#klanswomen

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The first public reference to Klan activity in Canada appeared in the Montreal Daily Star, which announced the organization of a branch of ‘the famous Ku Klux Klan’ in Montreal in 1921, and reported that ‘a band of masked, hooded and silent men’ had gathered in the northwest part of the city behind the Mountain. In 1921, the Klan set up an office in West Vancouver, and British Columbia newspapers began to publish solicitations for Klan membership. KKK crosses were sighted burning across New Brunswick: in Fredericton, Saint John, Marysville, York, Carleton, Sunbury, Kings, Woodstock, and Albert. James S. Lord, the sitting member of the New Brunswick legislature for Charlotte County, becamea highly publicized convert. Later the Klan would infiltrate Nova Scotia, burning ‘fiery crosses’ on the lawn of the Mount Saint Vincent Convent, and in front of St John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church at Melville Cove near Halifax’s North-West Arm.

Reports of Klan activities surfaced in Ontario as well, where white American organizer W.L. Higgitt began a tour in Toronto in 1923. In the summer of 1924, a huge Klan gathering took place in a large wooded area near Dorchester. Cross-burning, designed to intimidate the village’s few Black residents, was carried out with great pomp and ceremony. In Hamilton in 1924, police arrested a white American named Almond Charles Monteith in the act of administering initiation rites to two would-be Klanswomen. Monteith was later charged with carrying a loaded revolver. Along with the revolver, police confiscated a list of thirty-two new members (‘some of them prominent citizens’), correspondence regarding thirty-six white robes and hoods, and a $200 invoice for expenses for ‘two fiery crosses.’ Monteith denied any involvement in recent cross-burnings on Hamilton Mountain, and was convicted on the weapons charge. The day after Monteith’s conviction, the arresting officer received a letter bearing a terse message: ‘Beware. Your days are numbered. KKK.’ Monteith’s conviction did nothing to put a crimp in the Klan’s membership drive. Between four hundred and five hundred members paraded through Hamilton in a KKK demonstration in the fall of 1929.

By June 1925 there were estimates of eight thousand Klan members in Toronto; headquarters were installed in Toronto’s Excelsior Life Building. The summer of 1925 witnessed hundreds of crosses burned across Chatham, Dresden, Wallaceburg, Woodstock, St Thomas, Ingersoll, London, and Dorchester. A group of hooded Klansmen tried to proceed en masse through the chapel of a London church to show their appreciation of the anti-Catholic address that had been delivered to the congregation. At a rally of more than two hundred people at Federal Square in London, J.H. Hawkins, claiming to be the Klan’s ‘Imperial Klailiff,’ proclaimed:

‘We are a white man’s organization and we do not admit Jews and colored people to our ranks. [ … ] God did not intend to create any new race by the mingling of white and colored blood, and so we do not accept the colored races.’

More than one thousand showed up at a similar rally in Woodstock.

