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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Here's Chuck Wicks from love country. Talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. You love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan, country music what you can call in anytime you like. I want to talk about this. Hulk Hogan called in. He's like Chuck Walker. I love your podcast. Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. Listen to new episodes of love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to. Forecast. Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans and this is yet again behind the ******** the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Now, today we are on part two of our series on the KKK, Part 2, Part 2. My guest with me is with part one. Katie and Cody. Hello the stuff. News? How much network of that's the one, that's the one. Here we are. So, uh, how you guys doing? Still still got a cold. Still good. I'm still doing well. Still happy. It's two days after you heard our last episode, but it's just minutes after we recorded the last one. But in those minutes, we've grabbed us a Dorito or three. There are so many Doritos in here, and they are interesting. They're delicious. I mean, how do you guys like the tapatio ones? That's spicier than I expected because that's spicier than tapatio is. It's got a real kick if that's what you're looking for. Two sauce sauce. I like it crystals. I grew up with crystals hot sauce. You know who would not have liked tap Potato Doritos? OK, I'm gonna say that. OK, I was hoping that was a seamless transition. Transition to the KKK? Well, then we should keep talking about cappuccinos hoping for another reason to not like the KKK. So in part one, we talked about the original clan, which was a terrorist organization that started as a bunch of drunk frat boys pretending to be ghosts and turned into a murder gang. Interesting. Headed by a former rebel general. Funny how that works. Part 2, We're going to talk about the rise of the KKK in the 1920s. Which was an order of magnitude larger than it was in the 1860s, and a hell of a lot weirder. This is not gonna go where you think it's going to go. This is a weird story. You keep saying that a lot weirder. It's hard to imagine super excited because it's already weird. It's already weird. Our Grand Maggies and our, you know, Queens. No, there's no queen. OK, no imperial emperor. There are some king kleagles in this one. I don't know what a kliegel is. I do. It doesn't matter. Has to do with racist. They're the grand, the grand Cagles. The Grand Kegels came later. We're not part of the clan. Ohh, that was very good. Cody, this is that was very witty. We're gonna check out for the rest of the episode, though. You know what? Just dial tone for the rest of you guys. Got your dose of comedy. You guys want to go get a drink? Thanks for stopping by. Stopping by. All right, here's the episode. In 1919, a pamphlet started circulating amongst the townships and villages of the American countryside. On its front was a drawing of a Klansman on a rearing steed. The title was the Ku Klux Klan. Yesterday, today, and forever. The Flyer's purpose was to announce the glorious. The birth of the KKK. It opened up by defending the first Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, the Invisible Empire was the great idea that's capitalized of American reconstruction. We say American reconstruction for the reason that all America was affected by reconstruction influences. It actually says influences, and I guess that's the spelling area. Well, with the racists. This is what the President models his tweets after. I was going to say, like more capitalizing the words and like getting some words wrong. The South most of all yes. But nevertheless all, all is capitalized for the great threat, great threat is capitalized to the white race. Loomed on the horizon of the South, would have spread through the entire nation had not the white robe of the Ku Klux Klan kept unrevealed those courageous and devoted hearts that were consecrated to saving the Anglo-Saxon civilization of our country, protecting the homes and well-being of our people, and shielding the virtue of womanhood. The original Ku Klux were not outlaws all caps or moral degenerates, all caps, nor did they perpetuate outlawry, which is a great where we don't use another. Laurie, this is the clan and they're terrible, but I really like it. The same claimant? Yeah. They were men of moral and social standing, and their leaders were men of sterling character and unquestioned culture. They reverently bowed to the soul of real law, all caps, and swore to enforce its principles of justice, protection, and the pursuit of happiness. Their strong arm fought valiantly for the preservation of the integrity of the race, against the cruelty of base, unjust and tyrannical legislations and insufferable