All you Christians complaining that moderate Muslims do nothing about ISIS…what have you done about the KKK?
That’s easy. They’ve encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office, and perpetuate the same hate and discrimination and oppression under a different name: “alt right”, “white nationalism”, “conservativism”. The KKK, a Christian racist organization, has shriveled away as it took over the Republican party, a Christian racist organization.
The Church Lady now says, “Don’t you dare call their policies racist! That’s offensive!”
Remember when the FBI went after the KKK and broke them down like they did the Black Panthers?
Yeah, me either.
@ Marcus Ranum-As I understand, Hoover’s FBI did selectively go after the Klan, but as you mentioned, did not break it down as they did the Panthers. One historian maintained that while Hoover opposed the terrorist acts of the Klan, as they were perceived by Hoover as a threat to law and order, he did not oppose their racist, white nationalist philosophy. In other words, oppressing minorities and civil rights leaders was the FBI’s job, and therefore the Klan shouldn’t usurp the bureau’s territory.
@marcus ranum, They actually used COINTELPRO against the KKK, one of the only redeeming things to come out of Hoover’s FBI.
PZ, this post is disgracefully historically ignorant. The Klan was not and is not just “white racists”. It was political and terrorist organizations that effectively controlled large parts of the country for decades at a time There was a century of Christian alongside people of all faiths’ resistance to the Klan who fought alongside others of all faiths to take the Klan from a huge force in national politics to the splintered hate groups that remain. The Klan had significant control in both the Republican and Democratic party over time, but for most of its history was much more connected to and received more support from southern Democrats. Party realignment at the local level happened a decade or more after the splintering of the Klan.
Republicans intentionally decided to court racist whites. They were not taken over by the Klan. That’s like equating Erdogan and ISIS because they’re both islamist.
The church lady and half the people commenting here last week.
They started the Klan, supported each of its surges (the ’20’s, ’50’s, ’80’s, ’00’s) and mostly joined it whenever possible. There is just so much they can do.
[To go all “anti-” ]
Mike Pence eliminated the KKK by taking their task list away from them and implementing them legislatively in his state.
So yeah he reduced the KKK to costumes for haters to *spit* at. The eliminated the KKK, not.
Okay, that was rude to Pence. the rethuglicans did what I said Pence did. I think it more evidential that the Republicans have been proudly copying everything the KKK did, aside from the arson. Effectively rendering the KKK redundant and superfluous.
Thanx Rethugs.
It’s a cute meme, and if this was 1971 I’d be all for it. But I’m not sure this is the right target today, or the right parallel, for two reasons:
(1) The timeframe is off: “You’re now reaping what was sown half a century ago, so we’re going to castigate you now for what your former leaders didn’t do.” A better contemporary parallel would be W3stboro Baptist Church, or the FLDS Church… but those organizations haven’t engaged in widespread overt violence against nonmembers, so it sort of dilutes the imagery. Plus, various federal authorities are actually doing something about the latter… (The financial extortion and near-terrorism engaged in by various “ministries” is awful, evil, and really visibly noncomparable.)
(2) D’aesh is mostly attacking members of its own ethnicity and religion — the collateral damage is just bonus points in this particular iteration of DeathRace 2000 and/or a recruiting tool. Conversely, the KKK overtly proclaimed that descendants of slavery and non-Christians were not Real Americans, and attacked those dissimilar people almost exclusively (making the occasional exception for “fellow travellers” — comparison to red-baiting chosen with malice aforethought — and desperately attempting to relabel things so that “white” became “Anglo-Saxon” by the 1930s so as to exclude all of those commies whose ancestors came from Southern Europe).
So it’s a cute soundbite. It’s not sufficiently valid to be worth pressing it, except as a response to imprecations “сделать америки здорово снова” (bad translation, on purpose so it will show up in Americanized word-order in online translation engines) — a reminder that there was a Compton (or East LA) near the suburban Los Angeles home of the Cleavers.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/klans-planned-parade-raises-questions-about-white-supremacists-in-nc/
qwints@#3:
COINTELPRO was more aimed at the student protestors and desegregation protestors. There were some infiltrations of radical organizations, like the KKK, the Weathermen, SDS, and Black Panthers.