At what was billed as the ‘first open-air ceremony of the Klan’ in Canada, two hundred new members were initiated at the Dorchester Fairgrounds in October 1925, in front of more than one thousand avid participants. The ‘first Canadian Ku Klux burial’ took place in London the next year, as robed and hooded Klansmen, swords at their sides and fiery crosses at hand, showed up to perform a ritual at the graveside of one of the Drumbo Klan. Ontario chapters sprang up in Niagara Falls, Barrie, Sault Ste Marie, Belleville, Kingston, and Ottawa. New headquarters appeared in a Vancouver mansion in 1925, and local chapters called ‘Klaverns’ sprang into existence in New Westminster, Victoria, Nanaimo, Ladysmith, and Duncan. Klan bonfires lit up Kitsilano Point. By 1928, the Vancouver Klan was soliciting signatures for a petition to demand that Asian Canadians be banned from employment on government steamships. A ‘Great Konklave’ was held in June 1927 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where an estimated ten thousand people stood by as hooded Klansmen burned a sixty-foot cross and lectured to them on the risks of racial intermarriage. Demanding an immediate ban on marriage between white women and ‘Negroes, Chinese or Japanese,’ the Klan proclaimed: ‘one flag, one language, one race, one religion, race purity and moral rectitude.’ The Saskatchewan group would later disaffiliate from Eastern Canada, to create an entirely separate western wing that was credited with signing up 25,000 members. In Alberta, ‘Klaverns’ came into existence in Hanna, Stettler, Camrose, Forestburg, Jarrow, Erskine, Milo, Vulcan, Wetaskiwin, Red Deer, Ponoka, Irma, and Rosebud. Alberta membership peaked between 5,000 and 7,000, but the Klan newspaper, The Liberator, produced out of Edmonton, purported to maintain a circulation of 250,000. Nor were the activities of the Klan restricted to rallies and cross-burnings. In 1922, the Klan was linked to a rash of torchings that wreaked more than $100,000 damage upon three Roman Catholic institutions: the Quebec Cathedral, the rest-house of the Sulpician order at Oka, Quebec, and the junior seminary of the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament in Terrebonne. In 1922, threatening letters signed by the Klan were delivered to St Boniface College in Winnipeg. Before the year was out, the college burned to the ground, causing the death of ten students. In 1923, similar letters, signed by the Klan, were sent to local police and Roman Catholic authorities in Calgary. In Thorold, Ontario, the KKK intervened in a local murder investigation in 1922, issuing a warning to the town mayor to arrest an Italian man suspected of the crime by a specified date or face the fury of the Klan. The letter continued: ’The clansmen of the Fiery Cross will take the initiative in the Thorold Italian section. Eighteen hundred armed men of the Scarlet Division are now secretly scouring this district and await the word to exterminate these rats.’ In 1922, the Mother Superior of a Roman Catholic orphanage in Fort William received a letter signed ‘K.K.K.’ threatening to ‘burn the orphanage.’ The mayor of Ottawa was mailed a vitriolic letter, demanding he pay more attention ‘to Protestant taxpayers’ or the Klan would take ‘concerted action.’ Two Klansmen stole and destroyed religious paraphernalia from the tabernacle of the St James Roman Catholic church near Sarnia. The Ancaster Klan attempted to intimidate the African Brotherhood of America from erecting a home for ‘colored children and aged colored folk.’

The Belleville Klan visited the office of the Belleville Intelligencer, demanding that the manager dismiss a Catholic printer employed by the paper. The Sault Ste Marie Klan launched a concerted campaign to force the big steel mills to fire their Italian workers. A rifle bullet was fired at George Devlin during a wedding reception in Sault Ste Marie, with a blazing cross left behind to claim responsibility for the act. In 1924, local Klansmen surrounded the Dorchester home of a white man believed to be married to a Black woman. Threats were made to burn a cross outside the house of a white Bryanstown resident reputed to be involved with a Black woman. In 1927, several crosses were burned on the lawn of a white family believed to be running a brothel in Sault Ste Marie. The family was forced to flee their home.

Klan activities were also responsible for the removal of a francophone Roman Catholic postmaster in Lafleche, Alberta. The Alberta Klan promoted boycotts of Catholic businesses. The Drumheller KKK, which boasted a membership embracing forty of the town’s most prominent businessmen and mine owners, burned a cross on the lawn of a local newspaper columnist after he wrote a satirical comment about the Klan. Alberta Klansmen used bullets and flaming crosses to try to intimidate members of the Mine Workers Union of Canada during their bitter labour dispute in the Crow’s Nest Pass. Lacombe Klansmen wrote to the editor of the Alberta Western Globe after he opposed the Klan, threatening ‘severe punishment including the burning of his house and business to the ground.’ The same group kidnapped, and tarred and feathered a local blacksmith.