conditions. No joke. I feel like that's formative literature for Trump. Like, I mean, he grew up reading this. He's definitely got some better words in there. I think that's a good. I mean, his dad, there's rumors that he was in the clan during this. I mean, like, this is the kind of they've got drafts of these things, like laying around the Trump household when he was a kid. They got the moral degeneracy in there. Really was waiting for that. Yeah. I gotta promise, this is not gonna go where you're thinking. OK, now, I read a book for this episode 2, the second coming of the KKK, by Linda Gordon. I want to advocate reading both of the books for this podcast because they're both good, but Linda Gordon's book is really special. It is almost unbelievably dense. I've rarely in my life encountered so much information from so many different sources consolidated into a single book of this size. I'm just kind of in awe of the amount of work she must have put into it and like, how like it. It's just it's really good. We're only using fractions of it for this episode, but it is a fantastic book, so I really recommend giving it a read if you're interested in the history of American radical right wing extremism. Now. This book claims that the second KKK's rise was directly inspired by the release of a movie birth of a nation in 1915. Birth of a nation was a fanciful story about the first KKK and how they saved white women from rape. Happy Friedman. It was the first film ever shown at the White House. Woodrow Wilson ******* loved it saying quote. It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true. Yeah, maybe America's worst president. If you're getting this guy's opinion on it, what would the whole Nazism and that thing that he just said. A lot of things. Yeah. William Joseph Simmons, a doctor from Atlanta, Spanish American War veteran and minister, was a huge fan of the movie when he got back from serving Garrison duty during the war, he drifted around a number of jobs, showing no aptitude for anything, and joined 15 different fraternal orders. Now, today frats are just something that a chunk of college kids do. But back in the day there was very little going on and most men were in a fraternal order of some type. Many were in multiple it was an extremely popular way to have something to do and feel like part of a community, so community is important. Very important. Simmons was desperate for a community, but none of the groups he joined fit the bill. He was a fan of birth of a nation, and he'd been inspired by the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of rape and murder. None of them fit the bill. They weren't quite evil, and hired by the lynching of is not really a bad boy. That Lynchian really inspired me. He's like, what about? What about it? Simmons started reading about the original clan. He bought a copy of the original KKK prescript, mixed in a little bit of masochism, and tried to start up his own fraternal order, essentially cosplaying as the Ku Klux Klan. Simmons's KKK was just as racist as the original, but was also differently bigoted. It ranted against, quote, the Harry Claw of Bolshevism, socialism, syndicalism, IWW, ISM, and other isms I, WWE. International workers of the world are very influential group of unions. He believed that these forces were quote seeking in an insidious but very powerful manner to undermine the very fundamentals of the nation's first letter, and nations capitalized. Yeah, we're getting into the good stuff. Yeah, I knew this was going to be right into the vein for you. So when the KKK had last ridden, socialism had not really been a buzzword in America. Marks and Engels had only published the Communist manifesto in like 1848, and **** traveled slowly back then. Social Democratic parties were starting to become a thing in Europe. The late 1860s, but most of the US was off doing its own thing. The assassination of William McKinley by a Polish American anarchist in 1901 really helped to pour gas on that whole fire. Simmons started advertising for K2. This time it's clean air. In 1915 he described reloaded, fully reloaded or electric boogaloo. You know, you pick your sure, you pick your own sequel title. K harder. You know, whatever, there's there's options. In his promotional materials, he described it as, quote, a classy order of the highest class. Capitalized. No class. The order of the highest class man. No roughnecks, rowdies, nor yellow streaks. Real men whose oaths are in Violet are needed. His oaths are in Violet, in Violet, in Violet. Yeah. They're not gonna break their oaths. And they're they're classy. Man of higher class. Very good class. Very classy. Very classy. Classiest men. Not exactly an instant hit. Only a few dozen people signed up. At first, Simmons went out of his way to find a few very old former Klansmen to join. He proclaimed himself the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and