Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Giljoy, and every week I tell
Speaker 1: you about people that I decide are cool because I'm
Speaker 1: apparently arbiter of cool based on the decisions I made
Speaker 1: when I named my podcast being me. Who I decide
Speaker 1: is cool usually means rebels and revolutionaries and all of that.
Speaker 1: And today my guest is the one and the only
Speaker 1: sharene Lana Units. That is correct, I am the guest.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, you're the host of a bunch of podcasts,
Speaker 1: including Ethnically Ambiguous and it could happen here. I believe
Speaker 1: you're the sole host of the latter one. Is that
Speaker 1: I'm the co host of Wait which one? The latter one?
Speaker 1: It could happen here? Ladder means it could happen here. Okay,
Speaker 1: got it? Sorry, my brain is broken. Uh no, uh
Speaker 1: I would. Yeah, if I was the only host of
Speaker 1: that show. I am one of the rotating faces or voices.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it's a daily show that people could
Speaker 1: listen to. But yeah, it's it's almost like that almost.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today? I'm okay, good to talk
Speaker 1: to a human being for for the first time today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not bad. I guess yeay, Yeah, how
Speaker 1: are you? How am I? Yeah? I don't know how
Speaker 1: I am? I. No one's ever asked you that, have they?
Speaker 1: I'm the first, probably how am I? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of burned out. I'm coming I'm almost done
Speaker 1: with a book tour, and I got to come home
Speaker 1: for a week, but then I'm leaving again for a
Speaker 1: week tomorrow. And and in this week, you've already recorded
Speaker 1: like fifteen podcasts, so yeah, break five or something. Well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly a break. And I miss sleep, um
Speaker 1: and I miss sleep anyway. Our producer is the one
Speaker 1: and only Sophie who matters. So if you looked m
Speaker 1: real Sophie's choice, you made right there. You're the only
Speaker 1: Sophie in my phone. Oh my god, I feel so honored.
Speaker 1: Marred has three people in her phone, two people named John.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think the only Sophie I
Speaker 1: know are like our friends with her, I am the
Speaker 1: only one who matters, shrinks I better. Okay, I deleted
Speaker 1: all the other ones off my phone. You're listening to
Speaker 1: this and you're my friend, and your name is Sophie.
Speaker 1: Don't feel forgotten, even though that would be technically accurate.
Speaker 1: Right now, you did get forgotten, so sorry about it.
Speaker 1: I forget a lot of things, but I don't forget that.
Speaker 1: Our audio engineer is Ian high Ian. It's fun to
Speaker 1: talk to Ian because he can't say anything back. That's true.
Speaker 1: Our theme music was written for us by a woman
Speaker 1: who you should check her out wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your music Spotify. I don't know that one's like evil,
Speaker 1: but I don't have like a better band camp whatever. Margaret,
Speaker 1: just plug in corporations. That's just like my thing. I'm
Speaker 1: really into corporate Yeah, this is my heel turn um okay,
Speaker 1: and then Sophie, today, what we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: is something that I spent ten minutes trying to come
Speaker 1: up with a way to sarcastically introduce and then I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: anything sarcastic about racism and the ku klex Klan. You
Speaker 1: did make some several uh inappropriate jokes off Mike, and
Speaker 1: that is something that you listeners don't get to hear.
Speaker 1: That is would definitely or shrine and me or if
Speaker 1: you're reading a transcript, Libel Yeah, that's my pedant joke
Speaker 1: day Today. Okay, today we're going to talk about people
Speaker 1: who fucked up the clan. Unfortunately, that actually means this
Speaker 1: week we're going to talk about people who sucked up
Speaker 1: the clan. Today, we're going to talk about the clan,
Speaker 1: but not in a real detailed atrocities kind of way.
Speaker 1: I'm going to just kind of treat have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the Klux Klan? They're not really very underground.
Speaker 1: Rings a bell, I think it rings a bell, hoods
Speaker 1: white people, racism, violence, evil. We're not going to go
Speaker 1: into detail about the specifics of the violence they committed.
Speaker 1: I think people are well aware of this is a
Speaker 1: bad organization, but we are going to talk about kind
Speaker 1: of who they are and what they were doing so
Speaker 1: that we can better understand what we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about about how people sucked them up. Um and kind
Speaker 1: of just like a no your enemy kind of way.
Speaker 1: So there's this organization that most everyone has heard of,
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. They're a hate group.
Speaker 1: They're bad, They wear stupid outfits and they set crosses
Speaker 1: on fire and they murder people, especially black people. There
Speaker 1: are terrorist organization and the most raw sense of that word.
Speaker 1: They were created as a reflection of white people's fear
Speaker 1: of no longer being able to own black people, and
Speaker 1: so they set out to scare the ship out of everybody,
Speaker 1: to make everyone obedient to white supremacy. I'm like usually
Speaker 1: into like shades of gray about stuff, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: like pretty into understanding where everyone's coming from or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like, there are evil people doing evil ship in
Speaker 1: this world. There's no gray there. It's just white. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: That was funny. I think that was That's the sort
Speaker 1: of bigger laugh and it's fine to continue. I laughed. No,
Speaker 1: it was good. And so if we didn't laugh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I only think I'm funny. Sophie laughs at
Speaker 1: my jokes and oh god, well now it just feels
Speaker 1: that way now I want to die, but continue my
Speaker 1: fake laugh is well, you know who else wants you
Speaker 1: to die? Screen Christ Magpie. Um, okay, So there's I
Speaker 1: Actually for all of the you know, anti racist work
Speaker 1: I've been involved in and stuff, I hadn't really known
Speaker 1: a lot of the sort of there's been like at
Speaker 1: least three different distinct time periods of the KKK that
Speaker 1: are like different organizations that kind of steal some of
Speaker 1: their own ship from each other, but they're actually like
Speaker 1: separate and we're founded at different times. And Clan number
Speaker 1: one it started in eighteen sixty five. It was started
Speaker 1: by six Confederate assholes. They were like a bunch of
Speaker 1: like rich kid frat boys, like former officers who just
Speaker 1: lost a war, and they met up at one of
Speaker 1: their dad's law offices and they were just like all
Speaker 1: into the secret society ship was like fucking everywhere in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in the US, and one of the
Speaker 1: ones that they were like primarily inspired by, at least
Speaker 1: according to lots of sources, of lots of things to
Speaker 1: say about this, there was this sort of joke secrets
Speaker 1: society called Sons of Malta, and it existed to sort
Speaker 1: of make fun of the other secret societies that were around,
Speaker 1: like the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus,
Speaker 1: all the various frats, et cetera. And the fact that
Speaker 1: they were inspired in part by this joke fraternity. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like kind of a history as flat
Speaker 1: circle moment where we realize a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: comes out of this like edge lord humor, land gets
Speaker 1: real real. That's a really good point. Actually, it's not
Speaker 1: just like a joke. You can't just be like it's
Speaker 1: a joke, don't take it seriously, because someone will and
Speaker 1: take it too far. Yeah. And the other society that
Speaker 1: they were inspired by, at least in terms of name,
Speaker 1: was called Cu Close alday Fun, which was a frat.
