Posted on 08/13/2017 10:54:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
When James Alex Fields Jr.’s mug shot was released after he drove his Dodge Challenger through a counterprotest in Charlottesville on Saturday, no one was surprised by what the image revealed: a young, white man with a neo-fascist undercut. “Alt-right” figures like Richard Spencer absorb nearly all the media glare on white nationalism, creating the impression that this is a single-sex movement, and as many have pointed out, the white supremacists who rallied on Saturday were mainly men.
When it comes to identifying the perpetrators of racial hatred in this country, it is tempting to comfort ourselves with gender tropes. But women have always played a determining role in white-supremacist movements.
While the march in Charlottesville occurred in reaction to the proposed removal of a statue of a Confederate general, women were responsible for the erection of many of these Confederate statues across the country at the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s, women composed the most influential arm of the KKK. And lest we forget the election that emboldened these modern white supremacists: More than half of white women voted for Trump. To overlook the comprehensive picture of who makes up the extreme right is to seriously underestimate its reach.
To overlook the comprehensive picture of who makes up the extreme right is to seriously underestimate its reach. When we think of the Klan — one of this country’s most notorious and instantly recognizable hate groups — we imagine male faces under the pointed white hoods. But a historical examination of that organization’s most effective period tells a different story. The 1920s were a boom time for the Klan. Membership was roughly 4 million — a number that dwarfs the fringe organization that it is today — and carried no stigma.
While William Joseph Simmons was the founder of that era’s Klan, a woman was the mouthpiece and arguably its most influential member. According to historian Kathleen Blee’s book Women of the Klan, Elizabeth Tyler was “the first major female leader” of the 1920s Klan. In the midst of financial turmoil, the Klan hired Tyler to publicize and recruit new members. One of her most important contributions was galvanizing the KKK’s base by expanding the list of targeted Klan enemies beyond Black people: Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and communists. Under her leadership, the Klan underwent “a dramatic reversal of fortune.” An estimated 85,000 new members joined. At one point, insurgent Klansmen argued that she was the actual head of the Klan and that Simmons was just a figurehead. A congressional investigation agreed.
Tyler’s role could have been chalked up to an anomaly were it not for what happened next. Tyler spearheaded the Women of the Klu Klux Klan, the all-women, autonomous arm of the KKK that had roughly half-a-million members during the 1920s. As I wrote in a Timeline piece on the WKKK, the organization was savvier than its male counterpart because “they were better than the men’s group at hiding their white supremacist mission behind a facade of social welfare.” The group helped to normalize the terrorism of the men’s KKK. Pamphlets from the time read, “Are you interested in the Welfare of our Nation? As an Enfranchised woman are you interested in better government?” Through picnics, lunches, and cross burnings, these white women rallied around racist immigration laws, anti-miscegenation, and segregation.
Due to infighting scandal and the Klan’s general loss of momentum, the WKKK died out by the end of the decade. But there’s no doubt that the Klanswomen channeled their xenophobia into other spheres — the classroom, the school board, local and national politics.
There may be fewer of them marching with lit torches, but rest assured women are playing a powerful role wherever they can. Undergirding this troubling belief that women aren’t central to racist movements is another: That racism occurs in a vacuum. Those who think white supremacy is a “white guys’ thing” must ask themselves about the nature of the fantasy they have constructed. Do we really believe the men holding torches in these photographs live in some sort of single-gendered society, or that the women they interact with hold no sway in their communities? There may be fewer of them marching with lit torches, but rest assured women are playing a powerful role wherever they can enact their agendas. If the 1920s Klan showed us anything, it’s that racist ideologies are nurtured in communities — not in isolation — and woven into a society’s very fabric. We will never understand the mechanisms that enact racism until we understand the whole societies from which they spring.
Take the “alt-right,” for example. Figures like Anne Coulter have been touting Trumpian ideas long before Trump made any moves toward the White House. Lauren Southern has become, according to Vice, the alt-right’s “not-so-secret weapon.” As a Harper’s feature recently highlighted, a group of “self-made female pundits” with a white-nationalist agenda are seeking to amplify their voices. Across Europe, a wave of women leaders promoting an anti-immigrant, white-populist hard-line are trying to galvanize women voters.
