Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Birth of the Ku Klux Klan

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

In Episode 44, Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to discuss the origin and rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut?

That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space. With no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's cracking my peppers? Is that how we should open it, Sophie? Is that bad? You look ashamed of me and ashamed of where you work and all of that. I shouldn't use that. Nick is literally climbing up on the roof, I think, to jump off. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history, one of whom is me based on the reaction

everyone had to that introduction. With me today in the studio, trying not to make eye contact with me because of their deep shame are my friends, Cody Johnston, Katie Stoll. Hello. It's okay. We support you. I just cocked my head kind of quizzically. You were the most forgiving of that. Huh. All right. We'll roll with that. I mean, we did. There's no taking it out. You can't edit audio.

It's not like video. Nope. This is it. So, how are you? How's everybody doing today? All right. I've got a bit of a cold, guys. I don't. I'm feeling well. And I made a mistake last night. I've been cooped up all week. And so, I was like, I really need to get out. And so, I went out with some girlfriends and I had one and a half drinks. And it was a mistake.

Set myself back. Also, should have read the label warnings. I had Sudafed in my system, so that just like amplifies your drinks. It was fun. And then it wasn't. Yeah. You just like throw your immune system for a loop there. Well, anyway, here I am. If I know one thing that will boost your immune system, it's spending roughly two hours learning about the Ku Klux Klan. That's what my doctor said.

Super doctor. It's time to take our medicine. It's time for everyone to take their medicine. Well, I have that Trump doctor, the guy who's like leaning back. Yeah, yeah. The pony. Looks like someone Hunter S. Thompson would have done drugs with and then like walked away from.

This is too far. Is that photo that looks like somebody photoshopped out a gun he was holding? It's pretty beautiful. What a great doctor. Well, today we're talking about the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. And then in part two, we'll be talking about the second Klan because they're two distinctly different things. Let's start with the OG KKK.

On April 9th, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Simpson Grant near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. It is, in my imagination, one of the most satisfying moments in American history. You've got this rich, fancy slave-owning asshole in his beautiful, pristine, bright uniform, handing over his sword to a working-class man, grew up poor in a filthy uniform, who has just been drunk off his ass for the last 30-some odd years of his life.

It's just a great moment to me. It's nice. Thousands of white supremacist soldiers would spend the rest of their lives knowing that an army commanded by this man and that included black men who had previously been owned by them had whooped them. It's a nice thing to think about. Wonderful. It's a good moment. But it brought a lot of resentment and anger among Southerners.

I could see that happening. Yeah, really pissed off some people. And they stayed pissed off. She was founded on resentment and anger. Resentment and anger. And sore losers. It's founded on sore losers forever. It has just been simmering. Every now and then we get a president who's good enough to take the top off the pot

because I don't want this to boil over. But nobody turns off the heat. So yeah, that's the situation after Appomattox. You've got, swelling back into the Old South from these armies that Lee had commanded, you've got tens of thousands of young men, many of them wounded, all of them armed and experienced in doing violence, roaming the countryside looking for excitement and pretty hateful still of black folks.

So that doesn't go away? That turns out... Terrible spoiler. That did not just... You know what? I guess racism lost. Your argument was better. Time to give that up. So they didn't really think the war was over, huh?

Well, they all got the point that you can't fight the American government. Right. But they did not get the point that we should stop fighting for racism. The debate was not over. The debate was not over. They just were like, yeah, we can't make more cannons than those guys. They learned that lesson. So one of the major sources for this podcast was a book called

They Called Themselves, the KKK, by Susan Bartoletti. She opens her book by quoting a number of white southerners' reactions to the end of the war, including one former slave owner from Virginia whose first reaction to the Confederacy's surrender was to ask about her now former slaves, if they don't belong to me, who's are they? Pretty emblematic of the attitudes that you were, yeah. Not quite getting it. Yeah.

So here's a quote from that book. Before the war, each slave was worth about $1,000 or $13,000 today. The average slave holder owned between one and nine slaves and some of the wealthiest planters owned hundreds. Many slave holders expected the federal government to compensate them for their great monetary loss. The wife of an Alabama planter bitterly described her family situation. We had all our earnings swept away, wrote Victoria Clayton. The government of the United States has the credit of giving the black man his freedom

while it was at the expense of the Southern people. Okay. Okay. This all adds up. This all adds up. I'm not confused yet. Yeah. I'm citing this not because I think both sides are valid here,

but it's important to understand the temperature that the South was at at this point in time if we're going to understand the rise of the first Ku Klux Klan. It started in Pulaski, Tennessee. Anyone ever heard of Pulaski, Tennessee? I've heard of Tennessee. Yeah. That's about it. Only there in Tennessee.

Yeah. The former Confederate officers, John Lester, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, James Crowe, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy. These men were pissed that they'd lost the war, and they were also bored. War, for all of its faults, offers a great deal of excitement for able-bodied young men. It turns out, bored and racist is a dangerous combination. John Lester later recalled in his book, quote, So, everything's fucked up because of the war still.

The South has been pretty ruined. These guys are just, they got nothing to do, right? So they start hanging out in the law offices that belong to Calvin Jones's dad, because these are all pretty rich upper middle class to upper class kids. And they were all frat boys. They had all been in fraternities before the war, and that will be very relevant here. Well, fraternity is important. No matter the kind.

Yeah, yeah. No matter the brand of fraternity. Brotherhood. Just important to have a fraternity. Just important to have a fraternity. Doesn't matter what they're about. Nope. So at first, they mostly drank and talked politics in one of their dad's offices.

This was going on in 1866. Now, in that April, President Johnson had vetoed the Civil Rights Act. Congress had passed it anyway. But Johnson was a, you wouldn't call him a woke president. Vetoing the Civil Rights Act. May I hand you in on that? Yeah. Now, the Civil Rights Act, when it was pushed through by Congress,

overruled the black codes that most southern states had enacted to restrict the rights of newly freed blacks. There'd been a race riot in Memphis that May, which had been caused by a carriage crash involving a black man and a white man. Basically, there were a lot of racial tensions, and the crash had sparked them. It led to three days of rioting. 46 black people killed, and two white people killed. So this was all going on when these guys were meeting in their dad's law office.