Speaker 1: It was a college frat, secret society that had recently
Speaker 1: dissolved during the Civil War. And Ko Close I didn't
Speaker 1: know this. I was like, I don't know, they just
Speaker 1: picked some dumb fucking name. And they did. They picked
Speaker 1: some dumb fucking name. But ku close means circle and Greek,
Speaker 1: so the Ku Klux Klan was them like riffing off
Speaker 1: the word ku close, Like they're just some fucking troll
Speaker 1: rich kids sitting around in their dad's law office being like, oh,
Speaker 1: what if we like ku close? No, it doesn't sound cool.
Speaker 1: What if it was ku klux like making up a
Speaker 1: band name for just like I don't know, terrible people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And much like everyone who tries to make up band
Speaker 1: names while high, they did not land it. No, this
Speaker 1: is not a good name. No, they barely flopped right
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, the pointed hood that they wear. It's
Speaker 1: going to come up a little bit more later because
Speaker 1: actually it wasn't really part of the first incarnation of
Speaker 1: the KKK. I didn't realize this, but it's called the
Speaker 1: Kappa Rotte, which comes from the Spanish Catholics, which is
Speaker 1: actually another like appropriation because as we'll talk about when
Speaker 1: we get to the second incarnation of the KKK, they
Speaker 1: fucking hate Catholics. So they were just like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: goofy looking. We'll take that right, right, But at this
Speaker 1: first incarnation they are more into pointy hats with over
Speaker 1: separate hoods or just wearing hoods rather than pointy hoods. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the six Confederate assholes they formed the KKK in
Speaker 1: eight possibly on Christmas Eve, possibly like earlier that year.
Speaker 1: People like to argue people. You probably knew that just
Speaker 1: in general people like to argue. Well, so the basis
Speaker 1: of this, like the six people were they getting together
Speaker 1: being like white people are the best? Like was that
Speaker 1: the base Like what was their initial group chat about?
Speaker 1: It was a party club? Oh it was they wanted
Speaker 1: to pretend to be ghosts. Wait, no, you're making I'm
Speaker 1: not making this up. I wish I was joined that
Speaker 1: to pretend to be ghosts, they lookey, Yeah, they threw okay,
Speaker 1: good to know, so they may throw over their head
Speaker 1: um the ghost ghost. Yeah, they would like throw sheets
Speaker 1: over their head, cut out holes for the eyes, like
Speaker 1: literally like fucking like spooky ghost costume, you know, and
Speaker 1: then they would ride around through town on their fucking horses,
Speaker 1: being like I cannot tell you with me. I'm not
Speaker 1: fucking with you. I don't believe you. I've been Margaret
Speaker 1: is not Margaret is a better human. Um. Doesn't that
Speaker 1: make you look at all those people that do that
Speaker 1: to their dog and their children differently? Yeah, Well it's
Speaker 1: funny because I actually never wore that kind of costume,
Speaker 1: even when I was feeling lazy, because I was like,
Speaker 1: it just looks too kkk to make the same and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't except that is actually it comes from the
Speaker 1: same origin. SU mean, I'm not working with you. I
Speaker 1: Like when I first heard, I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I believe it, and I like checked a
Speaker 1: bunch of sources. So what a fault? What a just
Speaker 1: a fall from grace? Like that is the saddest plot twist,
Speaker 1: And like evolution, I've ever heard devolution? But can you
Speaker 1: imagine this? You take like six random white frat dudes
Speaker 1: who are like kind of goofy and into partying, and
Speaker 1: they come up with this like clever secret society, and
Speaker 1: then it all goes wrong, but not in a way
Speaker 1: where they think it went wrong. It goes in a
Speaker 1: way that they're totally fine with. They just hadn't originally intended.
Speaker 1: And everyone else, you know, so like and so they
Speaker 1: would go around and crash parties and be like I'm
Speaker 1: a ghost or some of them would like stay quiet,
Speaker 1: and some of them would like talk in like weird voices.
Speaker 1: Oh god, and they would play prank rejectively funny, am
Speaker 1: I dad? I mean that's what's so interesting, is um.
Speaker 1: And that's why no one should ever have fun or
Speaker 1: use jokes. Um. Yeah, I got it? Sorry, yeah no,
Speaker 1: no no. And and so then they would have like
Speaker 1: spooky initiation rights that were like just goofy, kind of
Speaker 1: like the fucking Proud Boys. Right. Oh, and I guess
Speaker 1: it is all goofy in the end. I guess we
Speaker 1: forget how goofy this ship is. Sometimes it absolutely it
Speaker 1: is also fucking goofy. And and so they what happened
Speaker 1: was as far as I can tell, they started to
Speaker 1: realize that their presence was scaring black people around when
Speaker 1: they would like hang outside wearing these things or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: and so since they're not intelligent people, the Klansmen, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, the black people are superstitious and they're
Speaker 1: afraid of us because they think we actually are ghosts
Speaker 1: and black people from the time. Talking to interviewers later,
Speaker 1: we're like, no, we were afraid because there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of like white organized Confederates who went around like
Speaker 1: shooting at us and ship. Yeah, because they immediately start
Speaker 1: doing pranks. They've been doing pranks on each other, but
Speaker 1: then they started doing like quote pranks on the local
Speaker 1: black community where they would like show up and be
Speaker 1: like I'm a scary and they would like grave rob
Speaker 1: and find an arm, like an arm of a dead person,
Speaker 1: and then they like harry it under their robe and
Speaker 1: they'd be like not used to meet you, and then
Speaker 1: they would like offer them the arm that they had
Speaker 1: stolen from a grave. Yes, stupid um. Whenever I record
Speaker 1: with Sharina, I get really sad that this is not
Speaker 1: a video podcast, because she has the best reaction faces
Speaker 1: of anybody, I know. Yeah, just imagine it, audience, Just
Speaker 1: imagine if I'm if I'm quiet, I'm making a funny face.
Speaker 1: So it's funny either way. So the group spread sort
Speaker 1: of like a meme, right in that it would kind
Speaker 1: of self spread. They would initiate people and give them
Speaker 1: the right to initiate other people, and so it spreads
Speaker 1: across the South, all the former Confederate states, and soon
Speaker 1: it was a white supremacist army committed to terrorizing formula
Speaker 1: enslaved people. In eighteen sixty seven, they allied with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, um worth noting for anyone the the tables
Speaker 1: were turned in the nineteenth century. The Democrats were the racists,
Speaker 1: and the the Democrats were the open racists, and the
Speaker 1: Republicans were the sort of slightly better party, you know.
Speaker 1: And so in sixty seven the KKK allied with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party and they got up to good old fashioned
Speaker 1: voter suppression. They would shoot people who were registering black
Speaker 1: people to vote, including veteran of the Pod Albert Parsons
Speaker 1: from the Haymarket episode, and just did lots of bad stuff.
Speaker 1: They shot up houses, they declared themselves the law. They
Speaker 1: murdered tons of people. They attacked everyone who worked to
Speaker 1: get black people voting. Um, they hated black ministers, especially
Speaker 1: because basically like, well, it's because they hated black people.