Throughout these activities, white police and fire marshals stood by, often present at the incendiary meetings and cross-burnings, content to reassure themselves there was ‘no danger.’ Despite the widespread evidence of lawlessness, Klan authorities tended to claim official disengagement whenever there was property damage or personal injury. Eschewing responsibility, they insisted that their organization had nothing to do with such events. Remarkably, the authorities largely respected these assertions of innocence, concluding that, without definitive proof that would tie named Klan officials to specific threatening letters or violent deeds, nothing further could be ascertained. Apart from the arrest and conviction of Almond Charles Monteith for possessing an unauthorized revolver, the only Klan event that attracted legal attention was the dynamiting of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ontario, in 1926. On the evening of 10 June 1926, a stick of dynamite shattered the stained-glass windows and blasted a four-foot hole through the brick wall of Barrie’s St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church. Buffeted about by the explosion, Ku Klux Klan flyers were scattered throughout the street, strewn among the brick, glass, and wooden debris. Barrie was a major stronghold of Ku Klux Klan activity, and organizers had drawn a crowd of two thousand to watch hooded Klansmen conduct a ritual cross-burning on a hill outside of Barrie several weeks earlier. At that ceremony, thirty-year-old William Skelly, a shoemaker who had emigrated one year earlier from Ireland, swore fealty to the tenets of the Klan, to uphold Protestant Christianity and white supremacy. He was initiated as a member in good standing. It was Skelly whom the police arrested for the bombing days later.

Skelly voluntarily admitted his Klan membership to the police, and confessed that, the night before the bombing, Klan members met to discuss ‘a job to be pulled off.’ There was a drawing of lots, and when Skelly drew the ‘Fiery Cross,’ he realized he was the designated man. Skelly claimed that he was intimidated by fellow Klansmen, who ‘made [him] drunk with dandelion wine and alcohol,’ and forced him to carry out the deed under threat of bodily harm. In fact, he told the police, he had joined the Klan in the first place only because he ‘had had considerable difficulty in securing steady work,’ and was told that, if he joined, the Klan ‘would look after him,’ finding him employment. Skelly also implicated two other Barrie Klan officials, Klan ‘Kleagle’ William Butler and Klan Secretary Clare Lee. Criminal charges of causing a dangerous explosion, attempting to destroy property with explosives, and possession of explosives were laid against all three white Klansmen.

This time the Ontario attorney general’s office issued an official statement that ‘no group can take into its own hands the administration of the law.’ The white deputy attorney general, Edward J. Bayly, became involved personally when he made arrangements for a leading white Toronto barrister, Peter White, KC, to prosecute the trio on behalf of the Crown. Skelly, Butler, and Lee were all found guilty at a jury trial in October, and sentenced to five, four, and three years, respectively. Officials from the Toronto headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan denied all responsibility, claiming throughout that Skelly ‘acted on his own initiative,’ despite all the evidence to the contrary." - Constance Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. pg. 183-193.

[radio-charlie]

Not sure I'm buying the very closely state-aligned people saying that Kamala is a shoo-in. Sure, she's got the sponsorship of some big-name celebs but celeb worship has steadily been eroded by the far-right and some powers who truck with them. Female white voters who lean towards her are being derided as blue MAGA Klanswomen who don't give a shit about Palestinians. Everyone who would vote for her, not necessarily befriend her or have her over for dinner, uniformly hates black people, brown people, yellow people etc. Yknow, unlike the type of person who's alright with Trump, lol.

I think it's dangerous to be lulled into complacency so early. Right now, when people are working their hardest to discourage you, is when you should power forward, albeit carefully. Because if you were no threat, they wouldn't be doing shit. Slack now and you lose ground you will not get the chance to regain.

JD Vance being made fun of as Giblet son of Groin is very nice and all but do try not to make a martyr out of a guy who is smart enough to play that role to people already disillusioned to shit with "institutions of truth, justice & morality" ya.

And of course 'power forward' doesn't mean support unconditionally, never using whatever power you yourselves have to push candidates towards better policy & platform. Many leftists derided as "too online" were absolutely correct - if you let the Democrats rest easy that they'll have your vote as long as they're not Republicans, they'll do whatever the hell they want.

