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Kloran has value for what it teaches about...

Thread ID: 20856 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-11-02

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confederate_commando [OP]

2005-11-02 05:09 | User Profile

JACK WILLIAMS :twisted: — Kloran has value for what it teaches about hatred

[COLOR="DarkRed"][WISH I COULD AFFORD IT...][/COLOR] This weekend, according to a wire story, an estate auction in Lebanon, Ind., was scheduled to auction off a rare, third edition of the “Kloran.” It was no typo. The Kloran, according to The Associate Press, is the White Book (what else?) of the Ku Klux Klan. Well, call me sheltered. I’ve had my hands on lots of books — good and bad — but had never browsed a copy of the Kloran.

The Kloran, I have come to learn, is, or I should say was, the bible of the KKK. Pardon me for using the word bible in the same sentence with that white supremacy group which underwent various transformations in the past century before petering out into various splinter groups in recent years.

Apparently the Kloran describes Ku Klux Klan rituals in great detail. These details were not to be divulged to us aliens, or non-members of the Klan. As if any sane man or woman would want to know the secret handshakes of a hate group.

Of course, the Klan and its Kloran is a sad part of our 20th century. [COLOR="Red"]The original Klan actually has its roots in the 19th century, founded as it was in the 1860s by veterans of the Confederate Army to resist Congressional Reconstruction in the South and to intimidate freed slaves.[/COLOR] Not that you would have found that mission statement on paper anywhere. A second coming of the Klan in the early 1900s worked its way into the governments of Tennessee, Oklahoma, Oregon and, unfortunately, Indiana. So it’s not surprising that a copy of the Kloran would turn up at an Indiana auction.

The Lebanon Reporter’s account noted that Klan membership peaked in the 1920s until “a scandal involving Klan leader D.C. Stephenson destroyed the Klan’s image and power.” A scandal? D.C. Stephenson and the Klan were the epitome of human scandal. The fact that state government in the ’20s was riddled with Klansmen is itself a scandal. But this specific “scandal,” too horrific to relate the details here, refers to the rape and cannabilistic murder of a woman by Stephenson, who, ironically, referred to himself as a “defender of Protestant womanhood.” He also happened to be a Prohibitionist. At the time of his crime, Stephenson was drunk on racial hatred, serving as the Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK as well as 14 other states. Some say his crime and conviction led to the end of this second wave of Klan activity, in which KKK national membership exceeded 4 million and involved 20 percent of the adult white male population.

The KKK, according to the Indiana State Library Web site, consisted of native born, white Protestants who were against Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, immorality and drinking.

And when you consider how the Klan hid behind the mask of “Christianity,” as if the Christ of Christianity were a white male born in the U.S.A., well, it’s enough to make me say, “Pour me a cold one.”

When Klansmen weren’t dressed up for Halloween and riding around in their much deserved white dunce caps, they were coining “Kl” words, such as such as “Klonvocation,” for convocation, “Klecktoken,” an initiation fee, “Klavern, as when a local chapter met at a tavern,” or the Kloran.

Whatever the highest bidder of the book paid at the weekend auction, the Kloran does have value as an inside look into the practices and mentality of a domestic terrorist group, one whose main legacy was that of terrorizing anyone who wasn’t as stupid as themselves.

One report said that auction’s secondhand Kloran, the KKK White Book, had faded and turned yellow. That works for me on several levels.

Jack Williams’ :wacko: column appears on Tuesday. He can be reached by e-mail at [email]jwwilliams@insightbb.com[/email].

[url]http://www.theheraldbulletin.com/story.asp?id=16623[/url]