Part One: Everyone Hates the Klan

including Ethnically Ambiguous and it could happen here. I believe you're the sole host of the latter one. Is that I'm the co host of Wait which one? The latter one? It could happen here? Ladder means it could happen here. Okay, got it? Sorry, my brain is broken. Uh no, uh I would. Yeah, if I was the only host of that show. I am one of the rotating faces or voices. It's almost like it's a daily show that people could listen to. But yeah, it's it's almost like that almost.

How are you doing today? I'm okay, good to talk to a human being for for the first time today. Yeah, I'm not I'm not bad. I guess yeay, Yeah, how are you? How am I? Yeah? I don't know how I am? I. No one's ever asked you that, have they? I'm the first, probably how am I? I don't know. I'm kind of burned out. I'm coming I'm almost done with a book tour, and I got to come home for a week, but then I'm leaving again for a week tomorrow. And and in this week, you've already recorded

like fifteen podcasts, so yeah, break five or something. Well yeah, yeah, it's not exactly a break. And I miss sleep, um and I miss sleep anyway. Our producer is the one and only Sophie who matters. So if you looked m real Sophie's choice, you made right there. You're the only Sophie in my phone. Oh my god, I feel so honored. Marred has three people in her phone, two people named John. I mean, I think I think the only Sophie I know are like our friends with her, I am the

only one who matters, shrinks I better. Okay, I deleted all the other ones off my phone. You're listening to this and you're my friend, and your name is Sophie. Don't feel forgotten, even though that would be technically accurate. Right now, you did get forgotten, so sorry about it. I forget a lot of things, but I don't forget that. Our audio engineer is Ian high Ian. It's fun to talk to Ian because he can't say anything back. That's true.

Our theme music was written for us by a woman who you should check her out wherever you listen to your music Spotify. I don't know that one's like evil, but I don't have like a better band camp whatever. Margaret,

just plug in corporations. That's just like my thing. I'm really into corporate Yeah, this is my heel turn um okay, and then Sophie, today, what we're going to talk about is something that I spent ten minutes trying to come up with a way to sarcastically introduce and then I was like, you know what, I don't want to say anything sarcastic about racism and the ku klex Klan. You did make some several uh inappropriate jokes off Mike, and that is something that you listeners don't get to hear.

That is would definitely or shrine and me or if you're reading a transcript, Libel Yeah, that's my pedant joke day Today. Okay, today we're going to talk about people who fucked up the clan. Unfortunately, that actually means this week we're going to talk about people who sucked up the clan. Today, we're going to talk about the clan, but not in a real detailed atrocities kind of way. I'm going to just kind of treat have you ever heard of the Klux Klan? They're not really very underground.

Rings a bell, I think it rings a bell, hoods white people, racism, violence, evil. We're not going to go into detail about the specifics of the violence they committed. I think people are well aware of this is a bad organization, but we are going to talk about kind of who they are and what they were doing so that we can better understand what we're going to talk about about how people sucked them up. Um and kind of just like a no your enemy kind of way.

So there's this organization that most everyone has heard of, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. They're a hate group. They're bad, They wear stupid outfits and they set crosses on fire and they murder people, especially black people. There are terrorist organization and the most raw sense of that word. They were created as a reflection of white people's fear of no longer being able to own black people, and so they set out to scare the ship out of everybody,

to make everyone obedient to white supremacy. I'm like usually into like shades of gray about stuff, you know, I'm like pretty into understanding where everyone's coming from or whatever. But like, there are evil people doing evil ship in this world. There's no gray there. It's just white. Yeah, yeah, totally. That was funny. I think that was That's the sort of bigger laugh and it's fine to continue. I laughed. No, it was good. And so if we didn't laugh, I

don't know. I only think I'm funny. Sophie laughs at my jokes and oh god, well now it just feels that way now I want to die, but continue my fake laugh is well, you know who else wants you

to die? Screen Christ Magpie. Um, okay, So there's I Actually for all of the you know, anti racist work I've been involved in and stuff, I hadn't really known a lot of the sort of there's been like at least three different distinct time periods of the KKK that are like different organizations that kind of steal some of their own ship from each other, but they're actually like separate and we're founded at different times. And Clan number one it started in eighteen sixty five. It was started

by six Confederate assholes. They were like a bunch of like rich kid frat boys, like former officers who just lost a war, and they met up at one of their dad's law offices and they were just like all into the secret society ship was like fucking everywhere in the nineteenth century in the US, and one of the ones that they were like primarily inspired by, at least according to lots of sources, of lots of things to say about this, there was this sort of joke secrets

society called Sons of Malta, and it existed to sort of make fun of the other secret societies that were around, like the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus, all the various frats, et cetera. And the fact that they were inspired in part by this joke fraternity. I feel like it's like kind of a history as flat circle moment where we realize a lot of stuff that comes out of this like edge lord humor, land gets real real. That's a really good point. Actually, it's not

just like a joke. You can't just be like it's a joke, don't take it seriously, because someone will and take it too far. Yeah. And the other society that they were inspired by, at least in terms of name, was called Cu Close alday Fun, which was a frat. It was a college frat, secret society that had recently dissolved during the Civil War. And Ko Close I didn't know this. I was like, I don't know, they just picked some dumb fucking name. And they did. They picked