Guess which ones they killed??
COINTELPRO studied the spectrum of various radical organizations, which was pretty broad. “Studying” is not “going after.” Hoover was much more concerned with communists (pathologically so!) and if I recall correctly he only paid attention to the KKK when the president ordered him to.
The KKK, of course, has a much deeper history of violence and radicalism than the Weathermen, SDS, and Black Panthers put together. And Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement (which had no history of violence at all) combined.
You’re right that the only people they assassinated were Black, like Fred Hampton and other Black Panthers. Hoover’s FBI was awful and persecuted a ton of leftist and radical groups, most of which were engaged in completely legal political activities, but they did use COINTELPRO (specifically COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE) to break up the KKK .
Marcus Ranum (#1) –
Any bets on the FBI labelling the SPLC as “serial harassers”, imposing fines and any “civil penalties” given to the KKK?
Unlikely, but there will be some who call for it.
qwints@#10:
they did use COINTELPRO (specifically COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE) to break up the KKK .
You think the KKK is broken up? I guess I should have started with the more basic question.
Yes, read the SPLC history -https://www.splcenter.org/20110301/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#con%20men%20and%20thugs. Most racist terrorists migrated into militia movements or skinheads. Fragmented groups using the name KKK still exist, but have little no continuity with the KKK of the 1970s.
qwints, I don’t understand what parts of this post you consider “disgracefully historically ignorant.”
Do moderate Christians have no moral obligation to oppose radical Christian hate groups such as the KKK?
I don’t get what historical component there is supposed to be to a question like this. Should we not be using those as examples, because there is allegedly some relevant kind of discontinuity between past hate movements and those we have now, and if so why would it change the answer to the question above?
If our current situation isn’t like this:
… then do they not have a moral obligation to oppose such hate groups which are in every other sense like it and could be up to the same terrorism and political control?
If the following is true:
There was a century of Christian alongside people of all faiths’ resistance to the Klan who fought alongside others of all faiths to take the Klan from a huge force in national politics to the splintered hate groups that remain.
… then why should we not conclude that this was their moral obligation? The fact that some of them lived up to it in the past does not suggest to me that it isn’t their obligation. They would be an example, in some reconstruction of the past which by your standards is not “disgracefully historically ignorant,” of what moderate Christian should be doing. That certainly doesn’t imply it’s something they are already doing now, about this somewhat different movement which you say is discontinuous with the ones some of them opposed before.
I don’t get it. Whether there was “courting” from one or a “take over” from the other, what substantive difference does that make to the message of this blog post? How fucking disgraceful is it to focus on a few words like that (the aptness of which is arguable at best), when we clearly have bigger fucking problems to worry about here?
That’s a fantastic source. What I read in it is the opposite of what qwints reads: sure, the Klan brand had mostly faded as of its writing (and continued fading since) but (a) when it rises, it rises fast and (b) Klan members and neo-nazis and sovereign citizens all are sufficiently similar that members of each movement seamlessly move into another movement.
Oh and (c) running a hate group is like herding cats: haters gonna hate, and they’ll turn on each other in an instant.
@14 consciousness razor, I understand PZ to be making that claim that “moderate Christians” are hypocritical in complaining that moderate Muslims have failed to do anything about ISIS because they have failed to do anything about the KKK. It’s not true that Christians “encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office” as Republicans. I agree that everyone has the moral obligation to do what they can to stop that kind of terrorism, but I just think this point misses that both moderate Christians and moderate Muslims have done a lot to denounce and fight terror.
Thought about writing a long reply, but I’ll leave it at this – white people aren’t made up of racists (covert or overt) and non-racists. I’m not the kkk so I’m not racist has justified a ton of oppression.