The women within these movements have warned of the foolishness of ignoring them. Not long after Donald Trump was elected, Lana Lokteff, a woman member of the “alt-right” gave a speech intended to galvanize other women. She told the crowd, “Our enemies have become so arrogant that they count on our silence.” After all, as Lokteff said, “When women get involved, a movement becomes a serious threat.”
Just wow.
>>One of her most important contributions was galvanizing the KKK’s base by expanding the list of targeted Klan enemies beyond Black people: Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and communists.
As founded the KKK was against Republicans, politicians and those voters who voted Republican.
>>Through picnics, lunches, and cross burnings, these white women rallied around racist immigration laws, anti-miscegenation, and segregation.
Martin Luther King Jr. found the black separatist hate of Nation of Islam to be as vile as the KKK.
Ask black women what they think of black men marrying white women.
Ask college snowflakes what they think of letting white people sit in as black people discuss racial issues. Even at BLM marches, white women were told to step aside or move to the back of the march.
So, unless we submit to the leftists and admit we are racist for supporting Trump and other conservative leaders, we are evil beyond description. Meanwhile, those of us who do not believe in white supremacy and have not gone to any protests (nor plan to at this time) are now considered to be THE enemy in the country for supporting leaders who promise to turn this entire charade/deceit around and show it for what it is: A livid hatred for white people and a wish for a destruction of their values and their very lives. We are at war.
>>Figures like Anne Coulter
I wonder if she knows Jim Thompson
Jill Stein and other Commie Rats are supporting a nuclear North Korea and we are told to stop making hysterical claims of threats of global Communism.
It was not a counter protest.
It was an illegal protest against a legally permitted demonstration.
You lied before your first misdirection. For shame.
Some of the worst torturers and murderers in modern history were women on all sides of the ideological extremes:
* Ilse Koch - the Bitch of Buchenwald
* Anna Pauker - Communist killer
* The women assassins of the VC and Khmer Rouge
* The Jane Fondas, Medea Benjamins and Cindy Sheehans who support those who torture and kill (throw in Rep. Barbara The Commie Lee, Rep. Maxine “Depends” Waters, Comrade Jan Schakowsky, the late suspected KGB operative Rep.Bella Abzug, etc). and you have the second tier leftist extremists. They don’t have to pull the trigger or cut with a knife, they encourage those who do, like an ISIS female support group does.
Not a word about most of these bastards in the mainstream media or history classes. Omission is collusion.
I wonder if the Stevenson scandal in Indiana had anything to do with this decline?
When the Democrat KKK of the 1920s had to choose between the Catholics and the Communists, they chose the Marxists in Mexico who were murdering the Catholic Priests and tens of thousands of Catholics.
The KKK then, and now, is about big government.
This should be a teaching moment for the left. Big government is dangerous because there is no guarantee that once the government has big power, that the government will be controlled by altruistic people.
This should be the time when the left realizes big government is not the answer.
What is a “neofacist haircut’? I have had my hair short since my Dad had to sneak me into Don’s barbershop to cut off the Mullet my Mom wanted.
Came out with a high and tight. Loved it, and would do it still except my bride tells me my head looks weird.
Don’t care about triggering someone with my multi decades spanning haircut, but if I am going to do it I want to know about it.
all sides of the ideological extremes:
And then you list a bunch of leftists. Got any examples from the right?
FDR was a fan of genuine Fascism.
Woody Gutherie’s guitar didn’t “kill fascists” until after Hitler betrayed Joe Stalin. Before that he and his “anti-war” pal Pete Seeger sang songs and protested against going to war against Hitler (it was a war for profit by American industrialists, you see).
Don’t forget the necklacing (fuel soaked tire cast around a victim’s neck and set ablaze) by Winnie Mandela.
Quite a few of the Weather Underground were women. They were even robbing banks for fund their activities into the 1980s, when that bastard child president Obama was still only 8 years old, to hear him tell it.
Just what the hell is the agenda.??? If it's stopping all muslims from coming into America, SIGN ME UP.!!
The left is using all its resources on this one.
I’m disgusted. Within 2 seconds they had made it about Trump. The narrative was Trump is racist.
On a related note:
Do a google search “muslim drove car into crowd”
You don’t find any results that show that a muslim drove a car into a crowd. All you see is cars being driven into mosques! Google is fine tuning the results.
The Left has been running from that for 70 years. It’s why in the immediate post-WWII era the Nazis became “right wing”, which they simply aren’t. For more on that, see my recent post here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3576964/posts?page=19#19
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