some dumb fucking name. But ku close means circle and Greek, so the Ku Klux Klan was them like riffing off the word ku close, Like they're just some fucking troll rich kids sitting around in their dad's law office being like, oh, what if we like ku close? No, it doesn't sound cool. What if it was ku klux like making up a band name for just like I don't know, terrible people. Yeah, And much like everyone who tries to make up band names while high, they did not land it. No, this

is not a good name. No, they barely flopped right into that. Yeah, the pointed hood that they wear. It's going to come up a little bit more later because actually it wasn't really part of the first incarnation of the KKK. I didn't realize this, but it's called the Kappa Rotte, which comes from the Spanish Catholics, which is actually another like appropriation because as we'll talk about when we get to the second incarnation of the KKK, they

fucking hate Catholics. So they were just like, oh, that's goofy looking. We'll take that right, right, But at this first incarnation they are more into pointy hats with over separate hoods or just wearing hoods rather than pointy hoods. Yeah. So the six Confederate assholes they formed the KKK in eight possibly on Christmas Eve, possibly like earlier that year. People like to argue people. You probably knew that just

in general people like to argue. Well, so the basis of this, like the six people were they getting together being like white people are the best? Like was that the base Like what was their initial group chat about? It was a party club? Oh it was they wanted to pretend to be ghosts. Wait, no, you're making I'm not making this up. I wish I was joined that to pretend to be ghosts, they lookey, Yeah, they threw okay, good to know, so they may throw over their head

um the ghost ghost. Yeah, they would like throw sheets over their head, cut out holes for the eyes, like literally like fucking like spooky ghost costume, you know, and then they would ride around through town on their fucking horses, being like I cannot tell you with me. I'm not fucking with you. I don't believe you. I've been Margaret is not Margaret is a better human. Um. Doesn't that make you look at all those people that do that

to their dog and their children differently? Yeah, Well it's funny because I actually never wore that kind of costume, even when I was feeling lazy, because I was like, it just looks too kkk to make the same and it shouldn't except that is actually it comes from the same origin. SU mean, I'm not working with you. I Like when I first heard, I was like, I don't know if I believe it, and I like checked a bunch of sources. So what a fault? What a just

a fall from grace? Like that is the saddest plot twist, And like evolution, I've ever heard devolution? But can you imagine this? You take like six random white frat dudes who are like kind of goofy and into partying, and they come up with this like clever secret society, and then it all goes wrong, but not in a way where they think it went wrong. It goes in a way that they're totally fine with. They just hadn't originally intended.

And everyone else, you know, so like and so they would go around and crash parties and be like I'm a ghost or some of them would like stay quiet, and some of them would like talk in like weird voices. Oh god, and they would play prank rejectively funny, am I dad? I mean that's what's so interesting, is um. And that's why no one should ever have fun or

use jokes. Um. Yeah, I got it? Sorry, yeah no, no no. And and so then they would have like spooky initiation rights that were like just goofy, kind of like the fucking Proud Boys. Right. Oh, and I guess it is all goofy in the end. I guess we forget how goofy this ship is. Sometimes it absolutely it is also fucking goofy. And and so they what happened was as far as I can tell, they started to realize that their presence was scaring black people around when

they would like hang outside wearing these things or whatever. Right, and so since they're not intelligent people, the Klansmen, they were like, oh, the black people are superstitious and they're afraid of us because they think we actually are ghosts and black people from the time. Talking to interviewers later, we're like, no, we were afraid because there was a bunch of like white organized Confederates who went around like shooting at us and ship. Yeah, because they immediately start

doing pranks. They've been doing pranks on each other, but then they started doing like quote pranks on the local black community where they would like show up and be like I'm a scary and they would like grave rob and find an arm, like an arm of a dead person, and then they like harry it under their robe and they'd be like not used to meet you, and then they would like offer them the arm that they had

stolen from a grave. Yes, stupid um. Whenever I record with Sharina, I get really sad that this is not a video podcast, because she has the best reaction faces of anybody, I know. Yeah, just imagine it, audience, Just imagine if I'm if I'm quiet, I'm making a funny face. So it's funny either way. So the group spread sort of like a meme, right in that it would kind

of self spread. They would initiate people and give them the right to initiate other people, and so it spreads across the South, all the former Confederate states, and soon it was a white supremacist army committed to terrorizing formula enslaved people. In eighteen sixty seven, they allied with the Democratic Party, um worth noting for anyone the the tables

were turned in the nineteenth century. The Democrats were the racists, and the the Democrats were the open racists, and the Republicans were the sort of slightly better party, you know. And so in sixty seven the KKK allied with the Democratic Party and they got up to good old fashioned voter suppression. They would shoot people who were registering black people to vote, including veteran of the Pod Albert Parsons from the Haymarket episode, and just did lots of bad stuff.

They shot up houses, they declared themselves the law. They murdered tons of people. They attacked everyone who worked to get black people voting. Um, they hated black ministers, especially because basically like, well, it's because they hated black people. And then they were like deeply religious in their own bigotry, you know. So it started from playing pranks and and then it became just pure hatred, Like it was like

pranks for a cover for the pure hate. Yep. And then they dropped the prank part and just continued to Yeah, and there's tactics. They basically did everything at night. They derive their tactics in large part from these like night patrols that happened during slavery times when white men would get deputized to ride around at night hunting for the origin of the Yep, the KKK and the cops have the same origin. And what do you know, as we'll talk about later, the same continued thread and a lot

of shared membership checks out. And yeah, the night patrols were civic duty, like jury duty basically. In the KKK, it just was a continuation of that. They also basically we're trying to overthrow the US government to reinstitute slavery. They didn't succeed at that part. At least, but they were trying to win through terror what they'd failed to