What year is this again? 1866. The war has just ended. Now, depending on the source, I've read that the decision to make a secret society from these guys was made in either May, right after their Memphis rioting, or on Christmas Eve. Either way, it was somewhere in the latter half of 1866. Either way, it's poetic in some way. Yeah, it really fits one way or the other.

But it was sometime in the later half of 1866 when John Lester told his friends, boys, let us get up a club or society. Well said, though. Yeah, well said. Yeah, well said. Everyone talked well back then. Let us get up a club or society. Let us get up a club or society.

Now, prior to the war, the Ku Kloss Adelphan had been a famous college frat for many southern men. Kappa Alpha, as it was more commonly known, had been founded in 1825 before it was disbanded during the Civil War. There had been numerous K.A. circles throughout the South. The word Ku Kloss itself means circle in Greek. And something about that imagery was inspirational to the six Confederate veterans drinking in Dad's office. Now, one of these men suggested they call themselves Ku Kloss, and another modified that to Ku Klux, because he thought it sounded better. The word clan was added to the end, since it also means circle.

Susan Bartoletti notes that Ku Klux clan can be literally translated to circle, circle. It sounds better than Ku Klux Club or Ku Klux Society. Ku Klux Society, yeah. The Ku Klux Boys. The Ku Klux Boys. James Crow, one of the former Confederates, noted, quote, there was a weird potency in the very name Ku Klux Clan, the sound of it as suggestive of bones rattling together.

Now, I'm all about admitting brilliance wherever I find it, even in the branding of racist assholes. And the name Ku Klux Clan is unfortunately an example of really good marketing. The proof in that is the fact that there's still people going by the fucking Ku Klux Clan today, you know? The name works. It works, yeah. It's got that sharp consonant sound. It's the Coca-Cola of racism. It sure is.

Ew. Now, after they locked down the name, the six young frat bros did what frat bros do. They wrote out a list of dumb rules, secret rituals, handshakes, code words, and hazing guidelines for their new club. They also created fanciful titles for themselves. Frank McCord would be the president, but since president was a boring name, they called him the Grand Cyclops. John Kennedy was the vice president, a.k.a. Grand Magi.

James Crow was the master of ceremonies, a.k.a. Grand Turk. And Calvin Jones and John Lester were night hawks, or messengers. Sounds like some fantasy game shit. Yeah, yeah. Sounds nerdy as hell. It's always that stuff. It's always that nerdy, twerpy, like, we can wear like... The Grand Magi.

Like Hitler in his fucking cowboy books, you know? Or Himmler in his pretending he was a dead Danish prince and making everyone dress like knights. Like, buying a castle. It's all just larping. It's all larping. All of it. It's young kids who read too many books and want to, like, be that badass swinging a sword around. Yeah, yeah.

Then get in power. Yeah, they're the hero, but like, the enemy is, like, not racism. They just can't bear the mundanity of normal life, guys. I also love how, like, there's always that feeling of, like, post-war, like, young men have nothing to do, you know? Later on, this would happen again, and we'd do football. We'd do football? Right.

They're like, we gotta do the KKK. Yeah. I've heard it said, and there's a couple of different charity groups in parts of the Middle East. I know in Egypt in particular that are aimed at, like, stopping young men from radicalizing. The best way to de-radicalize a lot of kids in, like, the Middle East is, like, soccer clubs and stuff. Right. Nothing else. Give them something to do.

Like, fraternity, but, like, fun activities. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do that different inner-city programs to reduce youth crime and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. After school programs, they're good. They're good. And that's kind of how this starts.

So, one of the weird things is that it doesn't start off super racist. So, I'm gonna read another quote from they called themselves the KKK. James Crow? James Crow? That's his real name. What? Nothing. Quote.

Their organizational work done, the Klansmen raided a linen closet. They pulled white sheets over their heads, cutting two holes for eyes and another for their mouth. Then they raced outside and leaped to stride their horses and swooped through the town streets, whooping and moaning and shrieking like ghosts. So, they're such losers. I'm gonna guarantee you they're drunk. Drunk?

Just like... Drunk Tennessee boys, dressing like ghosts. Yeah. That's so silly. It's really silly. You dumb little babies. And, like, in their tass, like, law office. Yeah.

Let's go raise the clock. Let's go pretend to be ghosts. Someone's like, look what I found. So, the gang found an abandoned house to gather in, so they didn't need to do their sewing and stitching at dad's office anymore. And for the next few weeks, they just kind of had fun with it. They'd meet up in rights, put on their robes, and then ride their horses through the country, ruining or making parties, depending on whether or not the partygoers enjoyed the sight of

a bunch of men pretending to be ghosts. It wasn't racist. They weren't targeting black people. They were just, like, fucking with everybody, pretending to be ghosts, riding around. And it was like, everyone was bored, so they were like, yeah, this is something. LARPing trolls. Interesting. Yeah.

Interesting how that leads to. Yeah. Here's where it leads. Some Klansmen were silent during these rides. Others spoke in low, gravelly voices that they thought made them sound like dead people. At this stage, again, there was nothing outwardly super hateful about the KKK. It was just a bunch of weirdos riding around. The club quickly made a name for itself, though, in part because 1866 was an incredibly boring

time to be alive in Tennessee. John Lester, one of the founders, wrote later, quote, its mysteriousness was the sensation of the hour. Every issue of the local paper contained some notice of the strange order. Now, the Pulaski citizen of the local paper was key to the rise of the first KKK. Its editor had a younger brother in the Klan, and in general, it seems like he did everything in his power to make the KKK seem irresistibly cool. Notices like this were published in the paper, ostensibly submitted anonymously by mysterious

hooded individuals. Quote, take notice, the Ku Klux Klan will assemble at their usual place of rendezvous, the din on Tuesday night next, exactly at the hour of midnight, in costume and bearing the arms of the Klan, by or of the great Cyclops. Oh, it's signed. I know, it's really. I'm going to read so many ridiculous K names. You guys are going to love it.

