Fanaticism Goes Full-Retard

File Under:  I cannot make this stuff up.

The "true" Klan (Ku Klux Klan) is not racist, doesn't believe in hate, and is against violence.  That wasn't a joke, at least not on my part.  Check out the video:


All-righty.  As the great-grandson of two sets of sharecroppers from the deep south, one of which died as a result of injuries suffered in a house fire set by the Klan, that certainly is shocking news to me.  To the Inter-webs I went a-looking.  Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on The Ku Klux Klan:

"The modern KKK is not one organization; rather it is composed of small independent chapters across the U.S."

Since as early as I can remember, the Klan has always been one unified, national organization all about White Power and the death of anyone who was not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.


So how did we go from lynching blacks, burning crosses to terrorize people, and filibustering civil rights amendments on Capitol Hill to joining forces with Black gang members to thwart a Klan rally?  Here is Imperial Grand Wizard Bradley Jenkins in his own words from the pages of VICE (click link for full interview):

"VICE: Hi Bradley. What did you mean when you said I'd spoken to a “fake Klan”?Bradley Jenkins: We call these other Klans "pop-up Klans." Our government made it very easy for people to call themselves Klans by splitting all the Klans up. The United Klans of America are the true Klan—we have a history, we have a charter. We're not a hate organization, we're just a fraternal white organization. [...]

And you consider Thomas Robb’s Knights of the KKK to be a pop-up Klan?Oh, I won't even tell you what I think of that man. He used to be a good Klansman, but look at the difference between his website and ours: he's begging for money on every page. Sure, it takes money to operate, but begging for $40 to $50 a month from people who are losing their jobs just isn't right. [...]

So you don’t see the UKA as a hate organization?Putting on public rallies with the robes and the hoods and screaming and hollering doesn't accomplish anything. Let me tell you what I hate: I hate that my country is going down the tubes and that Europe is going down the tubes. I hate that we have people who are totally blind to the Islamization of our world. [...]

The UKA has been linked with some very serious incidents in the past, though?That was a different time and it's something you can't change. But if you look at other Klan organizations, they have scum in their ranks because they don't do background checks. It's all about quantity to them, whereas United Klans of America is concerned with quality. I'm a military veteran and an ex-cop. In fact, child molesters and immigration are two of our biggest issues. The Klan leadership figures out ways to inform communities about those issues without telling them it's coming from the Klan. We don't really want them knowing it's coming from the Klan, actually. The Klan is a means to an end. [...]

If you're not racist, why not start a new organization than become the leader of one with a long history of racism?Because there has to be someone who stands up and establishes what we're about. Myself and the four other Imperial wizards have come to the conclusion that 2013 is the time for that to happen. It will be the year that people realize the Klan is not a huge hate organization."

Well, smack me on my bottom and call me Susan (I don't know why you would do that, but something needed to go right there for transition).  Fascinating.

So as you probably surmised the title of this blog entry, I am not buying this radical change of heart on Klan ideology.  It seems that as tolerance seeps its way into the deepest roots of hate and divisiveness in America, the KKK (real, fake, or otherwise) is finding its numbers, wealth, and relevance dwindling.  Like the Dixiecrats (who were no longer in power or the mode) and the Republicans (who were getting trounced in elections) of old, this new breed of "true" Klan recognized it is time for the old flippity-flop and some good ol' fashioned spin-doctoring.  After decades of White Bashing over active and passive white complicity in hundreds of years of discrimination, suppression, and genocide one of these "educated" Klansman got the idea that White Pride would be a much more appealing draw than the messy business of killing in the name of White Supremacy.  Furthermore, maybe, just maybe if they could successfully remove themselves far enough away from the negative image they created for themselves then they could navigated the Hate Boat back into the waters of the power elite, thus reintroducing their extreme ideology back into national policy.

However, am I wrong?  Is there room for organizations like UKA in America, or the world?  Are they different from groups like: Aryan Nations, IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda?  Moreover, is there any reaching across the isle of moderation and civility with open arms to formerly militant extremists in the wake of a true enlightenment and reformation?  In essence, is a change of  this magnitude possible and are we as reasoned people obligated to embrace it?  I do not know.  Maybe we are co-dependent on our connections to the past, even the negative ones, and like Albi and the badly-burned Albanian boy, it's just different, very different.  Maybe I am an intellectual dinosaur and DaJuan Horton and Bradley Jenkins are the what the new face of America will be: an inconceivable coalition of diverse people with hard to categorize and label beliefs.  Mayhaps, we will come to judge this new Klan by the same criteria we judged the old -- by its words and deeds.

"Don't Let the Man Get You Down" by Fatboy Slim from Palookaville released 2004 on Astralwerks