win on the battlefield. Basically, they're like, all right, we can't take on the US as an army, but we can just like take it on as a terrorist organization. And all along they have all these like goofy titles like dragons and cyclops and goblins and ghouls and ship dorksky, I know, I know, And it's like, and then I'm also mad because they give dork's a bad name in this context. You know, that's that's a good point. I

don't mean dorks, I mean funny thing to be. Yeah, I've been dork sometimes all the time, but they still deserve to get made fun of for this, you know. Yeah. It's like it's like if a dork had the capacity for pure evil that is terrified. Yeah, yeah, totally. By the early eighteen seventies, there's impostor clans as well, because basically everyone's like, oh, I want to know, I'm the real kk. Okay, no, I'm the real KKK And the racist got up to some serious, good old fashioned in

fighting with guns and ship so that's cool. So the US government passed its first ever anti terror legislation banning things like riding around at night in a mask terrorizing people. And I'm like, not like a big law girl, but I think that passing the law. That's like inasmuch as there should be laws like don't terrorize people and like murder everyone. Yeah you said that as if it's like you know, people say, like their horse girls. Yeah, law girl,

Jim is a big horse girl. That doesn't surprise me. Jaby has a hat that says hello to horse. I learned about this this concept recently. Shout out to my friends who are horse poor, which is where you're poor because you have horses so expensive. Yeah, I did not know those Yeah, horse pose, all your money goes into the horse and you're like what now, what what about me? Yeah? I have a friend who was a horse who pays more for the horse's room and board than her own rent.

Shout out to my friend who's listening anyway. By eighteen seventy two, the clan is more or less gone under

that name. There's a bunch of other terrorist organizations. Louisiana had the White League, Mississippi had the Red Shirts, and anti black terror of course continued, but most importantly unfortunately it's like kind of like instead of seeing the Clan is defeated in eighteen seventy two at the federal government, it's more like they succeeded at the clan succeeded at its goal, which was that the reign of terror against black voters allowed racist Southerners to subvert democratic processes and

got the right wing elected. Basically, the Republican Party, the leftish less racist wing was like conquering the polls until all this voter suppression happened, which was voter suppression primarily and most importantly of black people and black voters, but it was also of anyone who supported the Republicans, and the Democrats got into power, and by eight seventy seven you get the Jim Crow laws that went into effect, and the Clan sort of wasn't necessary at that point

because it was all made systemic. That's the first incarnation of the KKK. Let's talk about the second one. Oh no, I know, I like feel like this is a more bastards the episode than what Like It's like how Pokemon starts out and you're like, oh, it's kind of cute, little Ghostie, and then it becomes like a I don't know,

like a disgusting totally Okay. N five, there's this piece of ship Baptist minister, his white guy named Thomas Dixon Jr. And he wrote a best selling novel called The Klansman spelled to the c actually and it's um, it's probably shocking to you. It's really spelled correctly initially. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, this book is very racist. Oh it's about how great I know, I know you'd be shocked. Um, it's about

how great the clan was. He had been inspired to become a novelist because he hated Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was this anti slavery novel from fifty years earlier that he was like still mad about even though it was written before he was born. His book The Klansman was wildly popular, and he went on to write twenty two novels about like brave white people fighting against socialism and

racial equality. Wow. He adapted it into a play, and he was pretty explicit that the reason he was adapting it in all these different forms was because he wanted more people to get the message. It wasn't even about the money for him, you know, he was doing it for the cause. That's that's stupid. That is so stupid. Also, just like hating a book that much, how is your entire personality in life? That's that's that's crazy. Yeah, he's

he's not the He's not the best. It becomes a play the same year, and that play gets banned a ton of places because everywhere that this ship goes, this like racist ship goes. That's like kind of like thesis of this episode. Everywhere there is this ship, there are people who were like, no, not that I don't know what's good, but I know what's that that's bad, you know. Um. And to be clear, while the KKK was absolutely Protestant, um, and Protestants are famously not a unified bunch of people,

and not all Protestants went along with this ship. Um, and a ton of other pastors, I think kind of an interfaith coalition worked to see the play band. And what do you mean, I'm a little bit of a dummy. What what what do you mean by Protestants are not unified? Okay, so Protestant being like a larger umbrella of a lot of different faiths that aren't Catholicism. Okay, yeah, no, it's not.

As a very legitimate question, basically, Protestant um as I understand it is Christians who aren't Catholics and not Orthodox and all of and it's just like, yeah, the big umbrella is Protestant, and then like underneath that you have you get the Baptist and the Methodists and a lot of other different faiths. Yeah, and so I believe in interfaith coalition worked together to see a band. But more important than that, well, it's not really more important than that.

