was already contested or recently lost by Byzantium.
Muslims as enemies of Christ who targeted non-combatants — missing context on mutual medieval warfare practices — Missing Context (45/100)
Presents Muslim actions as uniquely barbaric while the transcript omits that enslavement and raids on civilians were standard across Christian and Muslim forces in the period.
Muslims enslaved women/children, conquered Iberia/Anatolia, threatened Europe — Missing Context (45/100)
Lists conquests as one unbroken horror — skips that Iberia was taken in 711, Anatolia much later, and most of Europe never faced direct threat.
Pope Urban framed it as defense of Eastern Christians against heathens — Emotional Button (45/100)
Uses 'brethren in urgent need' and 'heathens' to trigger tribal loyalty and fear — classic call-to-arms language.
Pope claims allowing Muslims to continue means wider attacks on all Christians — False Dilemma (20/100)
Presents only two choices: crusade now or watch all Christendom fall. Ignores diplomacy, alliances, or containment options that existed.
Crusades as unique multinational unity — historical exaggeration — Missing Context (45/100)
Calls it 'entirely unique in human history' — ignores Mongol, Islamic, and Roman empires doing the same thing centuries earlier.
Catholicism alone achieved what no other religion could — selective history — Cherry-Picked (20/100)
Ignores the Islamic conquests and the Caliphates that united far more territory and peoples under one faith before and after.
Secular world hates Crusades because they worked — motive speculation — Straw Man (20/100)
Frames criticism as jealousy of success instead of the actual complaints: massacres, forced conversions, and broken treaties.
First Crusade as unqualified success — glosses over the sack of Jerusalem — Missing Context (45/100)
Calls it a 'roaring success' while skipping the wholesale slaughter of civilians once Jerusalem fell.
Sixth Crusade as bloodless diplomatic win — omits the prior violence — Missing Context (45/100)
Praises the peaceful handover while ignoring that Jerusalem was only lost again because of earlier Crusader failures and broken agreements.
Crusades kept Europe Christian for 1000 years, decline only after popes stopped calling them — False Equivalence (20/100)
Pins secularization on the lack of crusades — equates military expeditions with the survival of an entire religion.
Crusades succeeded because Europe stayed Christian — False Equivalence (20/100)
Equates 'still Christian' with 'Crusades worked' — treats 1000 years of separate history as proof of a single campaign. 💀
Crusades preserved Christianity — decline only began after popes stopped calling them — False Equivalence (20/100)
Pins secularization on the end of papal crusade calls like that's the causal switch. Correlation treated as causation.
Christianity declined only after popes stopped calling Crusades — causal fairy tale — False Equivalence (20/100)
Blames secularization on the loss of papal crusade-calling power. That's not history, that's fan fiction with a cross. 😈
See the full analysis with sources and timestamps →