So tragic about how this starts. We're dressing up as ghosts. We're pretending to be dead. It's like we're already dead. It's like they're showing their pain. I mean, they probably saw some shit. Civil war is a rough thing to see. They're just expressing their angst.

Their angst, yeah. That's what I mean. It's kind of emo. You could see how if there had been trained therapists back then and when they'd been around, he could have guided this in a positive direction and was like, oh, this could be a healthy thing to do. Dress up as your friends who died in the war. Let's work through this shit.

Exactly. Wow. It's possible it could have been pushed in a good direction. Love the KKK. Now, many local men soon joined the Klan. Most of them were Confederate veterans like the founders. These people generally seemed to be the creme of Southern society. Doctors, prominent churchmen, and respected former Confederate officers.

I'm going to guess an awful lot of them went by Colonel in their daily life because it was the South in the 1860s and every third man was a Colonel. Now, for some early Klansmen, the thrill must have been the chance to see August members of society debase themselves in preposterous hazing rituals. For example, the KKK had a secret initiation. First, the initiate would be blindfolded and asked ridiculous questions for the sole purpose of embarrassing him. After he'd answered enough, the Grand Cyclops would say, place him before the royal altar

and adorn his head with the regal crown. Then they would all chant an oath, which the oath was, oh, would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us. And then, after the initiate finished reciting these words, the blindfold was untied, revealing a mirror that showed the man himself wearing a regal crown, which was, in fact, a donkey hat. Now, they called themselves the KKK. It doesn't go into more detail, but the Southern Poverty Law Center describes that donkey hat as two large donkey ears.

So it was like a joke. It was like, ah, look at how silly you are. Yeah. Yeah, right. Having fun. And then everyone would laugh at the guy looking silly in the thing. And that was the initiation. So it's like some light hazing.

Light hazing. Not hazing. That doesn't sound so bad. Doesn't sound so bad. It sounds good. I want to join. It sounds great. I'm selling the clan right now.

Yeah, I hope this works out. It's kind of edgy. It's kind of fun. It's kind of fun. You can see the appeal, especially it's 1866 and there's fucking nothing to add. Boredom really, really is a driver for some awful, awful behavior. Yes. It's very sad, actually, to me.

So pathetic. Yeah. That's where it starts. In this book, Ku Klux Klan, its origin, growth, and disbandment, John Lester claims the clan spread almost by accident at first, essentially as an old-timey meme. Quote, during the fall and winter of 1866, the growth of the clan was rapid. It spread over a wide extent of territory. Sometimes by a sudden leap, it appeared in localities far distant from any existing dens.

A stranger from West Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas visiting in a neighborhood where the order prevailed would be initiated and, on his departure, carry with him permission to establish a den at home. These dens were loosely connected, and an essential control by the grand cyclops of the Pulaski clan was more formal than literal. It's hard to say those words. It really is. It's hard to listen to them.

That won't even qualify as silly by the time we get done with all the titles they're going to be. You're going to normalize all this stuff. I know. So at first, at least according to one branch of scholars, the KKK was mostly a way for bored young white veterans to drink and play pranks on themselves and others. Since all these guys were racist as fuck, the relatively good-hearted pranks against their fellow white people soon gave way to distinctly less fun pranks against black people.

Luckily for us, back in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a bunch of interviewers go out and talk to former slaves. These people were very old at the time, but there were still a bunch of them alive. And these people were asked about their experiences with the KKK, which had just had its second resurgence in the 1920s. So I'm going to read you a quote from Henry Gary of Birmingham, Alabama, relating the tale of an early clan prank. Now, when these interviewers would talk to these former slaves, they were given the

explicit order of preserving their diction as much as possible. And I am not going to read that in exact diction, because I think that might come across as like a caricature. I'm going to try to translate it as well as I can. There's also a hell of a lot of inwards in these. There's a debate to be had when you're reading like a scholarly document about whether or not you read the inword to preserve the code. I'm not going to say it, because I don't like saying it.

I think that's a really good choice. But there's a debate. Who likes saying it? Racists. Oh, yes. And if you're like a lecturer and you read a Confederate document, there's an argument to be made. But I don't, I'm just not going to say it.

So here's Henry Gary of Birmingham, Alabama, relating an early clan attack or prank. My daddy went over to where he was sitting on his horse at the well. Then he, the Klansman said in word, get a bucket and draw me up some cool water. Daddy got a bucket, fill it up and hand it to him. Captain, would you believe it? That man just lifted the bucket to his mouth and never stopped till it was empty. Did he have enough? He just smacked his mouth and called for more.

Just like that, he didn't stop till he drunk three more buckets full. Then he just wiped his mouth and said, Lordy, that sure was good. It was the first drink of water I've had since I was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Now, other interviewed freed people claim that the water trick was accomplished by the Klansman holding a bag under his robes that they poured the water into, right? So they would have like a tube running from their mouth and they'd pour it in or something like that. Klansman also stole bones from dead people so that they could pretend to rip off their

own arm and then hand it to a freed person. The goal was to scare black people so that the newly independent black farmers would move away and black citizens would stay out of predominantly white areas. John Lester claims that the switchover from the prank based clan to being regulators, as he puts it, happened accidentally when they realized that black people who walked past their den got scared by the lictors out guarding the door. When asked their names, these lictors would reply, a spirit from the other world. I was killed at Kikamaga.

So these guys are pretending to be dead confederate veterans and they realize this is scary to people and they start taking it further and taking it further. So we're going to talk about where this all leads and how it leads to an orgy of unspeakable violence. But first, are you guys in the mood for ads? Oh, yes. The only thing I want right now. It's like sunshine on my soul.

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And we're back talking about the KKK. So I'm going to read you another bit from John Lester sort of explaining the evolution of the Klan from like harmless pranks on everybody to really just screw in with black people. Right. It's just a prank bro. Yeah. Just a prank bro.