[uptownthots]

do people also just not know that the het romance community is swarming with weirdo conservative women…..’by and for’ klanswomen be fr 💀

[mithliya]

fkskdhshsj the white girl summer pic with the klanswomen is sending me lmao you're iconic honestly.

brown women & black women

🫱🏽‍🫲🏿

being tired of white women's nonsense

my fave is they agreed and then proved me right

[scentedchildnacho]

He asked me if they have a meal at Saint Andrews tonight so I told him the obvious......that's a very bad mass murderer they let men go around a pre school they don't enroll children in.....its just to call you a pedophile they have weird rock concerts in the church.....people who profane the church sense of humor that badly are not afraid of hell those are very very witchy creepy people

Its a church it has to be cleaned for third world disease you will all be charged compliant in mass murder

Its for disease treatment no one thinks it's okay to just go into a church it's like a hospice

I explained if your a man the naacp no one told you you could ever be away from African American generals if it's not male comrades no one told you you may go around women and children you were told to go to your general

That would be a mission no one thinks it's okay to feed childs portions I have to starve if you don't go to things designed for men

What made ya think my nightly plate had to be portioned to you

Its a church that's all it does is get offended and sue....that's all those people do over there is sue people for their incompetence to them

There like over there using the church to rock old 80s rock music......I mean hell scares me ...those people are truly witchy think of all the obscure tortures they will do to them for killing third world poverty and refusing diversity

I met Felons and klanswomen in new Mexico and they can like think about punishment as linguistics

Its Christianity they appear to forget that we pray for the really bad people also and quite frankly it's the bad people sometimes that want it kept so art mausoleum

If I did that klanswomen would really chollo at me and beat my ass but they can get away with it

I don't think I'm different or special I was told church is church or I am a witch so I think that people will have a lot of disease and casualty

I would like check out what the aa meetings were but they were just crowded all together with a whole huge crowd of males.....so I told her I don't wish on her sucks dick.... People like me will give a tampon though I don't find it sanitary and if that many men are around it's very unsafe and she should leave also

Were you sitting on the concrete or threatened with cars then klanswomen really really beat you for stealing the churches

Did ya have to have concrete ass and surf bashing on the water.....klanswomen really don't want you stealing the church

[ballplayersxo]

The weakest links on twitter are saying that Gabourey Sidibe and Serena Williams "dated down", firstly, Alex Ohanian is a whole tech investor who founded Reddit and has a net worth of 70M+ and Serena did date niggas like Common and Drake and I know Alex Ohanian doing better than Common, idk what Gabourey's fianceé does but ik he makes good money far more than you forex associate ass niggas who date white women because you want biracial kids. Black women get white men on their level, you don't see Black women in embarassing ass entanglements with White men and I'm not putting White men on a pedestal rather its showing that Black women tend to pick WELL enough meanwhile its niggas like Paul George denying parenthood and knocking up White strippers (and there is nothing wrong with strippers but again, its the predicament especially with your standing as a famous Black athlete and embarassing your Black fianceé in the process) Black men will fuck literal klanswomen if it meant having little Jaylen's and Ryleigh's with 3c hair and green eyes. Matter fact lets discuss how Black men were disrespecting Gabourey, putting her down on her weight, calling every darkskinned plus-size little firl "Precious", using her to uplift white women (Kanye saying "my bitch makes your bitch look like Precious") and overall making her social media presence a living fucking hell all because she exists AND lets discuss how EIGHTY percent of Black women are the breadwinners because you bottom barrell niggas wont contribute. I'll give white men and asian men their shit too because we KNOW domestic violence runs in their communities too and all niggas are shit but they fucking provide and they dont have this wild sense of racist hatred for white and asian women the way you niggas do!

you spilled. honestly it comes from a place of jealousy & disdain the way that they degrade black women because look at how well we’re doing? instead of competing with men of other races for resources, wealth, & power, (like men have done since the beginning of fucking time) they’re arguing and bashing black women, the only societal group that they have the one up over. absolute beta males. they hate black women & want the world to hate us too. it won’t happen. stuff like this used to bother me but at the end of the day, they can keep bashing black women cause it won’t change their position in society. that’s why they are where they are at, and that is why majority of them will never progress.

