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novacorps · 5 years

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let’s talk about the REAL origin of the KKK and how it mirrors the birth of the alt-right

The KKK probably didn’t actually start as a racist thing but became a vehicle for it.

It basically started because this group of young professionals who probably never owned slaves (think the college educated alt-right of today) and basically got bored and decided to make a secret fraternity for shits and giggles. “It would be secret, to heighten the amusement of the thing, and the titles for the various offices were to have names as preposterous-sounding as possible, partly for the fun of it and partly to avoid any military or political implications.” And they recruited people to join and hazed them just like a fraternity.

For fun, they disguised themselves in sheets on horses and road through the streets. It caused such a stir, they were like YO?? This is fucking awesome we’re causing so much shit trolling everybody

So, they started adding weird shit to the costume.

They’d wear animal horns, fake facial hair, polka dots, reflective material, satin, sacks over their head (think Victorian Halloween costumes), black/red face (which was commonly used to hide your face at the time and make it seem like they were black and native americans were the ones committing crimes), and often colorful robes and women's dress. Basically these guys were literally just out here straight up looking like something straight out of The Purge meets someone’s Mardi Gras fursona. like they went either went HARD or they had a fucking sack over their head going yo i’m TOTALLY in the kkk

fun fact: there was so much crossdressing that in accounts of people describing them, they were sometimes like I THOUGHT THEY WERE A BAND OF WOMEN??? and a lot of times their victims recognized them because they were wearing their wives dresses

At some point, they decide to scare blacks for shits and giggles because they thought they were easy targets and afraid of ghosts. "Much of the Klan’s early reputation may have been based on almost frivolous mischief and tomfoolery. At first, a favorite Klan tactic had been for a white-sheeted Klansman wearing a ghoulish mask to ride up to a black family’s home at night and demand water. When the well bucket was offered, the Klansman would gulp it down and demand more, having actually poured the water through a rubber tube that flowed into a leather bottle concealed beneath his robe. After draining several buckets, the rider would exclaim that he had not had a drink since he died on the battlefield at Shiloh. He then galloped into the night, leaving the impression that ghosts of confederate dead were riding the countryside.”

some quick history: “Back in those days planation owners had little log cabins built around in a circle, around for the slaves. And the log cabins, they dabbed between two logs, they dabbed it with some mortar. And of course when that falls out, you could look out and see. But every, most every night along about eight or nine o’clock, this overseer would get on his white horse and put a sheet over him, and put tin cans to a rope and drag it around. And they told all the slaves, ‘now if you poke your head out doors after a certain time, monster of a ghost will get you.’ they peeped through and see that and never go out. They didn’t have to have any guards.” Fry said such disguises meant to scare slaves were common and that the first Klansmen, knowing this, naturally chose similar uniforms, often embellishing them with fake horns and paint around the lips and eyes.

black people were like........ lmao bruh. we don't actually believe in ghosts?? but we believe white people can be fucken crazy. because who the fuck wouldn’t be unsettled by a bunch of weirdos riding up in masks looking like the pre-war slave patrols riding around on horses who would literally fucken shoot you if you left ur cabin. let’s just take a moment to appreciate that white slave owners’ solution for making sure slaves didn’t run away during the night was the same logic as adults trying to scare their kids into staying in bed so they can go get nasty: stay in bed or the GHOSTS will get you

“The whole rationale for psychological control based on a fear of the supernatural was that whites were sure that they knew black people. They were not only firmly convinced that black people were gullible and would literally believe anything, but they were equally sure that blacks were an extremely superstitious people who had a fantastic belief in the supernatural interwoven into their life, folklore, and religion. Such thinking had obvious flaws: the underestimation of black intelligence and the overvaluation of existing superstitious beliefs. Blacks were frightened, no doubt, but not of ghosts. They were terrified of living, well-armed men who were extremely capable of making black people ghosts before their time.’

alright so. at the time (reconstruction, or just post-civil war), the southern states are passing these new laws (black codes) that basically went: go fuck yourself poor whites and blacks, you’re not getting any of our power and WHILE WE’RE AT IT let’s just virtually re-enslave blacks (e.g. blacks can't assemble in groups, have guns, learn to read and write, testify against white people, etc. and forreal spouting a lot of the same white nationalist ideas as the alt-right today. they were like: “we hold this to be a Government of White People, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the White race" and driving a wedge between poor whites and blacks.

which begs the question of like bro. why weren’t poor whites and blacks out there looking like that handshake meme hating rich whites in power?? and that’s because poor whites and blacks were usually poor in very different ways so that they were at best tentative allies. Poor whites typically owned land but usually not the other resources that would have allowed them to exploit their land intensively. blacks needed social services because like they were out there like drake starting from the bottom. so, the rich white dudes in power were like heeeey poor white people you know if we give blacks these programs... we gotta tax ur land that you’re already struggling to hold onto and reap benefits from. there’s clearly NO OTHER OPTIONS. so you’re at this point in time where not only do you have this racism where a lot of white people think they’re better than black people, the north going guys can u please play nice and let the black people have some rights?? and the south being like U CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO FUCKEN DO, but ALSO a lot of growing resentment from poor whites about black people making their lives harder. and if we’re learned anything from history, this is the PERFECT environment for white, racist extremists to THRIVE (e.g. illegal immigrants are taking our jobs! we need a muslim ban!).