So it's not quiet. Until it's just racism bro. Kind of like Reddit. Yeah. It's just racism bro. Quote. In a short time the lictor of the Pulaski din reported that travel along the road which he had his post had almost entirely stopped and the country it was noticed that the nocturnal

perambulation of the colored population diminished or entirely ceased, wherever the Ku Klux appeared. In many ways there was a noticeable improvement in the habits of a large class who had hitherto been causing large annoyance. In this way the Klan gradually realized that the most powerful devices ever constructed for controlling the ignorant and superstitious were in their hands. Even the most highly cultured were not able to wholly resist the weird and peculiar feeling which pervaded every community where the Ku Klux appeared. Every week some new incident occurred to illustrate the amazing power of the unknown over the

minds of men of all classes. Circumstances made it evident that the measures and methods employed for sport might be effectually used to subserve the public welfare, to suppress lawlessness and protect property. So that's how they became, in his words, a band of regulators. Really just stumbled into it. Yeah, he says that their goal was to protect property and preserve peace and order. Oh was it now? No.

We're just cops bro. We're just cops. Just fake ghost cops. The realization of the power of terror. Yeah, exactly. Isn't it a Ryan Reynolds movie? Ghost cops. Ghost cops.

Ghost cops. Ghost cops. Ghost cops. I actually think the power of terror. That's international. Okay. It translates into ghost cops. So tales quickly began to spread across the old south and communities of freed black people

that ghosts of dead confederates or men pretending to be the ghosts of dead confederates had started to wander the earth. Lester says the KKK men suddenly realized that this, yeah, give them another way to dominate their former slaves and he and other racists claim that the clan's tactics were powerful because freed people were superstitious. Testimonies from former slaves who experienced KKK raids makes it clear to me at least that superstition was not the issue of the day. Here is freed woman Ann Ulrich Evans.

The Ku Klux Klan just come all around our house at night time and shoot in the doors and the windows. They never bothered anybody in the daytime. Then sometime they come in the house, tear up everything in the place, claim that we're looking for somebody and tell us they're hungry because they ain't had nothing to eat since the battle of Shiloh. So superstition is probably not a major fact. They're shooting into your house.

It's like, I'm not scared of them for being spooky and scared they're going to kill me. There's dozens of them and they're shooting at my house. I don't think they're ghosts. And she was like a little kid at the time. They're shooting at me. And it was clearly like if you're a black person in this situation, the smart thing to do is like, oh yeah, you're ghosts. You guys are sure ghosts.

I'm so pranked right now. You got me. Yeah. So the Klan grew throughout 1866. By April of 1867, it had enough influence that when the Tennessee Democratic Party held their first midterm convention to pick candidates for the upcoming elections, the first elections since the war, every Klan leader in the state was invited. They called themselves the KKK.

Historians agree that the timing of these two meetings was significant. It suggests that the Southern Democrats wanted to ally with the Ku Klux Klan in order to create a secret empire powerful enough to overthrow Republican rule and battle reconstruction policies. Nor longer was the Ku Klux Klan a social club. With this secret meeting, they became a paramilitary organization. So we can't fight the union on the battlefield. That's real clear to us.

So we need to fight them as a political entity to still get as much of our way as possible. And if these guys are murdering people in the streets and suppressing black people from voting, that helps our bottom line. So this is what the Democratic Party decides at the time in Tennessee. Yeah, it's a new war. It's a different war. It's a different kind of war. Yeah, same war, different kind of.

So during this convention, the Klan laid out their official prescript, declaring that they, quote, reverently acknowledged the majesty and supremacy of the divine being and recognized the goodness and providence of the same. We recognize their relations to the United States government and acknowledge the supremacy of its laws. So that sounds nice and patriotic. It wasn't stated, but was very clear from the context is that the KKK didn't think all of the U.S. governments laws were valid, just like they didn't think that all U.S. citizens

deserve to be citizens. Now during that election season, the RNC put together a document as well, a guy named, or the DNC put together a document as well. No, sorry. This was the RNC because the Republicans were putting together a document on like sort of they sent a guy named Shers around the South to observe the different kinds of people and classify Southerners into groups so they could try to figure out a strategy for winning elections in the South still, even though, again, the Republicans had very little power electorally

in the South for, you know, most of the post-war period. So he... Oh, how things change. Oh, how things change. So this guy, Shers, divided the Southerners he meant into four distinct groups. Here's how he described the largest group of Southerners. They, quote, have no definite ideas about the circumstances under which they live and about the course they have to follow.

Their intellects are weak, but their prejudices and impulses are strong, and they are apt to be carried along by those who know how to appeal to the latter. So that's a description of the bulk of the South. He noted that these people had all been thoroughly convinced that further armed resistance to the state was not the answer, but he warned that they were still willing to do violence if the right justification arose. The KKK, in essence, weaponized these men, and that fact was clearly its goal by this point.

So once the Klan Prescript was completed, the Ku Klux Klan declared itself the Invisible Empire. They divided the nation into different realms, dominions, and provinces, and prepared for their organization to expand across the nation. The goal was for the Klan to be its own secret country of racists inside the United States, with its own government dedicated to the overthrow of every aspect of real society that was not focused around white dudes. The prescript included a list of titles for all their members.

The officers of this Ku Klux Klan shall consist of a grand wizard of the empire and his tin genie, a grand dragon of the realm and his eight hydras, a grand titan of the dominion and his six furies, a grand giant of the province and his four goblins, a grand cyclops of the din and his two nighthawks, a grand magi, a grand monk, a grand exchequer, a grand turk, a grand scribe, a grand sentinel, and a grand ensign. The body politic of this Klan shall be designated and known as ghouls. No, no, no, they are ghouls. Wait a minute, real quick, when it's like the grand so-and-so with his eight dwarves,

is that seven different positions? So he gets to appoint his dwarves. Yeah, he gets to pick his goblin dwarves, his grand magi's, his nighthawks. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah, it sounds like... Hey, hey. Cool.

