Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello. I'm Forrest, Forrest Gump. That's not what I was expecting you to say. Because Forrest Gump is named after the founder of the KKK.
Is he really?
Wow. It's right at the beginning of the film, which I know you haven't watched. I haven't watched it.
i know too much about it now you always say that you're like oh like people talk about it so i feel like i've seen it i'm like that's not i know the point i know i know uh instead i spent uh random moments of my bank holiday watching the ultimatum south africa Which honestly, if we have any South African fans watching, listening, and we definitely do because I don't shut up about it.
Please, please, please tell me, DM me on Instagram because I don't always like read all the comments everywhere and like it's hard to keep track of. DM me your thoughts on what the fuck has been going on on the ultimatum South Africa. I have so many opinions. We'll talk about it on Under the Duvet next week, but I need to know.
I was actually in the pub the other day and these two girls came up to me and were like, oh, like, love your podcast, blah, blah, blah. And also, we weren't sure whether we should come up to you, but we're South African, so we knew that you would love us. I was like, yes, fair. Fair, fair, fair.
I'm actually thinking about unfollowing my friends who have just moved there because the spam I am getting of beauty is making me depressed. Anybody. We're not going to talk about South Africa today. Today, we are confronting, head on, the epitome of evil. And evil is not a word we use on this show. Well, we can use it on this one. Red-handed, maybe not.
We're going to talk about a group that has, since 1865, morphed from being a secret society to a pyramid scheme on steroids, and then a paramilitary army brimming with shaved-headed bigots. But through every metamorphosis of the Ku Klux Klan, one thing has remained the same. An unshakable commitment to racial terror and white supremacy.
This is the story of America's first terrorist group, otherwise known as the KKK. Here is the shorthand.
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Chapter 2: What historical context led to the formation of the KKK?
But let's not forget, that is what they are. But also, it was pretty standard for secret societies at the time. And the buffoonery did not stop there. Early clansmen wore animal horns and polka-dotted hats and imitated barnyard animals, which, shall we all just picture together? Fully grown men, on horsies, wearing bedsheets and mooing like a cow.
Yeah.
And look, again, it's like it sounds incredibly comical and buffoonish, but very much like the pranks that made no sense when I read it out. Must have been terrifying to the newly freed black folk who would have been watching these men doing this. Absolutely.
Fucking hell. And yes, it does sound funny, but it all got very ugly very quickly. Mutilations, floggings, lynchings and shootings spread across the South until the mid-1870s. And that's when the Klan started to fade away.
Chapter 3: How did the KKK evolve from a secret society to a paramilitary group?
Congress was sick of the violence. And anyway, the Jim Crow laws had just codified racism in the law of the land.
But then, the Klan had a second wind. As you'll learn very quickly, the history of the KKK is really like a game of whack-a-mole. The Roaring Twenties was arguably peak KKK. That is, until a high-profile sex scandal brought it all undone.
That's what I find so interesting about like, I think we have a common thing of this like nostalgic for the 20s and also for the 50s when you have all those like do what girl groups and like, oh yeah, let's go back to when we didn't have the fucking vote. But the 20s has that like thing about it that we sort of
idolize it a bit it's like very glamorous yeah but also basically everyone who you're watching in the great gatsby was a fucking fascist you can't leave that bit out but before we get into this sex scandal that brought down the kkk at its peak let's back up a bit there were essentially three things behind the kkk's 1920s resurgence a movie a lynching and effective marketing
In 1915, America's first ever blockbuster, The Birth of a Nation, was released. It was like the Avatar or Star Wars of the time, only really, really racist. Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it.
I have. What it is, is a white man in blackface raping a woman, basically. Lovely. And then he gets lynched. God, yeah.
So yeah, The Birth of a Nation was three hours of racist propaganda that portrayed the original Ku Klux Klan as this white feminist superhero squad which saved America from the Reconstruction period. It was a smash hit. It was shown in the White House. President Woodrow Wilson was a fan. And the new Ku Klux Klan were essentially a bunch of idiots cosplaying this film.
I would like to say that I didn't watch all three hours.
I was going to say that's quite the commitment.
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Chapter 4: What role did the Civil War play in the KKK's origins?
Surely not.
Maybe it's like grift.
Oh, maybe, maybe. So yeah, what do they mean by scandalous behavior? I mean, it was anything, ranging from listening to jazz music or women just wearing shortish skirts.
Smoking those jazz cigarettes.
Ha ha ha.
This new KKK lived and breathed by a book which was called... The Chloran. Oh, my God.
These guys, they're like... Again, I don't want to dismiss how dangerous they were.
Yeah, yeah.
But they're just like trolls. They're coming across like trolls.
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