It's a complete aside is the fact that this show is sponsored by capitalism. M hmm. I wonder where that was going. Yeah, no, it's it's going to adds. That's what's happening. And we are back and we are talking about the people working to see this play band. In the North, anti racists were really just people would pick at the play. They would d platform the play wherever they could. They would throw eggs at the actors of the play, like they would get tickets and go inside

and just like and it would work. Right, they couldn't do the play because everyone who came to the audience was like, no, fuck you fucking racist, you know. And I feel like this is like again, this is like something that gets left out of history. Whenever people are like, well they were racists like everyone back in the day, Like,

I hate that argument for a lot of reasons. I mean I genuinely before you started that sentence was thinking in my head like, oh, good people didn't exist like I didn't like because I forget that too, Like you, it's good to know that there are people that recognized how bad that play was or that ideology was, because

I think, well, I don't know. I mean, of course there were people like that, but I think I forget that that was possible back then because I just assumed they're all just like this, I don't know, racist lump of people, and that's not true, Yeah, totally, And it it gets it gets us off the hook when we're like, oh, well everyone sucks and you're like, well, yeah, a lot of people suck a lot of people, especially when you think about like the Civil War and you learn about how,

like the people that didn't want slavery they had slaves. So it's like at the same time, you're like, oh, even like these quote unquote anti slavery, anti racist people were still low key racist. So I think that kind of message bleeds through for me where it's like I forget that there were maybe genuinely good people and that yeah, no,

that's legit. I mean, one of the things is that when people say everyone was racist back in the day, one of the things you're doing is saying everyone was white back in the day, right, being like, because some of the people who are against racism, we're against racism because it was against them, you know. And so you're you're cutting already all the people of color out of the conversation when you say everyone's racist, when you mean

all white people are racist. And then even then again like you know, actually, it's a really interesting example, like the Civil War stuff, because there were people who were absolutely ideologically committed to abolition, and then there were people who are like, well, we just want to conquer the South because we can't let people succeed, you know. And it, I don't know whatever is fucking, but people would suck up. This play not entirely successfully um in the wake of performances,

because the performances did happen a lot of places. When I say it was banned a ton of places, it was not successfully banned most places, right, it was performed a ton of places. Is very commercially successful and in the wake of performances, racist violence would follow. And it was this book in the play The Klansmen that introduced

the pointed hoods and the cross burnings. They were actually an invention of a novelist, not history, and the cross burnings come from a Scottish tradition called the kron Tara, which is a way that the Scots would make a declaration of war, which I'm like, kind of annoyed. This is the least bad thing that the clan did, but

I'm kind of annoyed that they took this. The burning cross was a symbol to rally people to defend an area, but it wasn't done like the clan does it where they like set a burning cross to be like we're gonna suck you up or whatever. They would send messengers around, and this was throughout a bunch of different parts of Europe. They would send messengers around with a burned or burning

cross as like the symbol. Like if the messenger shows up in your town and they're not like it's not like a huge like Jesus sale, Like, it's not a it's like a one you can hold one hand. Yeah, yeah, it's like a foot tall or whatever you know, and you would run around with this thing and you send messengers out and be the like, hey, get your people ready, it's time to go fight. So it was it was

so much cooler. Yea, what has become. And there's one argument I saw that burning crosses were used like the This is a reference that I don't know what percentage of the audience will get, like the beacon fires of gondor the that a reference that works for either of you. Um, I'm gonna pretend, okay, chuckling to myself, it's from Lord of the Rings. Uh yeah, well I figured it was the Rings, but I don't know enough about that reference

is about to continue further. No, No, the idea of being like if you want to communicate things across great distances back in the day, you set big fires on top of a hill, and then someone on the next hill season sorts of big fire and and the fires continue along or whatever. And so there's people who make a claim that the burning crosses were used like that. Um, but I'm not sure if I've seen people making a lot of different arguments about the kron Tara and I

was used m hm. So you got the book, you got the play. How about a movie, Sharine, No, do you think there should be a movie of the class? Wait? Maybe I do know about this little bit of history. I'm not sure. It's called the Birth of a Nation. Yeah, that sounds right, sounds about right. Yeah, I thought in my head, I'm just so used to like crazy plot twists that are actually real. I thought you were going

to be like and that was the origin of Broadway. Well, I mean, this is the birth of American filmmaking as like feature length. It's the first feature length Hollywood film or whatever. Yeah, it is, and it's that is a terrible fact. I'm glad that he didn't invent Broadway. Also, yeah, um, it's the most influential film of all time. It invented or made widespread a bunch of technical accomplishments like the close up, the fade out, and the orchestral score. It

was the first movie screened inside the White House. There's a lot of people arguing about how the president react to this, um, but he certainly intentionally had this movie screened inside the White House. It was the president back then. You'd think I would have included it in my script, but did not. Yeah, one of those like also rans, I mean he actually won, but like one of those people that we don't talk about all that much. Um. And it remains the most racist film in Hollywood history.

It's about scary black men trying to hurt white women and white women who are then saved by the heroic clue klux Klan. This film, this will be shocking to a lot of shocking revelations here. It was polarizing. Oh don't say some people didn't like it. Well, that's good to know. Honestly, I can't expect anything anymore. That's good to know that people were like, actually maybe not. I mean most vocally black people didn't like it for a very good reason, right, Um. But there were other people.

But the people who did the most work against this film, as far as I can tell, the end Double a c P, which is the National Association for the Advancement of Color People, which was found as six years earlier in nineteen o nine. It was at the forefront of the fight against the film. They were joined by leftists, civil rights folks, religious leaders including Jews, who went all out against this movie. Three states banned the movie. Wherever

it played, white mobs attacked black people. Um. Lynchings across the country went up fivefold in the month that it came out. Wow, it's just so unfortunate and devastating, like coming just from like and it was a silly but like from like an artistic technical perspective that like all of these really technical achievements when it comes to filmmaking

and making art. The fact that this was like the first feat that they decided to put all those energies towards or like that is so sad to me, I know what I mean, because filmmaking is like an amazing achievement back then that was like that was it was like what what was it? Nine fifteen? ID I cheated, but like that was That's just so mind boggling to me that so many like fascinating, mind boggling things that filmmaking is that they were they were dedicated first to this,

and that's just so sad. I don't know rant But one of the things that came out of it as a as a reaction against it, it was the birth

of the quote. I don't think it's what people want to call it now, but it was a quote of the the race movie movies for black audiences, the first black owned film studio, The Lincoln Motion Picture Company was founded in nineteen six basically as like people got together to work to counter the blatant racism of the Birth of a Nation, and in classic Hollywood form, merchandizing followed.