Cool. It's almost indistinguishable from chunks of D&D source books that I read. Yeah. Yeah, it really could be. Now, the KKK printed up a bunch of copies of its new prescript and sent them out to every din in the country for $10, about $145 in modern money. The Klan also picked a leader to go with their new, more formal style and ghouls. And they picked, as their leader, who else but famous racist, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Yes. Now, Forrest was a former Confederate cavalry general, and in general, a very smart guy. Some historians consider him to be the greatest cavalry commander of the modern era. I've read people who will argue that it took the European powers until 1915 or 16 to figure out some of the things he knew at the start of the Civil War, so he's very good at fighting. And it's like one of these... Not good enough. I mean, the reason that he was so popular among these people is he's one of these very

few guys in the cavalry who actually fought with a sword on horseback against other guys and killed them and stuff. So he's the biggest war hero that the South has alive, other than generally. Like it's him and Forrest. Right, when you imagine cavalry, he's the guy. He's the fucking guy. So he's... He's a real life larper.

Yeah. He's a warrior. And you can see why all of these kind of wannabe guys would flock to the Klan, fucking Nathan Bedford Forrest is in charge. Yeah. Well, there you go. Smart casting. Smart casting.

During the Civil War, he'd been described as a wizard of the saddle, and so his office title was Grand Wizard. Yeah. Yeah. Forrest was famous, particularly within the community of former Confederate veterans. His name attached to the growing notoriety of the KKK caused it to swell with new blood. Many of them combat-hardened former cavalrymen who were super used to killing people from horseback.

Yeah. It's at this point that I should note that during the Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the commanding officer of what would be known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the garrison surrendered, Forrest ordered his men not to treat the fort's 300 black soldiers as POWs. They were all murdered. So that's this guy. This guy who winds up in charge of the Klan.

And we don't know a tremendous amount about his actions as head of the KKK because it was a secret and quasi-illegal organization. Right. They're always covered with that damn sheet. They're always covered with that damn sheet. It was a secret country. What I do know is that more than a century later, a painting of him led to one of the funniest headlines I have ever seen in the Washington Post.

Cody, why don't you just try to read that? Quote, I thought it was very nice. VA official showcased portrait of KKK's first Grand Wizard. What? I imagine him saying, I thought it was very nice. Very nice. An old man. Just a man on a horse.

I thought it was very nice. Now, Forrest claims that despite the surge in membership, the KKK brought in only the best people. Quote, this is Nathan Bedford Forrest. Only the best. No. Bed Four. Bed Four.

That's his 2019 nickname. They admitted no man who was not a gentleman and a man who could be relied upon to act discreetly. No men who were in the habit of drinking, boisterous men, or men liable to commit error or wrong or anything of that sort. What? Doesn't seem like they followed their own rules. No, no they did not.

Susan Bartoletti, using primary sources, makes a strong and not surprising case that this was nonsense. She quotes W.P. Burnett, a 27 year old, a literate man, and Klansman at the time. Quote, Pretty and I, everybody in our neighborhood belonged to the organization. The leaders pushed the poor people into it and made them go on raids. I was induced to join because they came to my house and told me if I didn't, I'd have to pay $5 and take 50 lashes.

Well, you're going to get you an army if you whip people that don't join. People can't join us fast enough. Either be racist or we'll hit you. Well I'm already racist, so I guess I'll pretend to be a ghost. I just want to channel your racism into this fake ghost. Newspapers continue to play a crucial role in this stage of the Klans development, rather than just advertising meetings and drumming up suspense. Many newspapers started to carry what were known as coffin notices.

These were threats to enemies of the Klan, and of course, any black people who lived in the area. And here's, I gotta read it. Here's how one of these was written. The Sargent and the Scorpion are ready. Some shall weep, some shall pray. Meet at Skoll for the Feast of the Wolf and Dance of the Muffled Skeletons. The Death Watch is set, the last hour cometh, the moon is full.

As someone who was bullied for bringing D&D books to class when I was in middle school, I kinda get it. The Ku Klux Klan was strong enough by 1868 to make a major effort in the election, Republican U.S. Grant faced off against Democrat Horatio Seymour. The Klan broke for Seymour. By that point, racists had hit upon the idea of scaring black people into not voting, and then basically doing everything possible via their control of the state and local governments to make black people kind of close to slaves again.

This series of innovations eventually brought us Jim Crow, but in 1868, it brought KKK and Nighthawks putting together dossiers on local black people who'd registered to vote or gotten some sort of job they didn't think black people ought to have. The KKK also targeted white people who plan to vote for Grant, and while their main focus was clearly political repression of the Republican Party, they also seemed to decide, well, since we're out here committing terrorism, we might as well be vigilante cops too. So they reported on white men who abused their wives, sold liquor on Sunday, and according to Bartoletti, even quote, boys who didn't mind their mothers.

Ryan Randolph and Alabama Grand Cyclops explained, the Ku Klux did not consider themselves law breakers, but as law enforcers. The Klan would hold regular meetings to vote on whether or not to punish someone for selling liquor or being a black guy vaguely near a white woman. Some people they'd warn, some people they'd whip, some people they just straight up murdered. White people were more likely to start their interaction with the KKK via a warning. Maggie Stenhouse was born enslaved in South Carolina. Here's how she recalled one of the Klan's visit to her home, a warning to her father

who was a preacher. The Klan did not like black preachers. Really we're not fans of that. The Ku Klux came, pulled off his robe and door face, hung it up on a nail in the room and said, where's that Jim Jesus? He pulled him out of the room. The crowd ran off. Mama took three little children but forgot me and ran off too.

They beat Papa till they thought he was dead and throwed him in the fence corner. He was beat nearly to death, just cut all to pieces. He crawled in my bed and woke me up and back on the steps. I thought he was dead, bled to death on the steps. Mama come back to leave and found he was alive. She doctored him up and he lived 30 years after that. We left that morning. We switched states, left their farm.