Speaker 1: And then they were like deeply religious in their own bigotry,
Speaker 1: you know. So it started from playing pranks and and
Speaker 1: then it became just pure hatred, Like it was like
Speaker 1: pranks for a cover for the pure hate. Yep. And
Speaker 1: then they dropped the prank part and just continued to Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's tactics. They basically did everything at night. They
Speaker 1: derive their tactics in large part from these like night
Speaker 1: patrols that happened during slavery times when white men would
Speaker 1: get deputized to ride around at night hunting for the
Speaker 1: origin of the Yep, the KKK and the cops have
Speaker 1: the same origin. And what do you know, as we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later, the same continued thread and a lot
Speaker 1: of shared membership checks out. And yeah, the night patrols
Speaker 1: were civic duty, like jury duty basically. In the KKK,
Speaker 1: it just was a continuation of that. They also basically
Speaker 1: we're trying to overthrow the US government to reinstitute slavery.
Speaker 1: They didn't succeed at that part. At least, but they
Speaker 1: were trying to win through terror what they'd failed to
Speaker 1: win on the battlefield. Basically, they're like, all right, we
Speaker 1: can't take on the US as an army, but we
Speaker 1: can just like take it on as a terrorist organization.
Speaker 1: And all along they have all these like goofy titles
Speaker 1: like dragons and cyclops and goblins and ghouls and ship dorksky,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, And it's like, and then I'm
Speaker 1: also mad because they give dork's a bad name in
Speaker 1: this context. You know, that's that's a good point. I
Speaker 1: don't mean dorks, I mean funny thing to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been dork sometimes all the time, but they still
Speaker 1: deserve to get made fun of for this, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like if a dork had the capacity
Speaker 1: for pure evil that is terrified. Yeah, yeah, totally. By
Speaker 1: the early eighteen seventies, there's impostor clans as well, because
Speaker 1: basically everyone's like, oh, I want to know, I'm the
Speaker 1: real kk. Okay, no, I'm the real KKK And the
Speaker 1: racist got up to some serious, good old fashioned in
Speaker 1: fighting with guns and ship so that's cool. So the
Speaker 1: US government passed its first ever anti terror legislation banning
Speaker 1: things like riding around at night in a mask terrorizing people.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, not like a big law girl, but
Speaker 1: I think that passing the law. That's like inasmuch as
Speaker 1: there should be laws like don't terrorize people and like
Speaker 1: murder everyone. Yeah you said that as if it's like
Speaker 1: you know, people say, like their horse girls. Yeah, law girl,
Speaker 1: Jim is a big horse girl. That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1: Jaby has a hat that says hello to horse. I
Speaker 1: learned about this this concept recently. Shout out to my
Speaker 1: friends who are horse poor, which is where you're poor
Speaker 1: because you have horses so expensive. Yeah, I did not
Speaker 1: know those Yeah, horse pose, all your money goes into
Speaker 1: the horse and you're like what now, what what about me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I have a friend who was a horse who pays
Speaker 1: more for the horse's room and board than her own rent.
Speaker 1: Shout out to my friend who's listening anyway. By eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, the clan is more or less gone under
Speaker 1: that name. There's a bunch of other terrorist organizations. Louisiana
Speaker 1: had the White League, Mississippi had the Red Shirts, and
Speaker 1: anti black terror of course continued, but most importantly unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's like kind of like instead of seeing the Clan
Speaker 1: is defeated in eighteen seventy two at the federal government,
Speaker 1: it's more like they succeeded at the clan succeeded at
Speaker 1: its goal, which was that the reign of terror against
Speaker 1: black voters allowed racist Southerners to subvert democratic processes and
Speaker 1: got the right wing elected. Basically, the Republican Party, the
Speaker 1: leftish less racist wing was like conquering the polls until
Speaker 1: all this voter suppression happened, which was voter suppression primarily
Speaker 1: and most importantly of black people and black voters, but
Speaker 1: it was also of anyone who supported the Republicans, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats got into power, and by eight seventy seven
Speaker 1: you get the Jim Crow laws that went into effect,
Speaker 1: and the Clan sort of wasn't necessary at that point
Speaker 1: because it was all made systemic. That's the first incarnation
Speaker 1: of the KKK. Let's talk about the second one. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I know, I like feel like this is a more
Speaker 1: bastards the episode than what Like It's like how Pokemon
Speaker 1: starts out and you're like, oh, it's kind of cute,
Speaker 1: little Ghostie, and then it becomes like a I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a disgusting totally Okay. N five, there's this piece
Speaker 1: of ship Baptist minister, his white guy named Thomas Dixon Jr.
Speaker 1: And he wrote a best selling novel called The Klansman
Speaker 1: spelled to the c actually and it's um, it's probably
Speaker 1: shocking to you. It's really spelled correctly initially. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: this book is very racist. Oh it's about how great
Speaker 1: I know, I know you'd be shocked. Um, it's about
Speaker 1: how great the clan was. He had been inspired to
Speaker 1: become a novelist because he hated Uncle Tom's Cabin, which
Speaker 1: was this anti slavery novel from fifty years earlier that
Speaker 1: he was like still mad about even though it was
Speaker 1: written before he was born. His book The Klansman was
Speaker 1: wildly popular, and he went on to write twenty two
Speaker 1: novels about like brave white people fighting against socialism and
Speaker 1: racial equality. Wow. He adapted it into a play, and
Speaker 1: he was pretty explicit that the reason he was adapting
Speaker 1: it in all these different forms was because he wanted
Speaker 1: more people to get the message. It wasn't even about
Speaker 1: the money for him, you know, he was doing it
Speaker 1: for the cause. That's that's stupid. That is so stupid. Also,
Speaker 1: just like hating a book that much, how is your
Speaker 1: entire personality in life? That's that's that's crazy. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's not the He's not the best. It becomes a
Speaker 1: play the same year, and that play gets banned a
Speaker 1: ton of places because everywhere that this ship goes, this
Speaker 1: like racist ship goes. That's like kind of like thesis
Speaker 1: of this episode. Everywhere there is this ship, there are
Speaker 1: people who were like, no, not that I don't know
Speaker 1: what's good, but I know what's that that's bad, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, while the KKK was absolutely Protestant, um,
Speaker 1: and Protestants are famously not a unified bunch of people,
Speaker 1: and not all Protestants went along with this ship. Um,
Speaker 1: and a ton of other pastors, I think kind of
Speaker 1: an interfaith coalition worked to see the play band. And
Speaker 1: what do you mean, I'm a little bit of a dummy.
Speaker 1: What what what do you mean by Protestants are not unified? Okay,
Speaker 1: so Protestant being like a larger umbrella of a lot
Speaker 1: of different faiths that aren't Catholicism. Okay, yeah, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: As a very legitimate question, basically, Protestant um as I
Speaker 1: understand it is Christians who aren't Catholics and not Orthodox
Speaker 1: and all of and it's just like, yeah, the big
Speaker 1: umbrella is Protestant, and then like underneath that you have
Speaker 1: you get the Baptist and the Methodists and a lot
Speaker 1: of other different faiths. Yeah, and so I believe in
Speaker 1: interfaith coalition worked together to see a band. But more
Speaker 1: important than that, well, it's not really more important than that.