The film people started selling kkk K. However, many case hats and kitchen aprons and ship like that assholes had planned for parties. Yeah, the app lilyad merged. God, well, it's a spoil it a little bit. The clan that gets reborn out of it is basically a merged selling organization. But um with this is still the second iteration. We're about to get to the second iteration. This is actually a dead time during the clan. There is no clan right now. Oh, the clan has been dead since eighteen

seventy two. So because they're like dead in quotes like they the government eradicated it. Yeah, and it actually seemed to be functionally gone. It actually seemed to not be organized, and all the people who wanted to continue the terror joined all these other organizations. Other people were like, well, we kind of one with Jim Crow, so we can just like continue to be racist through the legal means. So this rebirthed the clan in some yes, very directly actually.

But one more thing about classic Hollywood ship baggery. The director of this film, d W. Griffith, he made a movie the next year called Intolerance, And it wasn't about like, intolerance is great, I love being a biggot. It was about how all the people who were critical of his movie, we're intolerant? Wow, Wow, what a what a round about little statement of the conturing. Doesn't it just sound like exactly what would happen right now? Yeah? It does? Wow,

I guess no one. I guess Humanity actually doesn't change, you know, it even just has different mediums of expressing itself. At the end, we're just the same stupid dummies. Yeah. The balance of like the balance of people have better ideas and worse ideas, like changes and like shifts back and forth. But it's like it shifts back and forth

like sixty Yeah it really does. Yeah, But like, I don't I used to know so much more about this era in film because I studied film, So I don't, Like my brain is like blocking so many things out. But he's a terrible person from I remember, Like, it wasn't just this film, it was just like I don't know. He just he defended it like to his death, like it was I don't know. Yeah, but like what was the author? What was the original author's name of the book and the play and all of that. Let me

scroll back. It's not important. If it's not important that, who cares Thomas Dixon Jr. Okay, Okay, So he wrote wait, he wrote them, and that was based that was the original story of Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation. I think it's like the second half of Birth in the Nation is based on the Klansman. I didn't actually as part of this, Like, one day I'm going to sit down. I'll probably never read the Klansman. I'm not like opposed to the idea of it, but I probably

won't use my one short life to do so. One day I feel like I should watch Birth of a Nation. But like I've definitely seen some of it just by nature of like studying stuff and disturbing. I mean, like it's I mean, just like the black face is the least disturbing part, and that is so concerning, you know what I mean. So it's just terrible anyway, Yeah, that's

well what it also did. This movie rebirth the KKK in ninetif a car who is practically the hero of the story but didn't quite succeed, a car hit a guy named William Joseph Simmons. Unfortunately didn't hit him hard enough, so he spent a while recovering instead of rotting. While he was laid up in bed, he decided, you know what, let's restart the KKK, just like in that fancy movie I just saw. Wow, he'd already joined like a dozen

different secret societies. Why not make his own. So he got a copy of the old KKK's rules, and he recruited some folks, including two members of the original clan who were old as ship at this point, and he went to Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We're gonna talk more about Stone Mountain later, fifteen charter members burned across and restarted the hate group. And this guy, he like, as soon as the government investigates the KKK, he's like, oh, oh,

I hope there's no crimes. And he starts like distancing himself away from federal after like he's like, oh, that's something doing me as soon as the Feds started investigating it, because he's just like fucking Proud Boy founder Gavin McKennis, who ditched the group as soon as they started, as soon as the going got rough coward. And I read another an academic analysis that said he was basically pushed out by the next guy who wanted to turn into

a mass movement by loosening up recruitment standards. But the guy who found it didn't stay in charge of it all that long. And this new incarnation, the second incarnation of the KKK, is by numbers, by far the largest KKKK. However many case, I'm just going to keep getting that wrong. The entire time, Um, there were up to about five million people in the KKK in the That's a lot of people. Yeah, And it's also the least influential period of the KKK for some reasons that we'll talk about.

Probably the first incarnation was the most influential, and that it sucked up reconstruction and then the third one that we'll talk about later. I think i I'm making a statement rather than like this being what historians have agreed upon is more influential in the way that it continues along campaign of terrorism and hate and uh funcked with civil rights movements and things. This one, it was kind

of like a social group. It was like people cost playing as the KKK to get together and they're like white, pure Protestant thing. And then the best part was it was a fucking pyramid scheme, this elaborate grift and like they're just basically like it's a fucking multi level marketing scheme where like you keep some of the money of the people that you recruit into the KKK, but you send the rest of it up to the people up top. And they sold tons of KKK merch. You could live

your whole KKK life. You could go to KKK camp by a KKK pocket knife. Yeah. No, they had this like the whole thing. There's actually a lot of yeah, and there's actually, uh, just to to shout out a podcast that some people might have heard, Behind the Bastards, there's a good Behind the Bastards about this part of it, about how it's all an elaborate grift and how it's like this like lifestyle club. But the other thing to know about the second incarnation the KKK is they weren't

just anti black. They absolutely were anti black. That is there rooted thing, but it isn't quite where they actually put people like to argue about this, and I'm not sure it might not be where they put on most of their energy. They were anti gay, they were anti Latin X. They're anti Asian. They were anti socialists. They were anti the i w W, the Industrial Workers of the World, a syndicalist union. They were anti abortion. They

were anti atheist. They are anti jew, they were anti Muslim, and, possibly more than anything else, or at least the thing that gets talked about the most, they were anti catholic Um, which is funny. What did they have a religious They were like, yeah, so I thought they were Christians. Yeah, I was raised vaguely Catholic. I didn't realize that huge chunks of the Protestant world don't considerate Catholics to be Christian. Oh they are. I mean we're sort of the original Christians.