And they would regularly go to the farms of black people who had like right when they were about to harvest and run them off of their farms and take their shit. To the clan, a visit like that was a success. They wanted the black family out and they got what they wanted. The book they called themselves the KKK gives more detail on these raids. Travelling by horseback, a clan din might cover 25 to 30 miles in one night. What is called a raid is a night strip, explained James Justice, a state legislator from North Carolina who was pistol whipped by several clansmen.

They may commit 20 violations of law in one night. Justice estimated several hundred acts of clan violence or outrages in his county alone over a 12 month period and even greater numbers in the neighboring counties. On a raid, the clansmen always outnumbered their victims, sometimes 40 or more to one. During the attacks, some clansmen acted theatrically, speaking in fake foreign accents or gibberish. They claimed to have come from the moon, risen from a confederate grave, or traveled from the depths of hell to seek revenge. Really expanding their stories here.

I do love that the moon comes into it. Be consistent though. You got to like, I mean, we're like. A confederate ghost are you from the moon? Pick a name. Why don't we just do the moon tonight, guys? All right, we're a moon man now. I want to be a moon man.

All right, all right, we're a moon man now. I want to be a goblin. We're moon cops. We're moon cops. Another great TV show. Oh, I would totally watch moon cops. Moon cops. Who do we, we catch?

John Goodman. Oh yeah. John Goodman and what's his name? Crazy Teeth. He was in the second Predator movie. Crazy Teeth? Crazy Teeth. He's also crazy.

Oh, Crazy Teeth. He's been in Starship Troopers and also is a fucking weird looking guy. Can we have Henry Winkler? Just for fun. Yeah. He could be the Commish. Yeah. Peter Man.

Is this? He was like the FBI agent. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's him. Show Cody the picture. He'll find the name.

This is working well for. Oh, Gary Busey. Gary Busey. Gary Busey. What? John Goodman and Gary Busey are moon cops. Okay, I can see that. That makes, that's better.

Way too long. Wow. I was just shamed a little bit. I mean, I didn't know any of those clues, but. But I'm also excited to see moon cops. Moon cops. Yeah. It's in production.

It's in production right now. It's already been green lit. Henry Winkler. Henry Winkler? He doesn't have to. The Fonz plays the Commissioner. He adds something beautiful to everything he touches. It's true.

You know. It would be nice like since you're going to have these guys who are both loose cannons if the chief was actually really calm and chill. Sure. The chief of the moon cops. Yeah. Kind. Sort of supportive.

Yeah. Bakes them bad. Like muffin baskets after a raid goes bad. Yeah. Moon fin baskets. Moon fin baskets. He's the base from which they spring. Exactly.

From the moon. He's the anchor that gives them license to soar. Also, they're from hell and they're ghosts. They're no ghosts of the moon. This is important. Back away. I know there's a lot of casting agents out there, or Netflix that's free. Yeah.

Come on. You're making so many shows. Come on. Make moon cops. Just raised our rates, so. That's a good use. Okay. Back to the thing.

Who clocks clans spread like wildfire during 1868 and eventually into every former Confederate state as well as Kentucky for some reason. South Carolina at the first state to secede had the highest clan membership per capita. Nathan Bedford Forrest told a Cincinnati reporter that year that the KKK had a nationwide enrollment of 550,000 men. This former rebel general claiming to have raised an army of half a million men cost some understandable uproar. What with?

Yeah. Five days later, Forrest started saying that the estimate was fake news. Misrepresented by the reporter. He didn't say fake news. No. But he said misrepresented by the reporter. Okay. He said it was bad reporting.

All right. All right. You gotta bring some modern terms in it so people get it. I got you. I got you. But it is the same thing. Because he said it was 150,000 people. He lied.

Now historians do regard that number as fanciful, but it's clear that the KKK was large during that time and several hundred thousand members is very probable during this period. Now not all of the clan, as we already stated, were virulent racists. Many of them were just poor guys who were like, everyone else in town has joined and we're going to get fucking shot at. They're just going to come by our house and fuck us up. So we might as well join the clan. They probably were a little racist.

I mean, we're not calling them woke, but they wouldn't have been fucking with people otherwise. Right. They're just like, yeah. Juniors would have looked the other way and not cared too much. Yeah. It was the South in 1868. Right.

That counts as woke. Right. Right. Not actively shooting at people who aren't right. I'm a progressive. I don't think they have to die. I'm a progressive. Yeah.

I don't load a bullet in my gun when I fire it near the house of a three person. I looked the other way. Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. Junius Tindall, 19, went on three raids with the clan. He reported later, quote, I was pressed into the order for they said we had to keep the new grows down.

They said we had to keep them from overrunning white people. One of his raids was to scare off a group of black people who planned to hold a dance. Clearly a threat to white supremacy. Yeah. Yeah. In another quote from that book, they call themselves the KKK. Today, psychologists explain that people who join groups such as the Ku Klux Klan are insecure and feel a need to do something that makes them feel powerful or superior.

Perhaps W.E.B. Dubois, historian and civil rights leader, understood Klansmen best. These human beings at heart are desperately afraid of something, of what? Of many things, but usually of losing their jobs, being declass, degraded or actually disgraced, of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children, of the actual pangs of hunger, of dirt, of crime. Still fits. Psychology.

Yeah. I always love stopping by here and hearing passages about today. Yeah. They're just as applicable to the day they were. Human nature here. We hurt others because we are afraid and are in pain. I am scared, so I'm going to shoot a gun at someone who doesn't look like me. Oh, yeah.

They don't look like you. They don't look like me. Who am I if I don't have someone to hate? Maybe it's their fault. You ever think of that? Yeah, it's their fault for not looking like me. You know what? That's not a good way to segue into an ad.

No, it's a terrible way to segue into an ad. Segways are nice. They killed that guy. Paul Blart? No, the guy who owned the company. Yeah. Oh. This is off the rails as an ad.

Wow. You tried though. You tried to make it better. I did try. Anyone got a product you want to plug before we roll in? Just a random product? Anything you like? I'm enjoying this coffee that I've been drinking.