Speaker 1: It's a complete aside is the fact that this show
Speaker 1: is sponsored by capitalism. M hmm. I wonder where that
Speaker 1: was going. Yeah, no, it's it's going to adds. That's
Speaker 1: what's happening. And we are back and we are talking
Speaker 1: about the people working to see this play band. In
Speaker 1: the North, anti racists were really just people would pick
Speaker 1: at the play. They would d platform the play wherever
Speaker 1: they could. They would throw eggs at the actors of
Speaker 1: the play, like they would get tickets and go inside
Speaker 1: and just like and it would work. Right, they couldn't
Speaker 1: do the play because everyone who came to the audience
Speaker 1: was like, no, fuck you fucking racist, you know. And
Speaker 1: I feel like this is like again, this is like
Speaker 1: something that gets left out of history. Whenever people are like,
Speaker 1: well they were racists like everyone back in the day, Like,
Speaker 1: I hate that argument for a lot of reasons. I
Speaker 1: mean I genuinely before you started that sentence was thinking
Speaker 1: in my head like, oh, good people didn't exist like
Speaker 1: I didn't like because I forget that too, Like you,
Speaker 1: it's good to know that there are people that recognized
Speaker 1: how bad that play was or that ideology was, because
Speaker 1: I think, well, I don't know. I mean, of course
Speaker 1: there were people like that, but I think I forget
Speaker 1: that that was possible back then because I just assumed
Speaker 1: they're all just like this, I don't know, racist lump
Speaker 1: of people, and that's not true, Yeah, totally, And it
Speaker 1: it gets it gets us off the hook when we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: well everyone sucks and you're like, well, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people suck a lot of people, especially when you
Speaker 1: think about like the Civil War and you learn about how,
Speaker 1: like the people that didn't want slavery they had slaves.
Speaker 1: So it's like at the same time, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: even like these quote unquote anti slavery, anti racist people
Speaker 1: were still low key racist. So I think that kind
Speaker 1: of message bleeds through for me where it's like I
Speaker 1: forget that there were maybe genuinely good people and that yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's legit. I mean, one of the things is that
Speaker 1: when people say everyone was racist back in the day,
Speaker 1: one of the things you're doing is saying everyone was
Speaker 1: white back in the day, right, being like, because some
Speaker 1: of the people who are against racism, we're against racism
Speaker 1: because it was against them, you know. And so you're
Speaker 1: you're cutting already all the people of color out of
Speaker 1: the conversation when you say everyone's racist, when you mean
Speaker 1: all white people are racist. And then even then again
Speaker 1: like you know, actually, it's a really interesting example, like
Speaker 1: the Civil War stuff, because there were people who were
Speaker 1: absolutely ideologically committed to abolition, and then there were people
Speaker 1: who are like, well, we just want to conquer the
Speaker 1: South because we can't let people succeed, you know. And it,
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever is fucking, but people would suck up.
Speaker 1: This play not entirely successfully um in the wake of performances,
Speaker 1: because the performances did happen a lot of places. When
Speaker 1: I say it was banned a ton of places, it
Speaker 1: was not successfully banned most places, right, it was performed
Speaker 1: a ton of places. Is very commercially successful and in
Speaker 1: the wake of performances, racist violence would follow. And it
Speaker 1: was this book in the play The Klansmen that introduced
Speaker 1: the pointed hoods and the cross burnings. They were actually
Speaker 1: an invention of a novelist, not history, and the cross
Speaker 1: burnings come from a Scottish tradition called the kron Tara,
Speaker 1: which is a way that the Scots would make a
Speaker 1: declaration of war, which I'm like, kind of annoyed. This
Speaker 1: is the least bad thing that the clan did, but
Speaker 1: I'm kind of annoyed that they took this. The burning
Speaker 1: cross was a symbol to rally people to defend an area,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't done like the clan does it where
Speaker 1: they like set a burning cross to be like we're
Speaker 1: gonna suck you up or whatever. They would send messengers around,
Speaker 1: and this was throughout a bunch of different parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: They would send messengers around with a burned or burning
Speaker 1: cross as like the symbol. Like if the messenger shows
Speaker 1: up in your town and they're not like it's not
Speaker 1: like a huge like Jesus sale, Like, it's not a
Speaker 1: it's like a one you can hold one hand. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a foot tall or whatever you know, and
Speaker 1: you would run around with this thing and you send
Speaker 1: messengers out and be the like, hey, get your people ready,
Speaker 1: it's time to go fight. So it was it was
Speaker 1: so much cooler. Yea, what has become. And there's one
Speaker 1: argument I saw that burning crosses were used like the
Speaker 1: This is a reference that I don't know what percentage
Speaker 1: of the audience will get, like the beacon fires of
Speaker 1: gondor the that a reference that works for either of you. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pretend, okay, chuckling to myself, it's from Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings. Uh yeah, well I figured it was
Speaker 1: the Rings, but I don't know enough about that reference
Speaker 1: is about to continue further. No, No, the idea of
Speaker 1: being like if you want to communicate things across great
Speaker 1: distances back in the day, you set big fires on
Speaker 1: top of a hill, and then someone on the next
Speaker 1: hill season sorts of big fire and and the fires
Speaker 1: continue along or whatever. And so there's people who make
Speaker 1: a claim that the burning crosses were used like that. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure if I've seen people making a
Speaker 1: lot of different arguments about the kron Tara and I
Speaker 1: was used m hm. So you got the book, you
Speaker 1: got the play. How about a movie, Sharine, No, do
Speaker 1: you think there should be a movie of the class? Wait?
Speaker 1: Maybe I do know about this little bit of history.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's called the Birth of a Nation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds right, sounds about right. Yeah, I thought in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm just so used to like crazy plot
Speaker 1: twists that are actually real. I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to be like and that was the origin of Broadway. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the birth of American filmmaking as
Speaker 1: like feature length. It's the first feature length Hollywood film
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, it is, and it's that is a
Speaker 1: terrible fact. I'm glad that he didn't invent Broadway. Also, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it's the most influential film of all time. It invented
Speaker 1: or made widespread a bunch of technical accomplishments like the
Speaker 1: close up, the fade out, and the orchestral score. It
Speaker 1: was the first movie screened inside the White House. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people arguing about how the president react
Speaker 1: to this, um, but he certainly intentionally had this movie
Speaker 1: screened inside the White House. It was the president back then.
Speaker 1: You'd think I would have included it in my script,
Speaker 1: but did not. Yeah, one of those like also rans,
Speaker 1: I mean he actually won, but like one of those
Speaker 1: people that we don't talk about all that much. Um.
Speaker 1: And it remains the most racist film in Hollywood history.
Speaker 1: It's about scary black men trying to hurt white women
Speaker 1: and white women who are then saved by the heroic
Speaker 1: clue klux Klan. This film, this will be shocking to
Speaker 1: a lot of shocking revelations here. It was polarizing. Oh
Speaker 1: don't say some people didn't like it. Well, that's good
Speaker 1: to know. Honestly, I can't expect anything anymore. That's good
Speaker 1: to know that people were like, actually maybe not. I
Speaker 1: mean most vocally black people didn't like it for a
Speaker 1: very good reason, right, Um. But there were other people.