I mean, but it's all the Cross. I mean, that's the boils down to. They all like the Cross. Yeah, I'll talk a little bit more about very simplic, but like it's I don't know, yeah, I mean, like, you know, I think that Christian religions would be I guess I would behind it. Like the people who think Jesus is the son of God rather than a prophet, you know. And but what's so funny is it all of these things I listed, except the Catholic part, sound everything like

modern hate groups. Yeah, so what they were just like it sounds like they were just pro white. Yeah, like what there's that's that's the only thing that they were for sure for they were wasps. They were white Anglo Sacks and Protestants, and or some of them were like, I'm not Anglo Sax and I'm Celtic because they were like Lowland Scottish or whatever. Because the guy who wrote that book was like into his Scottish heritage and his

weird racisms. And so to talk about the anti Catholic thing and why it makes any sense, um, because it doesn't translate very well in the modern context of you're going to be a right wing asshole today. About twenty three million immigrants have just poured into the US over the past few decades from the not nice parts of Europe like Italy and Ireland and Eastern Europe. And you've got this nativist thing which is a prejudice against even

white immigrants. And this is where a lot of the like the Italians or the Irish weren't white kind of stuff comes from, and that nativism and that like anti Irish and anti Italian, et cetera stuff. It was anti Catholicism was a big part of it. And the reasoning is is complicated. You've got some religious dogmatism, the clan, you know, their wasps Um. Catholics weren't Protestant, so they were the enemy. There's the nativism. They're immigrants, so they're

the enemy. But the main rationality people have used, kind of in the sort of almost conspiracy theory ish level, that people use against Catholics is that they can never be true patriots because they serve Rome and the Pope and they're not to be trusted because they have dual loyalty. Interesting, and this idea goes back really far in the seventeen

fifties and the seventeen sixties and colonial New York. The first gun control laws that New York passed before the United States existed banned the sale of guns to indigenous people and to Catholics. Um, this is actually that's really funny. I know that, and it's actually coming up now because there's this gun control laws in New York and they're like referencing they're they're like referencing these old gun control

laws as like there's there's precedent. Wild that is I mean that rational is so just like conspiracy theory like e to me, like I don't know, Like it's just like I don't know. So it's it's about they want you to be a patriot. So it's about like nationalism more so than like racism kind of in that sense.

But like or I don't know, it's messy because I would say overall because like as far as I've looked into like eighteenth century and earlier um US stuff and maybe nineteenth century stuff in the US, the anti Irish, et cetera, the Irish might not have been white, but they weren't black, right, they were this like special third thing to use the meme of the day, and so it was still better than being black to be uh

someone who has since become white. Right. But there is this kind of brief spike in the late nineteenth century early twentieth century where a lot of people are getting kind of more consciously called and grouped in with like people of color or you know, colored people sections or whatever, right of people who are like ethnic Europeans rather than

you know, proper white Europeans or whatever. I mean, I don't know if anyone's had that Irish friend that was like my relatives are slight, or like my answers were slashed, which isn't true. So yeah, I know, but I feel

like that narrative is unfortunately like a thing for some people. No, totally and like, and what I want is people as as someone who you know of his Irish heritage or whatever, but is fucking white and modern American context is to recognize that, like you don't have to like pretend to the oppression of the Irish people is a real thing that happened, and you don't need to fucking like come in and try and swoop in on someone else's that

was like a different and more important thing that was happening. Yeah, I think I think the what it is it like the the allure of struggle, like making sure everyone knows that you struggled to and you're not as privileged as you appear to be. It's such an I mean, it's still happening today and will probably continue to happen for

a long time. But I think the Irish thing is a good example of that in modern times where it's like it's okay that you have privileged you don't have to prove that you one day, once upon a time your family had it hard. I don't know, no totally.

And it's like, I think it is worth being proud of a history of rebellion, but that needs to be not you, obviously, but me needs to be aware that like that doesn't translate to like oppression now, you know, and like it should only translate to an awareness of like why you should be on the right side of history. And whereas a lot of the people who do that, like the Irish word slaves, it's kind of like, well we did good, why can't you do good? Bullshit? Yeah? Yeah, no,

that's you know what else is bullshit? What else is bullshit? Oh right, it's all my chop up? So sorry no, no, sure, it's a fucking professional. Yeah. Sof so, we told us this time to go to ads, and I just went on a We went on a ran instead. I just thought, maybe you forgot like I did. I completely forgot step on toes. I didn't want to step on toes, but I did want to bash on capitalism. So yeah, yeah, bullshit, Yeah, here's some things that you can make up your own

mind about about whether or not they interest you. And we are back. Okay, I didn't One of the funny things about the second incarnation of the KKK. That guy whose name already forgot, the guy you stuck who wrote the book Tom something Dick and whatever. Yeah, it was a junior at the end of Tom Dick Jr. Oh I wrote it in the script again, Dixon Jr. H close the KKK was too bigoted for him, the new one, Wow, because he didn't hate Jews or Catholics, he only hated

black people. It he claims that he is the black person's best friend. Um, but yeah, he has this whole thing about how it's like the other classic one of the many classic forms of racism. It's like being like, you should care because I'm trying to help you all be better by not being horrible ignorant, terrible people or whatever. I'm helping you evolve because I'm better than you. Yeah exactly.