SO. back to the kkk. Everyone thought the KKK was SO. FUCKING. WEIRD. they talked about it constantly locally. and it got outta control.

stuff like the night riding QUICKLY started getting out of hand. “Anyone could put on a sheet and a mask and ride into the night to commit assault, robbery, rape, arson or murder. The Klan was increasingly used as a cover for common crime or for personal revenge.”

so suddenly all these racist extremists and people with who could become extreme (same logic as liam neeson who who said he wanted to kill some black bastard after hearing his friend was raped by a black man) ... like there’s a growing place for them to meet and exchange ideas and make each other worse. so all these people and groups on the fringe start associating themselves with the kkk and using the kkk as a way to connect with people who also wanted to do terrible things.

the klan has, perhaps unwittingly, just accidentally organized extremists who might never have otherwise been able to organize like that

“Describing the actions of Ku Kluxers who marched in a Mardi Gras parade in Memphis in 1872, after conservative Democrats regained power, a newspaper writer reported that some of the marchers carried ropes. “It was a favorite bit of pleasantry to lasso a negro,” the writer noted. “No violence was offered but the contortions and grimaces of the captives were highly amusing.” The public pain and fear of these victims of Klan “pleasantries” offered visual confirmation that order had been restored in the South. Besides being fun for the perpetrators, performance also had a cloaking quality. As Parsons writes, “Klansmen used performance for reasons that lay far beyond any hopes of obscuring their identities or cowing their victims.” By making their violence appear theatrical, Klansmen could essentially confuse authorities, who would take time to decide whether the perpetrators were joking. Performances also misdirected outside audiences (like Northerners), who might have trouble figuring out what the Klan was all about. “The Klan was conceived in a tableau vivant, nurtured by minstrels and serenaders, housed by circuses and masquerades, and given an afterlife in Mardi Gras processions,” Parsons writes. All of that playing with current forms of popular culture meant that Klan violence confused observers—especially white Northerners, who were fans of minstrelsy, too, and quite ready to laugh at a black person who was the butt of a joke.”

but like?? it’s just for lols right? it doesn’t necessarily mean those guys were RACIST or they were ALL racist. that’s just the kind of edgy humor everyone was DOING at the time. “In a painful irony, circuses and minstrel shows, which had provided the theatrical vocabulary for acts of Klan violence, included Klan-themed skits in their programs; these representations then provided cover for the Klan, who could continue to claim to Northern observers horrified at the violence that the Klan was an imagined entity.”

and then like. it really fucking starts going fucking down. you start having a “few bad apples” doing shit like burning black churches and schools (exactly like what’s happened with dylann roof, attacks on synagogues, shooter in new zealand).

journalists in the north are losing their goddamn mind and reporting on it because the kkk is just SO. FUCKING. WEIRD. and how can you not? people are dying and saying they’re associated with the kkk which are doing... what again? these weird dudes dressed up like they’re going to mardi gras??? c’mon. THOSE guys? that’s a bit of a stretch to blame the KLAN for that.

in fact, the north was so obsessed, the klan became TRENDY in the north. northerners would dress up as them at costume parties and have KLAN APPRECIATION GROUPS. sometimes ironically, sometimes not.

so the klan becomes a recruitment tool for those people. just like geek culture and youtube became a tool for radicalizing and recruiting white men.

"By making their violence appear theatrical, Klansmen could essentially confuse authorities, who would take time to decide whether the perpetrators were joking. Performances also misdirected outside audiences (like Northerners), who might have trouble figuring out what the Klan was all about."

SO. There’s a website online called Stormfront which is a is a white nationalist, white supremacist, antisemitic, Holocaust denial, neo-Nazi Internet forum, and the Web's first major racial hate site. In addition to its promotion of Holocaust denial, Stormfront has increasingly become active in the propagation of Islamophobia. They use controversies like GameGate, places like 4Chan, Reddit, and YouTube to convert people. Often, people will meet and interact with neo-nazis without even knowing it.

“I think one of the real things that made it so difficult to get out and realize how radicalized I’d become in certain areas was the fact that in a lot of ways, far-right people make themselves sound less far-right; more moderate or more left-wing,” Sherratt said.

Sherratt wasn’t alone. YouTube has become a quiet powerhouse of political radicalization in recent years, powered by an algorithm that a former employee says suggests increasingly fringe content. And far-right YouTubers have learned to exploit that algorithm and land their videos high in the recommendations on less extreme videos. The Daily Beast spoke to three men whose YouTube habits pushed them down a far-right path and who have since logged out of hate.

Here’s a couple highlights from Stormfront:

#pewdiepie #social justice #sjw #kkk #richard spencer

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