[apenitentialprayer]

The Pervasiveness of Klan Beliefs Among 1920s Protestants

As a consequence of the absorption of the Klan into daily life, Klan members often found it difficult to comprehend negative reactions to the organization. An oral history of Muncie included a story about a housekeeper in a Jewish family who not only joined the Klan but expected the family to share in her pride at being a Klanswoman. This sense of normalcy continued to inform retrospective opinions of the Klan long after its demise. Few people expressed regrets about their participation in the Klan [...] In Indiana in the 1920s respectability lay in being a Klan member. As a Brown County Klanswoman explained, “it was considered the thing to do to join the Klan in the 1920s.” In background, values, ideologies, and even politics, Klanswomen and Klansmen did not differ significantly from their racial and religious counterparts in Indiana. Far from the popular media image of people with weaknesses of character or temperament or intellect as the Klan’s only adherents, the Klanswomen and Klansmen of the 1920s were more often -and perhaps more frighteningly- normal. They were women and men who loved their families, acted kindly and sympathetically to many other people, and even held progressive views on a number of issues. To say that the Indiana Klanswomen and Klansmen were normal does not mean that the Klan was not racist, xenophobic, violent, intolerant, and bigoted. [...] Women and men in the Klan denounced Jews as “Christ-killers” and hinted at Jews amassing vast fortunes through the exploitation of Christian labor. The Klan argued that blacks were inherently stupid, socially inferior, and should be returned to Africa, and emphasized the point by showing Birth of a Nation at Klan rallies. Klan speakers charged that the Catholics controlled New York City, New York state, Chicago, and other cities; that most criminals were Catholics; and that 50 percent of the teachers in public schools were practicing Catholics. [...] Such attitudes and actions of racism, intolerance, and xenophobia found a fertile home in Indiana and in many other states in the 1920s. Even without laws mandating racial segregation, cities and towns practiced strict segregation of social life, schooling, and housing. Newspapers ran separate columns or pages for news for and about local blacks, reserving the newspaper as a whole for what was considered universal - the white experience. Considerable social distance also existed between Catholics and Protestants and between Christians and Jews, exacerbated by stories of Jewish-Catholic plots to destroy the Protestant faith. In such an atmosphere the Klan movement of the 1920s was eerily unremarkable for many white native-born Protestants.

Kathleen M. Blee (Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, pages 171, 171-172, 172-173, 173)

[martellthacool]

I always wondered why these so-called cowardly black lives matter group don't go down to the planned parenthood centers and really really and protest them. It's so many black babies (regardless of race, babies lives matter) ended up perishing than remaining alive. Nobody isn't calling out on this at all. Black lives matter in the womb and so many self hating chocolate klanswomen ™ has no problem to destroy lives but except black men to protect a traitors who doesn't value life at all #plannedparenthood #blacklivesmatter #bbsellsbabyparts by Martell Tha Cool

[lincolncollection]

Collecting All Things Lincoln, Part 5

The Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection is a treasure trove of books, documents, art, and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln and his times. Past posts titled “Collecting All Things Lincoln” have highlighted some of the more unusual—even outlandish—items in the collection. Here are a few more:

In 1970, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea issued this commemorative 75 pesetas guineanas silver coin featuring Abraham Lincoln. On one side, a portrait of “Abramo Lincoln” is flanked by olive branches. The other side displays the “Rep. de Guinea Ecuatorial” coat of arms with the motto “Unidad, Paz, Justicia” [“Unity, Peace, Justice”] above crossed elephant tusks. The coin is housed in a red vinyl folder with the coat of arms in the center and "Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial" below.

These two commemorative silver bars also feature portraits of the 16th president. The 3-ounce bar was produced by the Lincoln Mining Company of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The reverse shows a miner panning for gold in a stream. The 1-ounce bar was produced in 1972 by the Madison Mint, a privately owned minting company that produced a variety of finely wrought silver “art bars” during the 1960s and 70s.

This Lincoln-Hamlin medal was produced sometime during Abraham Lincoln’s first term as president. The front of the medal features profiles of a bearded Lincoln and his vice president, Hannibal Hamlin. The profiles are surrounded by willow branches symbolizing freedom. The reverse of the medal reads “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Eternal Progression” with the words surround by laurel branches symbolizing victory.