Speaker 1: But the people who did the most work against this film,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, the end Double a
Speaker 1: c P, which is the National Association for the Advancement
Speaker 1: of Color People, which was found as six years earlier
Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine. It was at the forefront of
Speaker 1: the fight against the film. They were joined by leftists,
Speaker 1: civil rights folks, religious leaders including Jews, who went all
Speaker 1: out against this movie. Three states banned the movie. Wherever
Speaker 1: it played, white mobs attacked black people. Um. Lynchings across
Speaker 1: the country went up fivefold in the month that it
Speaker 1: came out. Wow, it's just so unfortunate and devastating, like
Speaker 1: coming just from like and it was a silly but
Speaker 1: like from like an artistic technical perspective that like all
Speaker 1: of these really technical achievements when it comes to filmmaking
Speaker 1: and making art. The fact that this was like the
Speaker 1: first feat that they decided to put all those energies
Speaker 1: towards or like that is so sad to me, I
Speaker 1: know what I mean, because filmmaking is like an amazing
Speaker 1: achievement back then that was like that was it was
Speaker 1: like what what was it? Nine fifteen? ID I cheated,
Speaker 1: but like that was That's just so mind boggling to
Speaker 1: me that so many like fascinating, mind boggling things that
Speaker 1: filmmaking is that they were they were dedicated first to this,
Speaker 1: and that's just so sad. I don't know rant But
Speaker 1: one of the things that came out of it as
Speaker 1: a as a reaction against it, it was the birth
Speaker 1: of the quote. I don't think it's what people want
Speaker 1: to call it now, but it was a quote of
Speaker 1: the the race movie movies for black audiences, the first
Speaker 1: black owned film studio, The Lincoln Motion Picture Company was
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen six basically as like people got together
Speaker 1: to work to counter the blatant racism of the Birth
Speaker 1: of a Nation, and in classic Hollywood form, merchandizing followed.
Speaker 1: The film people started selling kkk K. However, many case
Speaker 1: hats and kitchen aprons and ship like that assholes had
Speaker 1: planned for parties. Yeah, the app lilyad merged. God, well,
Speaker 1: it's a spoil it a little bit. The clan that
Speaker 1: gets reborn out of it is basically a merged selling organization.
Speaker 1: But um with this is still the second iteration. We're
Speaker 1: about to get to the second iteration. This is actually
Speaker 1: a dead time during the clan. There is no clan
Speaker 1: right now. Oh, the clan has been dead since eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. So because they're like dead in quotes like
Speaker 1: they the government eradicated it. Yeah, and it actually seemed
Speaker 1: to be functionally gone. It actually seemed to not be organized,
Speaker 1: and all the people who wanted to continue the terror
Speaker 1: joined all these other organizations. Other people were like, well,
Speaker 1: we kind of one with Jim Crow, so we can
Speaker 1: just like continue to be racist through the legal means.
Speaker 1: So this rebirthed the clan in some yes, very directly actually.
Speaker 1: But one more thing about classic Hollywood ship baggery. The
Speaker 1: director of this film, d W. Griffith, he made a
Speaker 1: movie the next year called Intolerance, And it wasn't about like,
Speaker 1: intolerance is great, I love being a biggot. It was
Speaker 1: about how all the people who were critical of his movie,
Speaker 1: we're intolerant? Wow, Wow, what a what a round about
Speaker 1: little statement of the conturing. Doesn't it just sound like
Speaker 1: exactly what would happen right now? Yeah? It does? Wow,
Speaker 1: I guess no one. I guess Humanity actually doesn't change,
Speaker 1: you know, it even just has different mediums of expressing itself.
Speaker 1: At the end, we're just the same stupid dummies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The balance of like the balance of people have better
Speaker 1: ideas and worse ideas, like changes and like shifts back
Speaker 1: and forth. But it's like it shifts back and forth
Speaker 1: like sixty Yeah it really does. Yeah, But like, I
Speaker 1: don't I used to know so much more about this
Speaker 1: era in film because I studied film, So I don't,
Speaker 1: Like my brain is like blocking so many things out.
Speaker 1: But he's a terrible person from I remember, Like, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just this film, it was just like I don't know.
Speaker 1: He just he defended it like to his death, like
Speaker 1: it was I don't know. Yeah, but like what was
Speaker 1: the author? What was the original author's name of the
Speaker 1: book and the play and all of that. Let me
Speaker 1: scroll back. It's not important. If it's not important that,
Speaker 1: who cares Thomas Dixon Jr. Okay, Okay, So he wrote wait,
Speaker 1: he wrote them, and that was based that was the
Speaker 1: original story of Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation.
Speaker 1: I think it's like the second half of Birth in
Speaker 1: the Nation is based on the Klansman. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: as part of this, Like, one day I'm going to
Speaker 1: sit down. I'll probably never read the Klansman. I'm not
Speaker 1: like opposed to the idea of it, but I probably
Speaker 1: won't use my one short life to do so. One
Speaker 1: day I feel like I should watch Birth of a Nation.
Speaker 1: But like I've definitely seen some of it just by
Speaker 1: nature of like studying stuff and disturbing. I mean, like
Speaker 1: it's I mean, just like the black face is the
Speaker 1: least disturbing part, and that is so concerning, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it's just terrible anyway, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: well what it also did. This movie rebirth the KKK
Speaker 1: in ninetif a car who is practically the hero of
Speaker 1: the story but didn't quite succeed, a car hit a
Speaker 1: guy named William Joseph Simmons. Unfortunately didn't hit him hard enough,
Speaker 1: so he spent a while recovering instead of rotting. While
Speaker 1: he was laid up in bed, he decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's restart the KKK, just like in that fancy movie
Speaker 1: I just saw. Wow, he'd already joined like a dozen
Speaker 1: different secret societies. Why not make his own. So he
Speaker 1: got a copy of the old KKK's rules, and he
Speaker 1: recruited some folks, including two members of the original clan
Speaker 1: who were old as ship at this point, and he
Speaker 1: went to Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk more about Stone Mountain later, fifteen charter members burned
Speaker 1: across and restarted the hate group. And this guy, he like,
Speaker 1: as soon as the government investigates the KKK, he's like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope there's no crimes. And he starts like distancing
Speaker 1: himself away from federal after like he's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: something doing me as soon as the Feds started investigating it,
Speaker 1: because he's just like fucking Proud Boy founder Gavin McKennis,
Speaker 1: who ditched the group as soon as they started, as
Speaker 1: soon as the going got rough coward. And I read
Speaker 1: another an academic analysis that said he was basically pushed
Speaker 1: out by the next guy who wanted to turn into
Speaker 1: a mass movement by loosening up recruitment standards. But the
Speaker 1: guy who found it didn't stay in charge of it
Speaker 1: all that long. And this new incarnation, the second incarnation
Speaker 1: of the KKK, is by numbers, by far the largest KKKK.
Speaker 1: However many case, I'm just going to keep getting that wrong.
Speaker 1: The entire time, Um, there were up to about five
Speaker 1: million people in the KKK in the That's a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, And it's also the least influential period
Speaker 1: of the KKK for some reasons that we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: Probably the first incarnation was the most influential, and that
Speaker 1: it sucked up reconstruction and then the third one that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later. I think i I'm making a
Speaker 1: statement rather than like this being what historians have agreed
Speaker 1: upon is more influential in the way that it continues
Speaker 1: along campaign of terrorism and hate and uh funcked with
Speaker 1: civil rights movements and things. This one, it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a social group. It was like people cost
Speaker 1: playing as the KKK to get together and they're like white,
Speaker 1: pure Protestant thing. And then the best part was it
Speaker 1: was a fucking pyramid scheme, this elaborate grift and like
Speaker 1: they're just basically like it's a fucking multi level marketing
Speaker 1: scheme where like you keep some of the money of
Speaker 1: the people that you recruit into the KKK, but you
Speaker 1: send the rest of it up to the people up top.