But yeah, So no, he didn't join the New KKK after he fucking inspired it because he because he was the classic type of racist and was like, I don't know about this new fangled expanding the concept of racism, new brands of racism, just dividing racists everyone I know, I know. Okay. The other weird things that the second KKK did. They were the paramilitary force that enforced prohibition.

What yeah, okay, So there's this period in or seven prohibition when alcohol, Yeah, alcohol was illegal federally for you know, tennis years or whatever. Many people listening to the actual dates and I don't off the top of my head when it was banned and waits were they also anti alcohol? Yes? Because and I didn't realize this. Good Protestants don't drink. It's what dirty Catholics and black people do is drink alcohol.

And these are good, upstanding, moral American value white people, yes, preach, So they're going to go around and murder everyone who drinks. That is so funny to me. Okay, this is apologies if anyone gets triggered by this. But in my head, alcohol is like a very white thing. I know it's not, I know it's not. But in my head, the most white American thing you can do is like heaven beer at night. You know. So the fact that like this

very white organization anti alcohol is very interesting to me. No, totally because I think they're just boring us. Fucking nobody wanted to hang out with them, and so they're like, let's just make all these roles together, straight edged dorks. Wow. Yeah, it's okay to be straight edge. No, not bashing that, but it's very interesting to think of them all kind of being on their moral high hords, will be boring Nazis together. Yeah, yeah, basically, and like Jesus, Chris, get

like a normal hobby. You fucking sorry, you can't hold your liquor, you Jesus. They're like, they're like those dirty people like to have a glass of wine. Like, yeah, but you make a point about how so many things can be averted by just someone having a hobby, had something to occupies we would avoid so much, Like if Hitler got into art school, you know, it's always the argument that was made that it is always argued that

was made boils down to a hobby. I went to art school briefly, and we would joke about I was one of the worst people at my art school, and us bad at art. People at my art school would joke that we got let in because art schools let everyone in. Ever since nineteen whenever ye can't. I can't risk it. God learn at a needle point, you fucking

claim we probably need a list of Uh. I'm not, again, not a big law girl, but like, uh, I don't know why that phrase is so funny to me, because because I like imagining the people who like laws is like liking horses. That's your hobby, is liking Yeah, I just think that is a funny. Like, so if you're not a law girl, who is the law? Like, what does the law girl do? Like, she's just she loves solving problems with laws? Okay, got it? And again I'm

finding an exception here law girls. Okay, this is what it is. You know how. I'm not condoning stealing by any means, but I think at the end of the day, you have to, like, sometimes I can rationalize laws being stupid and in place for dumb reason, you know, Like I don't mind taking something from a big corporation and being like fuck you, And the same applies to laws. If you just recognize that laws are stupid and made

up by someone, everything kind of falls apart. But if you really like this is against the law, I can't go. I can't jaywalk people that are law girls don't. And now what I believe is that should look both ways before you jay walk right exactly exactly, think about good analogy, what is the law, Why does the law exist? And

then you follow the thing. If the law exists so that people don't get hit by cars and interrupt traffic or whatever, right, and obviously sometimes we should interrupt cars, but then you just try to not do that rather than obey the law, like like if there's if there's a stoplight and there is not a single car there, but it says it's a red hand. The logical thing to do is just a fucking walk. But if you're a fucking law girl or like whatever it is, you're

literally standing there because it's against the law. And that is so silly to me. That is so sick. Well, the one thing I am attempting to solve car slially is that maybe we have a list of hobbies that

are not allowed to have. Everyone should get hobbies, but the hobbies can't be murdering people from drinking before you know, I'm sure we can all think of hobbies that people shouldn't have, and maybe we shouldn't run on the list hoppy lobby, that's that's the name of our campaign to try and get this put into loss that people that are behind the bastards on them. Yeah, hobby lobby, remember

I remember when that happened. For whatever reason, the word hobby got like destroyed for me because I Almos thought it was like a cute word and then it just like they took it from us. Going back, all right, speaking of lobbies, h this incarnation of the clan was very politically influential. U they elected thirteen state governors, untold

numbers of judges. It's just a fucking magafing. Practically, some Jewish congress people led an inquiry against all of this um and then those against the clan, and those congress people found themselves replaced by clan candidates the next election. And they did a lot more than they did their old ship too. Write They were like this dumb group that was like running around having like big festivals and being a like having selling KKK pocket knives and ship.