Among the collection’s dozens of souvenir and commemorative pins featuring Abraham Lincoln, this is perhaps the strangest. It celebrates the 1925 annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan, held on September 19th and 20th on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Hundreds attended, marching through town in what the local newspaper called a “gorgeous display” in which "vary-colored robes, capes and gowns present[ed] a spectacle as Knights, Klanswomen and Junior Members march[ed] under warm September sun before large crowds along sidewalks.” The marchers then gathered on the battlefield to view hot air balloons, airplanes, and fireworks. Klan members could add this pin to their regalia.

The A. G. Trimble Company of Pittsburgh created this pin in 1968 to memorialize the four assassinated U.S. Presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.

This pin declaring “We’re Long on Service” was created in 1985 to promote the Lincoln National Life Reinsurance Division. The image of Lincoln was taken from a cartoon titled “Long Abe A Little Longer” that appeared in the November 24, 1864, issue of Harper's Weekly after Lincoln was re-elected for his second term.

A woven bookmark with a portrait of Lincoln and a quotation from the Gettysburg Address is attached to the front of this greeting card created by the Quality Weaving Company of Philadelphia. The card dates from the late 1930s or early 1940s. It was signed by Stewart W. McClelland, Robert L. Kincaid, and R. Gerald McMurtry, all associated with Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, at the time the card was produced.

The G. J. Johnson Cigar Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, chose Lincoln, who did not smoke, as the face of their Exemplar cigar—“The Ideal 5₵ Cigar.” Below Lincoln’s portrait are the inspirational words “With malice toward none. With charity for all.” The sign dates from around 1900.

If you missed them earlier, you can still see “Collecting All Things Lincoln” posts Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

[valeriesolanasapologist]

she wanted to get surgery to change her face because she's racist. that's it. not everything is about men. it's not gonna kill you to admit that. but yknow, whites gotta defend their fellow klanswomen no matter what i guess 🙄

"Not everything is about men"

But we are talking about racist attitudes and white supremacy, which does include men, specifically white men. Do white men not benefit from these racist attitudes as well? Or is it just white women who mainly benefit from white supremacy? Do white men not benefit from white women upholding racists attitudes too?

[ausetkmt]

Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement

In Backfire: How The Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement, the leading historian of the Ku Klux Klan brings the story of America's oldest terrorist society up-to-date.

David Chalmers skillfully shows how Klan violence actually aided the civil rights movement of the 1960s and revolutionized the role of the national government in the protection of civil rights.

He follows the forty-year struggle to punish Klan murderers through the courts of Alabama, Georgia, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and how Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center finally found a way to bring the Klan down.

As it looks to the future, Backfire examines the emergence of today's violent conspiracies of the white supremacist Right.

Click Title Link for a FREE Download

[feelingbluepolitics]

"Women have buoyed American far-right organizations and causes for centuries. In her recent book on women at the forefront of contemporary white nationalism, author Seyward Darby writes that women are not 'incidental to white nationalism, they are a sustaining feature.'

"Since the late 1800s, women have supported and enabled the terrorist white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan, while hundreds of thousands joined its female affiliate, Women of the Ku Klux Klan, and its predecessors.

"Women helped establish the Klan's culture, bolstered its recruitment efforts and manufactured its propaganda. Despite its hyper-masculine ideology, which identifies white men as the primary arbiters of political power, women have also held leadership positions within the modern-day Klan.

"More recently, women have joined the far-right Proud Boys movement, which has openly recruited female foot soldiers. In December, a growing rift between male and female Proud Boys was reported. After experiencing intense sexist backlash from men in the organization, women led by MMA fighter Tara LaRosa began their own group, the Proud Girls USA.

"To leave one extremist organization in order to form another suggests a deep commitment to the far-right cause.

..."A 2005 study noted a disconnect between the rise in women within American right-wing terrorist organizations and the attention it received from law enforcement.

"Despite a marked increase in women's engagement in acts of terror against the state and racial minorities, security officials have largely failed to publicize, search and interrogate women operatives in these organizations, even after they become known to law enforcement.

..."There is also evidence that American far-right women have drawn inspiration and tactical knowledge from women engaged in extremist violence abroad.