I'm not a fan of cold brew usually, but today it's okay. So if you like coffee, pick up a bottle of whatever kind of cold brew we have at the office. Nobody here remembers the name. Don't tell us the name, Sophie, if you do. Just guess. You'll probably be right or not. And if you don't want to spend the money on that, just make your own.

Yeah, just let coffee get cold. That's how ads work, right? That's how ads work. If you don't want this, put it in the comments. Products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what?

They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. This season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.

He's a shark. And not in the good-bad-ass way, he's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the

youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the

world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price.

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. We're back! Now, in February of 1868, when super racist President Andrew Johnson had impeachment proceedings brought against him, the Klan threatened Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican congressman. Quote, this is a free country, and by heaven we will not submit to your damnable laws any longer. If we have not the power to remove the laws, then we will remove those who make them. It's a letter they sent him.

So there was a lot of bloodletting all throughout the South during this period and the run-up to the election. South Carolina and Tennessee were particularly dangerous places and black people were regularly beaten or murdered for registering to vote or helping other people register to vote, or even sort of looking like they might plan on voting someday. A black editorial writer in Charleston summed up the defiant attitude of many freed people. If we are to be massacred because we refuse to vote the Democratic ticket, if we are to be murdered in cold blood, then let it come, we can die but once.

And in spite of the Klan's terrorism, newly freed black men turned out to vote in huge numbers. In Georgia, a hundred of them armed themselves with rifles and handguns in March 12 miles to vote. There were countless similar stories. Groups of women marching en masse dozens of miles without the knowledge of their husbands to donate money to U.S. grants campaign and receive a button. The activism and voting of newly freed black people paid off.

On November 3rd, 1868, Ulysses Simpson Grant was elected president in a landslide 214 electoral votes to 80. And Grant, I gotta say, he gets a lot of shit in history because there's a lot of corruption in his administration, which was not super weird for the time, everybody was corrupt as fuck. For any time. For any time. U.S. Grant was a guy, never owned a slave.

His wife did, but he was not a slave owner. Was not an abolitionist prior to the war in general because he was just a hardcore alcoholic and didn't really have strong opinions on anything. But didn't like slavery, beat the Confederacy and as a president, stuck his neck out a number of times to pass laws and push things that would like aid in, he was like, these people are free, they deserve to vote. And was like, was pretty good about pushing that and sacrificed a lot of political capital to do the right thing in that instance.

Not a perfect guy, but if you're looking at like presidents that weren't shitty for black people up until like fucking like LBJ almost, he might be the best. I mean, FDR too, like, but like he, he gets, he should get some credit. U.S. Grant. Also smoke dozens of cigars a day. Chain smoke cigars, drank all that. I heard a really cool rumor that the reason he was so successful as a general, because like McClellan Lee thought was a way better general than U.S. Grant.

But McClellan didn't fucking do anything because he was too scared to get his army massacred. And so some historians are like, well, the grant would mainly get wasted after like planning and stuff. So maybe it was just the fact that he was like, okay, this is the plan. I'm going to go get shitfaced and like wouldn't second guess himself. Right, right. We did it.

I've got it. I've done much. I'm not going to stay up all night and then panic in the morning. I'm just going to get wasted, wake up, hung the fuck over and let this battle happen the way it does. It's smoke five cigars and then we'll do battle and we'll do seven more cigars. I'm on borrowed time anyway with all this. Yeah.

I like, I like U.S. Grant. He's an interesting guy. Uh, so the Klansman responded to his election with an orgy of violence. The Republican legislature in Tennessee passed a law allowing the governor to send the militia in to enforce, you know, the fact that you can't murder people. Uh, Nathan Bedford Forrest threatened to raise 40,000 men if the Republicans sent in the militia. He said, I have no powder to burn killing Negroes.

I intend to kill radicals. There is not a radical leader in this town, but is a marked man. And if trouble should break out, none of them would be left alive. One of these radicals apparently was William Luke. He was a white man who had the gall to come down from Canada and educate freed black people. Because as soon as, you know, these people were freed, there were suddenly millions of people who had never gotten an education, wanted to learn how to read stuff. And so a bunch of very brave teachers swarmed into the south.

William Luke was one of them. A radical of them. Yeah. I'll teach you to read. I'm not. I'm just going to worry about killing radicals. I'm going to use a ghost army to kill radicals. All right.

Yeah. Teaching people numbers. You're the calm one. All right. So the KKK warned William Luke to leave and he did not listen, even worse, he dared to fight back. So quote, around midnight, three Klandins met at a Baptist church where they voted to take the law into their own hands.

On horseback, they headed into town and overtook the guards. Realizing his fate, William Luke allegedly told the Klansmen, I know I've done wrong, but I don't deserve this. At gunpoint, the Klansmen abducted the five prisoners. Just outside cross planes, they lynched the four black men from a tall oak tree, the guys who'd been protecting him, saving Luke for last. Before hanging him, they allowed him to write a letter to his wife, who still lived in Canada with their six children.

It's a heartbreaking letter. It's a heartbreaking story. Yeah. But that's the KKK. The American missionary general reprinted the warning that one of their teachers received from the Mississippi KKK didn't give you an idea of the sort of warning these people sent out and is going to be larpy. First quarter, eighth bloody moon, air the next quarter be gone, unholy teacher of the

blacks be gone, air it is too late, punishment awaits you, and such horrors as no man ever underwent and lived, the cussed moon is full of wrath, and as its horns fill the deadly mixture will fall on your unhallowed head. Beware when the black-clat cat sleeps, we are the dead and yet live who are watching you. Fool, adulterer and cursed hypocrite, the far piercing eye of the grand cyclops is upon you. Fly the wrath to come.

Ku Klux Klan. It's pretty embarrassing. You talk like that way, that way, around your kid, like they save it all up for these kinds of correspondences. They save it all up for these kinds of things. They were just, if someone, if fucking Gary Gaijax had invented D&D in 1861, we might have been saved a lot of trouble. Yeah, they just wanted to talk like that with their buddies.