started holding meetings. Now, unlike the original Klan, they didn't start off doing anything out in the world. This was just a place where grown men went to engage in weird *** quasi magical rituals with other masked men. It was larping. Larping as the KKK who were themselves Larpers getting really deep in his getting, really. Yeah. Circle, Circle, circle, circle. Circles. Inside of circles. Exactly. Now, in order to codify some of these rituals and establish standards for his new organization, Simmons published the KKK's Holy Book in 1915. Guys, want to guess what it was called? Clandon Nomicon, the tomb of the Martian demon. Hobgoblin? What? What is it? The Koran. Koran. Mine was? Liar. That's so bad. Amazing. You can find the whole cloran online. It's it's on parody. I know it is beyond parody. Everything about this episode is beyond parody. I'm just. I can't tell you how excited I am literally jumping out of his seat as he said that now. Yeah, again, you can read it for yourself if you decide that as an experience that will spark joy in your life. It is online. I'll put the link in the thing. It's all there now. The Cloran promises education in character spelled with a K&NOH honor and duty. Not spelling, though. Probably not spelling. Never been one of the KKK strong points to give you some info on the organization's founding principles. I would like to read y'all the Ku Klux Creed Creed? Yeah, of course, of course it's spelled with the ******* cake. We, the order of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan reverentially, acknowledged the Majesty and supremacy of the divine being, and recognized the goodness and Providence of the same. We recognize our relation to the government of the United States of America, the supremacy of its constitution, the Union of states they're under, and the constitutional laws thereof, and we shall ever, be ever devoted to the sublime principles of a pure Americanism and Valiant to the defense of its ideals and institutions. We allowed the distinction between the races. Mankind as same has been decreed by the creator, and we shall ever be true to the faithful maintenance of white supremacy, and will strenuously oppose any compromise thereof in any and all things. By the creator's decree. Citation needed. One of the things that is pointed out in the fantastic Linda Gordon book, the Second coming of the KKK, is that this was not radical at the time. The KKK was speaking very much to the majority of white Americans, and that is very important for everything that comes next. The ideology of this group is not fringe in any way, shape or form. They're preaching to the choir. They are not radicalizing people, and that's critical. No one's getting radicalized here. Everyone's a white supremacist. Well, I'm going to start a white supremacy group. Yeah, right. Yeah, now. About 2/3 of the cloran is made-up of incredibly dense, utterly preposterous ceremonies. I'm going to read a quick and random excerpt from the clans naturalization Ritual, AKA they're induction of new members so you can have an understanding of the special tenor of this Nyon readable tone. Cody, you look so excited. I'm ready. I'm going to read all the titles. So, starting off, we have the clad. Speaking with the KKK OAD, we're the aliens from the world of selfishness and fraternal alienation. Prompted by unselfish motive, desire, the honor of citizenship in the Invisible Empire, and the Fellowship of Klansmen to which the Clester response has your party been selected with care to which the clad responds? These men are known or vouched for by Klansmen in Konklave assemble 2, gays and konklave. The plextor responds. Have they? The marks the clad asks, or says, the distinguishing marks of a Klansman are not found in the fibre of his garments or his social or financial standing, but are spiritual, namely a Chevelle Rick head, a compassionate heart, a prudent tongue, and a courageous will, all devoted to our country, our clan, our homes in each other. These are the distinguishing marks of the Klansmen, O faithful plextor, and these men claim the marks. The collector neck says what if one of your parties should prove himself a traitor, to which the clad says he would be immediately banished and disgraced from the Invisible Empire without fear or favour? Conscience would tenaciously torment him, remorse would repeatedly revile him, and direful things would befall him. The cluster asks, do they know all this? The clad says all this. They now know they have heard and they must heed, Clockster says. Faithful clad, you speak the truth. Gonna be a lot of case, man. Gonna be a lot of cases going on. Bunch of dorks. Bunch of bunch of real dorks. It's not even that racist. Like, there's a little bit about white supremacy in there, but it's mostly just really dense nonsense rituals, like and then you sprinkle in this little dash your racism here and there, like you do with