"Evidence from the global war on terror points to the potential dangers of ignoring the growth of violent extremism among women. In Iraq, for example, female terrorists carried out large numbers of deadly suicide attacks against American assets during the U.S. occupation.

"The rest of the world has since been forced to grapple with the reality of violent women after female terrorists staged lethal attacks in Nigeria, Somalia, Tunisia, the Philippines, Indonesia and France

..."Additionally, since ordinary citizens played an unusual role in exposing the identities of the Capitol attackers, gender biases among civilians are also relevant. Failure to accept women's complicity in the Capitol siege and the broader movement may prevent the identification of female offenders and impedes efforts to punish and deter future attacks.

"American women have been key pillars of support for violent right-wing extremists for centuries. They have been right-wing extremists themselves – racist skinheads, neo-Nazis and Klanswomen. Women are also Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and Proud Boys. They were capitol rioters."

The terror inflicted on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 laid bare America’s problem with violent extremism.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have begun to piece together the events of that day, while attempting to thwart any impending attacks. Scores of people have been arrested and charged over the attack – the vast majority being men.

[greatrunner]

All those white girls in shows like Into The Badlands and Game of Thrones quite literally achieve power through the men their connected or related to, or take advice from, and do it all through the subjugation or expense of Black and non-Black characters in the process, and often under the pretense of “I’m the good white person” or “I was abused, therefore I am justified in everything I do!”

And watching folk calling the “power” these white women have at their disposal “feminism”, or regard them as “great feminist characters” is like watching a bunch of white women in our very reality praise white women serial killers and politicians who would soon as cut their throats, bathe in their blood, and sell them under the river for their own political gains.

They’re the fantasy equivalent of Klanswomen.

[femlib]

Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s by Kathleen M Blee, 1992

Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice. "All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy. Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class.

Amazon Mediafire EPUB

[douglaswelch]

What I’m Reading: The Second Coming of the KKK – 71 in a series – “…some husbands resented their wives’ Klan activities and absences from home…”

“Klanswomen were often wives of Klansmen, but many joined on their own, and others led their husbands into the organization. In fact, some husbands resented their wives’ Klan activities and absences from home, and some opponents taunted Klansmen with the charge that they were not man enough to keep their wives at home.4 It seems likely, though, that Klanswomen often spent more hours on Klan work than did rank-and-file Klansmen because they had more disposable time.”

[newstfionline]

I wanted to understand why racists hated me. So I befriended Klansmen.

By Daryl Davis, Washington Post, September 29, 2017

Daryl Davis, author of “Klan-Destine Relationships,” and subject of the documentary “Accidental Courtesy,” is an award-winning musician, actor, lecturer and race relations expert.

One night in 1983, I found myself playing in a country band at a truck stop lounge. I was the only black person in the joint. Taking a break after the first set of music, I was headed to sit at a table with my bandmates when a white gentleman approached from behind and put his arm around my shoulders. “I really enjoy y’all’s music,” he said. I shook his hand and thanked him. “This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he continued.

I told him that Lewis was a friend of mine and that he had learned his style from watching and listening to black blues and boogie-woogie pianists. My new fan didn’t buy it, but he did want to buy me a drink. While we sipped, he clinked my glass and said, “This is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.”

Why? “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. I burst out laughing. Then he handed me his KKK membership card, and I recognized the Klan’s symbols. In that moment, I was overcome by a question: How could anybody hate me when they didn’t even know me?

I was no stranger to racism. Having grown up a black person in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I knew that prejudice was common. But I had never understood why. Sitting in that lounge with my new friend, I decided to figure it out in the only way that made sense: By getting to know those who felt hostility toward black people without ever having known any.

Several years later, I recruited that man, whose name was Frank James, to put me in contact with the grand dragon of the Maryland Klan. He tried to deter me, warning that the leader would kill me. But eventually, after I promised not to reveal how I’d gotten the grand dragon’s contact information, James gave it to me. (I reveal it now, because James has since died.)

By then, I had decided to travel around the country and interview KKK leaders and members from various chapters and factions to get the answer to my question: How can you hate someone you’ve never met? I was planning to write a book detailing my interviews, experiences and encounters with these Ku Klux Klan members. (The book, “Klan-Destine Relationships,” was published in 1998.)