Speaker 1: And they sold tons of KKK merch. You could live
Speaker 1: your whole KKK life. You could go to KKK camp
Speaker 1: by a KKK pocket knife. Yeah. No, they had this
Speaker 1: like the whole thing. There's actually a lot of yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's actually, uh, just to to shout out a
Speaker 1: podcast that some people might have heard, Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: there's a good Behind the Bastards about this part of it,
Speaker 1: about how it's all an elaborate grift and how it's
Speaker 1: like this like lifestyle club. But the other thing to
Speaker 1: know about the second incarnation the KKK is they weren't
Speaker 1: just anti black. They absolutely were anti black. That is
Speaker 1: there rooted thing, but it isn't quite where they actually
Speaker 1: put people like to argue about this, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it might not be where they put on most
Speaker 1: of their energy. They were anti gay, they were anti
Speaker 1: Latin X. They're anti Asian. They were anti socialists. They
Speaker 1: were anti the i w W, the Industrial Workers of
Speaker 1: the World, a syndicalist union. They were anti abortion. They
Speaker 1: were anti atheist. They are anti jew, they were anti Muslim, and,
Speaker 1: possibly more than anything else, or at least the thing
Speaker 1: that gets talked about the most, they were anti catholic Um,
Speaker 1: which is funny. What did they have a religious They
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, so I thought they were Christians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was raised vaguely Catholic. I didn't realize that huge
Speaker 1: chunks of the Protestant world don't considerate Catholics to be Christian.
Speaker 1: Oh they are. I mean we're sort of the original Christians.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it's all the Cross. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the boils down to. They all like the Cross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little bit more about very simplic, but
Speaker 1: like it's I don't know, yeah, I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that Christian religions would be I guess I
Speaker 1: would behind it. Like the people who think Jesus is
Speaker 1: the son of God rather than a prophet, you know.
Speaker 1: And but what's so funny is it all of these
Speaker 1: things I listed, except the Catholic part, sound everything like
Speaker 1: modern hate groups. Yeah, so what they were just like
Speaker 1: it sounds like they were just pro white. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: what there's that's that's the only thing that they were
Speaker 1: for sure for they were wasps. They were white Anglo
Speaker 1: Sacks and Protestants, and or some of them were like,
Speaker 1: I'm not Anglo Sax and I'm Celtic because they were
Speaker 1: like Lowland Scottish or whatever. Because the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: that book was like into his Scottish heritage and his
Speaker 1: weird racisms. And so to talk about the anti Catholic
Speaker 1: thing and why it makes any sense, um, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't translate very well in the modern context of you're
Speaker 1: going to be a right wing asshole today. About twenty
Speaker 1: three million immigrants have just poured into the US over
Speaker 1: the past few decades from the not nice parts of
Speaker 1: Europe like Italy and Ireland and Eastern Europe. And you've
Speaker 1: got this nativist thing which is a prejudice against even
Speaker 1: white immigrants. And this is where a lot of the
Speaker 1: like the Italians or the Irish weren't white kind of
Speaker 1: stuff comes from, and that nativism and that like anti
Speaker 1: Irish and anti Italian, et cetera stuff. It was anti
Speaker 1: Catholicism was a big part of it. And the reasoning
Speaker 1: is is complicated. You've got some religious dogmatism, the clan,
Speaker 1: you know, their wasps Um. Catholics weren't Protestant, so they
Speaker 1: were the enemy. There's the nativism. They're immigrants, so they're
Speaker 1: the enemy. But the main rationality people have used, kind
Speaker 1: of in the sort of almost conspiracy theory ish level,
Speaker 1: that people use against Catholics is that they can never
Speaker 1: be true patriots because they serve Rome and the Pope
Speaker 1: and they're not to be trusted because they have dual loyalty. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and this idea goes back really far in the seventeen
Speaker 1: fifties and the seventeen sixties and colonial New York. The
Speaker 1: first gun control laws that New York passed before the
Speaker 1: United States existed banned the sale of guns to indigenous
Speaker 1: people and to Catholics. Um, this is actually that's really funny.
Speaker 1: I know that, and it's actually coming up now because
Speaker 1: there's this gun control laws in New York and they're
Speaker 1: like referencing they're they're like referencing these old gun control
Speaker 1: laws as like there's there's precedent. Wild that is I
Speaker 1: mean that rational is so just like conspiracy theory like
Speaker 1: e to me, like I don't know, Like it's just
Speaker 1: like I don't know. So it's it's about they want
Speaker 1: you to be a patriot. So it's about like nationalism
Speaker 1: more so than like racism kind of in that sense.
Speaker 1: But like or I don't know, it's messy because I
Speaker 1: would say overall because like as far as I've looked
Speaker 1: into like eighteenth century and earlier um US stuff and
Speaker 1: maybe nineteenth century stuff in the US, the anti Irish,
Speaker 1: et cetera, the Irish might not have been white, but
Speaker 1: they weren't black, right, they were this like special third
Speaker 1: thing to use the meme of the day, and so
Speaker 1: it was still better than being black to be uh
Speaker 1: someone who has since become white. Right. But there is
Speaker 1: this kind of brief spike in the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: early twentieth century where a lot of people are getting
Speaker 1: kind of more consciously called and grouped in with like
Speaker 1: people of color or you know, colored people sections or whatever,
Speaker 1: right of people who are like ethnic Europeans rather than
Speaker 1: you know, proper white Europeans or whatever. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if anyone's had that Irish friend that was
Speaker 1: like my relatives are slight, or like my answers were slashed,
Speaker 1: which isn't true. So yeah, I know, but I feel
Speaker 1: like that narrative is unfortunately like a thing for some people. No,
Speaker 1: totally and like, and what I want is people as
Speaker 1: as someone who you know of his Irish heritage or whatever,
Speaker 1: but is fucking white and modern American context is to
Speaker 1: recognize that, like you don't have to like pretend to
Speaker 1: the oppression of the Irish people is a real thing
Speaker 1: that happened, and you don't need to fucking like come
Speaker 1: in and try and swoop in on someone else's that
Speaker 1: was like a different and more important thing that was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think the what it is it like
Speaker 1: the the allure of struggle, like making sure everyone knows
Speaker 1: that you struggled to and you're not as privileged as
Speaker 1: you appear to be. It's such an I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still happening today and will probably continue to happen for
Speaker 1: a long time. But I think the Irish thing is
Speaker 1: a good example of that in modern times where it's
Speaker 1: like it's okay that you have privileged you don't have
Speaker 1: to prove that you one day, once upon a time
Speaker 1: your family had it hard. I don't know, no totally.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I think it is worth being proud
Speaker 1: of a history of rebellion, but that needs to be
Speaker 1: not you, obviously, but me needs to be aware that
Speaker 1: like that doesn't translate to like oppression now, you know,
Speaker 1: and like it should only translate to an awareness of
Speaker 1: like why you should be on the right side of history.
Speaker 1: And whereas a lot of the people who do that,
Speaker 1: like the Irish word slaves, it's kind of like, well
Speaker 1: we did good, why can't you do good? Bullshit? Yeah? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's you know what else is bullshit? What else is bullshit?