They were also murdering people, all the usual people that they hated. But they fell apart the way that lots of right wing stuff falls apart. They first they split into two different organizations fighting over the same name They then fell into disrepute because some of the leaders got caught undressed and fucking and it's some kind of like

sex den wow plot twist, I know. And since the whole thing is like we're the moral, upstanding Christian Americans, you know, and then one of their leaders abducted, raped, and murdered a white woman and that's exactly what they claimed that people of colored Yeah, and so that so they started to fall out of favor because people started

being like, oh, these people actually suck. And all the while, like tons of groups are fighting them and they're working against them, and that ties into their downfall as people's aren't realizing that these people suck, and then everyone's fighting against them. There's like newspaper expose as on how much the whole thing is just a grift. People start realizing they're getting ripped off. Maybe five million members by nine thirty,

that thirty thousand members. And during the thirties, Uh, they changed from having Catholics as their enemy number one having Communists their enemy number one. I think they're basically like trying to ride the red scare, but it didn't revitalize them. By nineteen forty, they're all but gone in in nineteen forty four. It was officially disbanded because they owed back taxes and they had to hit Oh yeah, the whole thing was like part of their like grift was that

they just bought a ton of real estate. Right. The grift is over at the end of KKK number two, but the KKK is still around the third KKK. Some people will split it between the third and fourth. I'm not going to This one is more informal. It's a bunch of independent groups around the country with like different names like the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux

Klan or whatever. They're back to their roots. They are focused on attacking and terrorizing black people, and they lack the numbers for like the forty to one fights that they prefer, so they don't go start fights, they don't go try and get into street brawls. They bomb black people's houses, they burned black churches. They murder black people,

especially civil rights activists in the South. It's interesting because while the second kk it was KKK whatever fun was by far the largest organization, the first and the third clan did way more in terms of their impact on US politics in a lasting way. In Birmingham, Alabama. They worked closely with police for decades. The third one probably peauked in about nineteen sixty five with thirty five to

fifty thousand members. Since then, it's fallen like mostly out of favor, mostly because you have like spiritual successors like the Patriot Front and Ship. You can still see them around being fucking evil from time to time. The Southern Poverty Law Center says that there's probably twenty nine separate rival clan groups around the u S right now arguing about who's the true heir to the k KK. But Sharine, this wasn't meant to be the story of the KKK. This is meant to be the story of some of

the many, many people who fought them. And so I'm gonna set the tone for when we come back Wednesday with this quote. I'm so I'm so happy because I I was really hoping the good part was coming up soon, and I did not know what I was coming. I know, I kind of I like, I framed this whole episode, this whole week's episode slightly differently than I usually do, mostly because there's so many different levels of the KKK, and I was like, I feel like it's worth understanding

it all. And honestly, I didn't know most of the stuff. Ghost stuff I still can't get over, I know. I mean, that's good to know. Yeah, and like, and I'm hoping because we're gonna talk, We're gonna talk on Wednesday about some of the people who fought them, but I'm hoping to do more in depth stuff on some of the more the larger organized groups who fought against them in

the future. And so I'm hoping to kind of like build a groundwork, um and to set this tone, I'm gonna quote from p Jelly Clark, who, in his introduction to a graphic novel called The Day the Clan Came to Town by Bill Campbell, he describes black veterans returning from World War One and other African Americans created armed defense units to protect their communities from rampaging white violence. Rosa Parks recalled, at the age of six, seeing her

own grandfather brandishing a shotgun on their porch. Quote. I stayed awake many nights keeping vigil with Grandpa, she recounted. I wanted to see him kill a Ku klux er. He declared. The first to invade our home would surely die. And and I want to frame whatever this is my cliffhanger.

I want to frame all of this because racist violence was normalized by the existence of hate groups like the KKK, but self defense and community defense was also normalized because and that party gets left out of a lot of the histories. So when we come back on Wednesday, I will tell you a bunch of those stories, nowhere near to all of them, because there's so many stories of people fighting them. That's what I got that great. Thanks, Sharine.

Is there anything you want to plug? Yeah, you can listen to my podcast ethnically Ambigie was if you want to. If you listen to It Could Happen Here, which is has a bunch of smart people on it, and I'm on there sometimes. Um and then yeah, I don't know. If you want to follow me, you can figure it out. I don't know. Godspeed. If you like history, you should find the episodes that Sharne does on It Could Happen Here.

Oh yeah, I mean I'm getting better at them. I'm it's a it's a work in progress, everybody, but actual history. Oh yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug? Do we perhaps have a live stream coming up. Oh yeah, I'm going to be a guest on a Behind the Bastard's live stream on December eight, two thousand twenty two. In case you're listening to this some time in the future, which case this one information I know. I'm really excited. I didn't know that. I have no idea what it's

gonna be about. Yeah, and you can get tickets on the internet, probably most easily by Google Lane Behind the Bastard's Live show December eight. That's how I would do it. There's probably an actual link that might be in the show notes. It's a moment how stock co slash bTB. Yeah, what I would probably do is Google instead of trying to remember things. But that's me. And you can ask if you are a person in the audience of this thing, you can ask questions of me or Sophie or Robert.

I guess and that's what I have to plug. Sophie, you've got anything to plug? Any good new podcasts out on cool Zone Media. Oh yeah, you can listen to Internet Hate Machine, hosted by Bridget Todd uh and all of our other shows. You can find out more about that on cool zone media dot com or at cool Zone Media on the social medes I will say that I started listening to Internet Hate Machine and did and it doesn't sound anything like the Nine Inch Nails album

Pretty Hate Machine. We really wanted to, um, you know, but clear about that, yeah, but instead it is actually I know when you're like when a bad thing happens on the Internet, like Elon must take you over Twitter, like I don't know, bridget Todd's good. I like the podcast. That's what I'm trying to tell you. You You should listen to it. Anyway. That's the end of part by everyone Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.