I had my white secretary, who typically booked my band and assisted me with my music business, set up a meeting with the Maryland grand dragon, Roger Kelly, explaining that her boss was writing a book on the Klan and would like his input. Per my instructions, she did not reveal the color of my skin.

Kelly agreed to participate, and we secured a room at a Frederick, Md., motel, where my secretary filled an ice bucket with cans of soda so I could offer my guest a drink. Regardless of how and what he felt about me, if he entered my room after seeing the color of my skin, I was going to treat him with hospitality.

Punctual to the minute, there was a knock on the door. The grand nighthawk (the grand dragon’s bodyguard) entered first, and then the dragon himself. “Hello,” I began, “I’m Daryl Davis.” I offered my palm, and Kelly shook my hand as he and the nighthawk introduced themselves. He sat in the chair I had set out, and the nighthawk stood at attention beside him.

We were both apprehensive of the other, and the interview started haltingly. We discussed what he had hoped to achieve by joining the Klan; what his thoughts were on blacks, Asians, Jews and Hispanics; and whether he thought it would ever be possible for different races to get along. A little while later, we heard an inexplicable crackling noise and we both tensed. The dragon and I stared each other in the eye, silently asking, “What did you just do?” The nighthawk reached for his gun. Nobody spoke. I barely breathed.

Seated atop the dresser, my secretary realized what had happened: The ice in the bucket had started to melt, causing the soda cans to shift. It happened again, and we all began laughing. From there, the interview went on without a hitch.

It was a perfect illustration that ignorance breeds fear and possibly violence. An unknown noise in an ice bucket could’ve led to gunfire, had we not taken a moment to understand what we were encountering.

Even though Kelly had told me he knew that white people were superior to blacks, our dialogue continued over the years. He would visit me in my home, and I would eventually be a guest in his. We would share many meals together, even though he thought I was inferior. Within a couple of years, he rose to the rank of imperial wizard, the top national leadership position in the Klan.

Over the past 30 years, I have come to know hundreds of white supremacists, from KKK members, neo-Nazis and white nationalists to those who call themselves alt-right. Some were good people with wrong beliefs, and others were bad people hellbent on violence and the destruction of those who were non-Aryan.

There was Bob White, a grand dragon for Maryland who served four years in prison for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore, where he had been a police officer. When he got out, he returned to the Klan and later went back to prison for three more years for assaulting two black men with a shotgun, evidently intent on murder. But after I reached out to him with a letter while he was in prison for the second time, Bob became a very good friend, renounced the Klan and attended my wedding.

Frank Ancona, who headed a Missouri Klan chapter, would also become a very close friend. When Ancona was killed this year (his wife and stepson have been charged with his murder), one of his Klan members, knowing how close we had been, called me and told me before notifying the police. I accepted the Klan’s invitation to participate in his funeral service.

Three weeks after this summer’s violent clash in Charlottesville, I was invited by the leaders of the Tennessee and Kentucky chapters of Ancona’s branch of the Klan to speak at their national Konvocation. I accepted, spoke and took audience questions after the lecture. Whether or not anyone there immediately changed their minds, we talked as people--and we all benefitted from that.

I am not so naive as to think everyone will change. There are certainly those who will go to their graves as hateful, violent racists. I never set out certain that I would convert anyone. I just wanted to have a conversation and ask, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” What I’ve learned is that whether or not I’ve changed minds, talking can still relieve tensions. I’ve seen firsthand that when two enemies are talking, they are not fighting. They may be yelling and beating their fists on the table, but at least they are talking. Violence happens only when talking has stopped.

And sometimes, people do change. One day in 1999, after having been in the Ku Klux Klan for about 20 years, Kelly, who had risen from grand dragon to imperial wizard, called me, said he was leaving the Klan and apologized for having been a member. He told me he could no longer hate people. I had not turned out to be what he had always thought of black people. He went on to become one of my best friends, and today I own his robe and hood--one set of many in my collection of garments donated to me by apostate Klansmen and Klanswomen, which is always growing.