Really some impulses that might have been redirected away from murdering people. Yeah, yeah. Just like, what's, like, spring that over here? Yeah. There's a productive way to do that. Have you thought about writing short fiction? Take the sheet off, here's some dye, okay? Lovecraft was just as racist as you and people still read his stuff.

You heard of what his cat was named? Don't. Have you not? No. It was the N-word. Really? Yeah. I knew that.

I forgot about that. Yeah. It's really bad. It's really bad. Oh, why did you write this? The KKK continued to raid after the disastrous 1870 election, during which the Democrats lost again. All this violence was, eventually, too much for the president.

Ulysses Simpson Grant was not a perfect man. He himself would have been the first person to tell you that. But he seemed to genuinely believe in legal equality for black people, or at least more legal equality for black people than the vast majority of white folks were willing to put their neck out for. And he was no fan of some goddamn Confederate raising an army in his country and terrorizing people. If you know U.S. Grant, he's not a fan of the Confederacy.

He's got a good vibe. They're like a rebel army. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing we know about Grant is that he's just not like rebel armies. In April of 1871, he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law. At the time, it was known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. This act made it a federal offense to interfere with someone's right to vote, hold political

office, serve on a jury, etc. It was basically the, y'all have to start treating black people like people, act. This act banned groups of people from conspiring to wear disguises to intimidate or hurt people. Any group accused of these crimes will be tried in federal court. The act also authorized the federal government to send in troops and suspend habeas corpus. It's the kind of ruling that can be terrifying even when applied to races because of its implications. But there was no slippery slope into tyranny this time.

Mass arrests of Klansmen followed, and it's a good thing to mass arrest. Have you got to mass arrest somebody? Yeah, I would be Klansmen. You would be Klansmen. Maybe a Grand Wizard. Maybe a Grand Cyclops. Maybe a Grand. Subgoblins here and there.

Maybe a Grand Gully. Couple of Gina. Go for the dwarves. They're low, low-hanging. Get some Gryffins in there. I want to hear Charlie from Always Sunny in Philadelphia read the KKK rank list. Not too out of place at all. Many Klansmen flit the country.

In South Carolina, 2,000 prominent citizens and Klansmen left for Canada. Nathan Bedford Forrest and the grand tradition of all good right-wing gang leaders rolled on his fellow Klansmen in exchange for immunity. Bring it back to modern day. Nothing changes. Oh, that's the good stuff. Oh, that's that shit. He was questioned by Congress, quote, from they called themselves the KKK.

Despite the immunity, Forrest evaded the questions, often claiming he didn't know. Although men who knew Forrest well credited him with a quick mind and a good memory, Forrest repeatedly told the prosecutor, I do not remember and I do not recall. He refused to admit his role in the Klan, but he justified the order's vigilante violence, arguing that Klansmen defended the South against Northern Republican aggression and from outrages committed by Black people. I think this organization was got up to protect the weak, said Forrest, with no political intention at all.

Forrest claimed to have ordered the Klan to disband back in 1868. He successfully held up under congressional testimony and, later, in a bar, was heard telling a friend, I've been lying like a gentleman. Okay. Like only a gentleman can lie. Only a gentleman can lie. Oh, I love it. Oh, it's so good.

Literally, just like I didn't start it, I don't have anything to do with it, but I think it's a good club. It's a pretty good club, because it's the best club in the world. Oh, man. Yeah, Gavin McGinnis, Maven, playing from that playbook. I love history. It's great. I love how it happens and then it keeps on happening.

It capes on happening. 3,319 Klansmen were ultimately brought in as a result of the government's war on the KKK. A little over 1,100 were actually jailed. Here's the Guardian, quote, Maria Carter of Harrelson County, South Carolina, testified that Klansmen broke into her home, pointed a gun at her husband, and frightened him to the point that he could not speak. They forced Carter's husband to go with him to a neighbor's house where they assaulted

a woman so ferociously that Carter remembered that the house looked, quote, as if somebody had been killing hogs there. The men shot and then severely whipped the woman's husband. Carter's husband was beaten mercilessly, his clothes were blood-soaked, and the next morning they clung to his body. After Grant won reelection, he went on to pardon many of the arrested Klansmen. Under the justification, this was the only way to heal the divide between white people in the South.

And they have done that. What is certain is that, by 1872, the KKK was no longer a major force in public life. Fortunately, for racists, it turned out that vigilante violence was never the answer they were looking for. Gradually disenfranchising black people through the law was the answer. In 1877, the first Jim Crow laws were passed, bringing an end to the brief period of time where southern blacks had a notable amount of political power. The Klan would stay buried for decades.

Jim Lester, writing in the 1880s, ended his book on the KKK with this line. There never was, before, since, a period of odd history when such an order could have lived. May there never again. He was wrong about that. On our next episode, we're going to talk about the Phoenix-like resurrection of the KKK during the 1920s. It's going to be a gigantic bummer, but not the bummer you're expecting.

Oh, okay. I'm intrigued. Yeah. This one goes some weird places. But before it goes some weird places, y'all should plug the plugables that you have to plug. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Watch our show and move to our podcast. Our podcast is called Even More News. Yes. There you go. The video show is called Some More News. It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube.

You can check out patreon.com. Some More News. Give them some money. And also twitter.com. Some More News. Give them some tweets. And we're on the Twitter too. We're on the Twitter too.

Thank you for taking that ball and running with it. Yep. Yep. Yep. Dr. Mr. Cody is where you can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteOK. You can find my book on Amazon, A Brief History of Vice, and you can find me in your heart anytime you enjoy the satisfying crunch of the Doritos corn-based snack.

My God. Just thinking about Doritos. How do you say that? I really want a Doritos. You guys want to grab some Doritos before we go? I sure do. Well, let me plug the stuff that's not Doritos and then we'll have a little Dorito break before we talk more about the KKK.

You can find us online at BehindTheBastards.com. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter at BastardsPod. You can buy T-shirts, reverse clan robes, and other branded content like cups at tpublic.com. So bye. Bye. And also bye. Bye. The episode's over.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Alphabet Boys told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.