Speaker 1: Oh right, it's all my chop up? So sorry no, no, sure,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking professional. Yeah. Sof so, we told us
Speaker 1: this time to go to ads, and I just went
Speaker 1: on a We went on a ran instead. I just thought,
Speaker 1: maybe you forgot like I did. I completely forgot step
Speaker 1: on toes. I didn't want to step on toes, but
Speaker 1: I did want to bash on capitalism. So yeah, yeah, bullshit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's some things that you can make up your own
Speaker 1: mind about about whether or not they interest you. And
Speaker 1: we are back. Okay, I didn't One of the funny
Speaker 1: things about the second incarnation of the KKK. That guy
Speaker 1: whose name already forgot, the guy you stuck who wrote
Speaker 1: the book Tom something Dick and whatever. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a junior at the end of Tom Dick Jr. Oh
Speaker 1: I wrote it in the script again, Dixon Jr. H
Speaker 1: close the KKK was too bigoted for him, the new one, Wow,
Speaker 1: because he didn't hate Jews or Catholics, he only hated
Speaker 1: black people. It he claims that he is the black
Speaker 1: person's best friend. Um, but yeah, he has this whole
Speaker 1: thing about how it's like the other classic one of
Speaker 1: the many classic forms of racism. It's like being like,
Speaker 1: you should care because I'm trying to help you all
Speaker 1: be better by not being horrible ignorant, terrible people or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm helping you evolve because I'm better than you. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So no, he didn't join the New KKK
Speaker 1: after he fucking inspired it because he because he was
Speaker 1: the classic type of racist and was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know about this new fangled expanding the concept of racism,
Speaker 1: new brands of racism, just dividing racists everyone I know,
Speaker 1: I know. Okay. The other weird things that the second
Speaker 1: KKK did. They were the paramilitary force that enforced prohibition.
Speaker 1: What yeah, okay, So there's this period in or seven
Speaker 1: prohibition when alcohol, Yeah, alcohol was illegal federally for you know,
Speaker 1: tennis years or whatever. Many people listening to the actual
Speaker 1: dates and I don't off the top of my head
Speaker 1: when it was banned and waits were they also anti alcohol? Yes?
Speaker 1: Because and I didn't realize this. Good Protestants don't drink.
Speaker 1: It's what dirty Catholics and black people do is drink alcohol.
Speaker 1: And these are good, upstanding, moral American value white people, yes, preach,
Speaker 1: So they're going to go around and murder everyone who drinks.
Speaker 1: That is so funny to me. Okay, this is apologies
Speaker 1: if anyone gets triggered by this. But in my head,
Speaker 1: alcohol is like a very white thing. I know it's not,
Speaker 1: I know it's not. But in my head, the most
Speaker 1: white American thing you can do is like heaven beer
Speaker 1: at night. You know. So the fact that like this
Speaker 1: very white organization anti alcohol is very interesting to me. No,
Speaker 1: totally because I think they're just boring us. Fucking nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to hang out with them, and so they're like,
Speaker 1: let's just make all these roles together, straight edged dorks. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay to be straight edge. No, not bashing that,
Speaker 1: but it's very interesting to think of them all kind
Speaker 1: of being on their moral high hords, will be boring
Speaker 1: Nazis together. Yeah, yeah, basically, and like Jesus, Chris, get
Speaker 1: like a normal hobby. You fucking sorry, you can't hold
Speaker 1: your liquor, you Jesus. They're like, they're like those dirty
Speaker 1: people like to have a glass of wine. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you make a point about how so many things
Speaker 1: can be averted by just someone having a hobby, had
Speaker 1: something to occupies we would avoid so much, Like if
Speaker 1: Hitler got into art school, you know, it's always the
Speaker 1: argument that was made that it is always argued that
Speaker 1: was made boils down to a hobby. I went to
Speaker 1: art school briefly, and we would joke about I was
Speaker 1: one of the worst people at my art school, and
Speaker 1: us bad at art. People at my art school would
Speaker 1: joke that we got let in because art schools let
Speaker 1: everyone in. Ever since nineteen whenever ye can't. I can't
Speaker 1: risk it. God learn at a needle point, you fucking
Speaker 1: claim we probably need a list of Uh. I'm not, again,
Speaker 1: not a big law girl, but like, uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know why that phrase is so funny to me, because
Speaker 1: because I like imagining the people who like laws is
Speaker 1: like liking horses. That's your hobby, is liking Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just think that is a funny. Like, so if you're
Speaker 1: not a law girl, who is the law? Like, what
Speaker 1: does the law girl do? Like, she's just she loves
Speaker 1: solving problems with laws? Okay, got it? And again I'm
Speaker 1: finding an exception here law girls. Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: it is. You know how. I'm not condoning stealing by
Speaker 1: any means, but I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you have to, like, sometimes I can rationalize laws being
Speaker 1: stupid and in place for dumb reason, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I don't mind taking something from a big corporation and
Speaker 1: being like fuck you, And the same applies to laws.
Speaker 1: If you just recognize that laws are stupid and made
Speaker 1: up by someone, everything kind of falls apart. But if
Speaker 1: you really like this is against the law, I can't go.
Speaker 1: I can't jaywalk people that are law girls don't. And
Speaker 1: now what I believe is that should look both ways
Speaker 1: before you jay walk right exactly exactly, think about good analogy,
Speaker 1: what is the law, Why does the law exist? And
Speaker 1: then you follow the thing. If the law exists so
Speaker 1: that people don't get hit by cars and interrupt traffic
Speaker 1: or whatever, right, and obviously sometimes we should interrupt cars,
Speaker 1: but then you just try to not do that rather
Speaker 1: than obey the law, like like if there's if there's
Speaker 1: a stoplight and there is not a single car there,
Speaker 1: but it says it's a red hand. The logical thing
Speaker 1: to do is just a fucking walk. But if you're
Speaker 1: a fucking law girl or like whatever it is, you're
Speaker 1: literally standing there because it's against the law. And that
Speaker 1: is so silly to me. That is so sick. Well,
Speaker 1: the one thing I am attempting to solve car slially
Speaker 1: is that maybe we have a list of hobbies that
Speaker 1: are not allowed to have. Everyone should get hobbies, but
Speaker 1: the hobbies can't be murdering people from drinking before you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we can all think of hobbies that people
Speaker 1: shouldn't have, and maybe we shouldn't run on the list
Speaker 1: hoppy lobby, that's that's the name of our campaign to
Speaker 1: try and get this put into loss that people that
Speaker 1: are behind the bastards on them. Yeah, hobby lobby, remember
Speaker 1: I remember when that happened. For whatever reason, the word
Speaker 1: hobby got like destroyed for me because I Almos thought
Speaker 1: it was like a cute word and then it just
Speaker 1: like they took it from us. Going back, all right,
Speaker 1: speaking of lobbies, h this incarnation of the clan was
Speaker 1: very politically influential. U they elected thirteen state governors, untold
Speaker 1: numbers of judges. It's just a fucking magafing. Practically, some
Speaker 1: Jewish congress people led an inquiry against all of this
Speaker 1: um and then those against the clan, and those congress
Speaker 1: people found themselves replaced by clan candidates the next election.
Speaker 1: And they did a lot more than they did their
Speaker 1: old ship too. Write They were like this dumb group
Speaker 1: that was like running around having like big festivals and
Speaker 1: being a like having selling KKK pocket knives and ship.
Speaker 1: They were also murdering people, all the usual people that
Speaker 1: they hated. But they fell apart the way that lots
Speaker 1: of right wing stuff falls apart. They first they split
Speaker 1: into two different organizations fighting over the same name They
Speaker 1: then fell into disrepute because some of the leaders got
Speaker 1: caught undressed and fucking and it's some kind of like
Speaker 1: sex den wow plot twist, I know. And since the
Speaker 1: whole thing is like we're the moral, upstanding Christian Americans,
Speaker 1: you know, and then one of their leaders abducted, raped,
Speaker 1: and murdered a white woman and that's exactly what they
Speaker 1: claimed that people of colored Yeah, and so that so
Speaker 1: they started to fall out of favor because people started
Speaker 1: being like, oh, these people actually suck. And all the while,
Speaker 1: like tons of groups are fighting them and they're working
Speaker 1: against them, and that ties into their downfall as people's
Speaker 1: aren't realizing that these people suck, and then everyone's fighting
Speaker 1: against them. There's like newspaper expose as on how much
Speaker 1: the whole thing is just a grift. People start realizing
Speaker 1: they're getting ripped off. Maybe five million members by nine thirty,
Speaker 1: that thirty thousand members. And during the thirties, Uh, they
Speaker 1: changed from having Catholics as their enemy number one having
Speaker 1: Communists their enemy number one. I think they're basically like
Speaker 1: trying to ride the red scare, but it didn't revitalize them.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty, they're all but gone in in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty four. It was officially disbanded because they owed back
Speaker 1: taxes and they had to hit Oh yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was like part of their like grift was that
Speaker 1: they just bought a ton of real estate. Right. The
Speaker 1: grift is over at the end of KKK number two,
Speaker 1: but the KKK is still around the third KKK. Some
Speaker 1: people will split it between the third and fourth. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to This one is more informal. It's a
Speaker 1: bunch of independent groups around the country with like different
Speaker 1: names like the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux
Speaker 1: Klan or whatever. They're back to their roots. They are
Speaker 1: focused on attacking and terrorizing black people, and they lack
Speaker 1: the numbers for like the forty to one fights that
Speaker 1: they prefer, so they don't go start fights, they don't
Speaker 1: go try and get into street brawls. They bomb black
Speaker 1: people's houses, they burned black churches. They murder black people,
Speaker 1: especially civil rights activists in the South. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: while the second kk it was KKK whatever fun was
Speaker 1: by far the largest organization, the first and the third
Speaker 1: clan did way more in terms of their impact on
Speaker 1: US politics in a lasting way. In Birmingham, Alabama. They
Speaker 1: worked closely with police for decades. The third one probably
Speaker 1: peauked in about nineteen sixty five with thirty five to
Speaker 1: fifty thousand members. Since then, it's fallen like mostly out
Speaker 1: of favor, mostly because you have like spiritual successors like
Speaker 1: the Patriot Front and Ship. You can still see them
Speaker 1: around being fucking evil from time to time. The Southern
Speaker 1: Poverty Law Center says that there's probably twenty nine separate
Speaker 1: rival clan groups around the u S right now arguing
Speaker 1: about who's the true heir to the k KK. But Sharine,
Speaker 1: this wasn't meant to be the story of the KKK.
Speaker 1: This is meant to be the story of some of
Speaker 1: the many, many people who fought them. And so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna set the tone for when we come back Wednesday
Speaker 1: with this quote. I'm so I'm so happy because I
Speaker 1: I was really hoping the good part was coming up soon,
Speaker 1: and I did not know what I was coming. I know,
Speaker 1: I kind of I like, I framed this whole episode,
Speaker 1: this whole week's episode slightly differently than I usually do,
Speaker 1: mostly because there's so many different levels of the KKK,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I feel like it's worth understanding
Speaker 1: it all. And honestly, I didn't know most of the stuff.
Speaker 1: Ghost stuff I still can't get over, I know. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's good to know. Yeah, and like, and I'm hoping
Speaker 1: because we're gonna talk, We're gonna talk on Wednesday about
Speaker 1: some of the people who fought them, but I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to do more in depth stuff on some of the
Speaker 1: more the larger organized groups who fought against them in
Speaker 1: the future. And so I'm hoping to kind of like
Speaker 1: build a groundwork, um and to set this tone, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from p Jelly Clark, who, in his introduction
Speaker 1: to a graphic novel called The Day the Clan Came
Speaker 1: to Town by Bill Campbell, he describes black veterans returning
Speaker 1: from World War One and other African Americans created armed
Speaker 1: defense units to protect their communities from rampaging white violence.
Speaker 1: Rosa Parks recalled, at the age of six, seeing her
Speaker 1: own grandfather brandishing a shotgun on their porch. Quote. I
Speaker 1: stayed awake many nights keeping vigil with Grandpa, she recounted.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see him kill a Ku klux er.
Speaker 1: He declared. The first to invade our home would surely die.
Speaker 1: And and I want to frame whatever this is my cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: I want to frame all of this because racist violence
Speaker 1: was normalized by the existence of hate groups like the KKK,
Speaker 1: but self defense and community defense was also normalized because
Speaker 1: and that party gets left out of a lot of
Speaker 1: the histories. So when we come back on Wednesday, I
Speaker 1: will tell you a bunch of those stories, nowhere near
Speaker 1: to all of them, because there's so many stories of
Speaker 1: people fighting them. That's what I got that great. Thanks, Sharine.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you want to plug? Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: listen to my podcast ethnically Ambigie was if you want to.
Speaker 1: If you listen to It Could Happen Here, which is
Speaker 1: has a bunch of smart people on it, and I'm
Speaker 1: on there sometimes. Um and then yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you want to follow me, you can figure it out.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Godspeed. If you like history, you should
Speaker 1: find the episodes that Sharne does on It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I'm getting better at them. I'm
Speaker 1: it's a it's a work in progress, everybody, but actual history.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker 1: Do we perhaps have a live stream coming up. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a guest on a Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastard's live stream on December eight, two thousand twenty two.
Speaker 1: In case you're listening to this some time in the future,
Speaker 1: which case this one information I know. I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I have no idea what it's
Speaker 1: gonna be about. Yeah, and you can get tickets on
Speaker 1: the internet, probably most easily by Google Lane Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastard's Live show December eight. That's how I would do it.
Speaker 1: There's probably an actual link that might be in the
Speaker 1: show notes. It's a moment how stock co slash bTB. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what I would probably do is Google instead of trying
Speaker 1: to remember things. But that's me. And you can ask
Speaker 1: if you are a person in the audience of this thing,
Speaker 1: you can ask questions of me or Sophie or Robert.
Speaker 1: I guess and that's what I have to plug. Sophie,
Speaker 1: you've got anything to plug? Any good new podcasts out
Speaker 1: on cool Zone Media. Oh yeah, you can listen to
Speaker 1: Internet Hate Machine, hosted by Bridget Todd uh and all
Speaker 1: of our other shows. You can find out more about
Speaker 1: that on cool zone media dot com or at cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media on the social medes I will say that
Speaker 1: I started listening to Internet Hate Machine and did and
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound anything like the Nine Inch Nails album
Speaker 1: Pretty Hate Machine. We really wanted to, um, you know,
Speaker 1: but clear about that, yeah, but instead it is actually
Speaker 1: I know when you're like when a bad thing happens
Speaker 1: on the Internet, like Elon must take you over Twitter,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, bridget Todd's good. I like the podcast.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to tell you. You You should listen
Speaker 1: to it. Anyway. That's the end of part by everyone
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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