cilantro. Yeah, get him salivating a little bit. Yeah. Now the 1st, 2/3 or so of the cloran are made-up of frustrating, stupid rituals, how you open and closed meetings, etcetera. Then at the end of the book, Simmons wrote a lecture. It reads like a particularly bad DND source book written by a racist. Here's him describing the South prior to the rise of the first clan. Ignorance, lust, and hate all capitalized. Seize the reins of the state capitalized, and riot, rapine, and universal ruin reigned supreme. The highest form of cultured society was thrust down at its noble neck, was forced under the iron heel of pernicious passion, who yielded a potent sceptre of inquisitorial oppression. And the very blood of the Caucasian race was seriously threatened with everlasting contamination. I would have been. It would have been a pretty good clan leader back in. Yeah, you really would really. I got that voice down. I know it. Don't don't explore that too much. No, but you're right. Spoiler, But we're about to get to an Evans ohh really prominently here showing up. Yeah. An important thing to realize about the 1920s clan is that while they were racist, they were first and foremost to social order. Their meetings probably weren't any more racist than the average Masonic meeting at the time. We have minutes from a lot of individual klavern meetings, individual groups who called it cavern, and many of them, they're so cool because they were so cool. Linda Gordon points out that many of them never even brought up racial subjects. Other than, like, passing. So the second clan was racist, but not more racist than mainstream society. It didn't stand out now. Simmons ran the Klan for five years, and as with every other endeavor in his life, he was bad at it. During his reign, the group had only one public outing, a March of the Veterans parade that included 20 black men he paid to put on robes in order to pad out his numbers. Like, whatever you do, do not take this off. Not take this off. Oh my goodness. Yes. But there's a point. Like, it's not the racism isn't the focus because he's clearly like, well, I just want us to look big, right? Right. Yeah. My club to be cool. I want everybody to show up. My cool club. That's very cool. Very cool. So he did make enough money to buy Baptist Linear University in Atlanta because it was heavily in debt and he tried to turn it into a whites only university for racists. 25 people enrolled and it went bankrupt. So Simmons. Was forced to go looking for help. Fraud universities, huh? Fraud universities. So Simmons don't bankrupt. The KKK is in severe debt. He's gotta go find help. And he found it when he met 2 veterans of the fairly new PR industry, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. They ran a publicity agency that had already helped the Anti Saloon league on its rise to prominence. Clark's dad had been a Confederate Colonel and owned the Atlanta Constitution, an influential newspaper. Elizabeth was his wife. She'd grown up poor and married at 15. And if you ignore the whole helping to fund the KKK of it all. She's a pretty inspiring feminist story. That's hard to ignore. That other part? It's really hard to ignore the clan part. Here's the second coming of the KKK quote. The team saw a lucrative client in Simmons's new Klan group. The minute we said, Ku Klux Tyler recalled. Editors from all over the United States began literally pressing us for publicity. By 1920, she and Clark had convinced Simmons that they could grow his new clan, that it had national potential. To realize that potential, it had to multiply its bigotry. The alleged threat from black people would not reverberate. Young Northerners at a time when so few African Americans lived outside the southeast. So Simmons hired them, signing a contract that gave Clark and Tyler an astonishing 80% of any revenue they brought in from new recruits. Since Simmons had gotten nowhere with his new organization, he undoubtedly thought that he had nothing to lose, and giving them forfeits if anything they could bring in. Tyler and Clark became in practice, head of the clan for two years now. They turned Simmons into a polished speaker, engineering and exploiting fear, he would warn that degenerative forces were destroying the American way of life. These were not only black people, but also. Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. The Big city dwellers who are tempting Americans with immoral pleasures. Sex, alcohol, and music. Notably jazz. Yeah, yeah. Interesting choice of music there. You got interesting choice of music. We're almost at the big reveal. Very excited. So, like the original clan, the second KKK used newspapers to stoke the buzz around their organization. Simmons would give exclusive interviews where he came across as super suave and cool in the clans. Membership would grow. Newspapers ran advertisements that included KKK application forms. Press releases ran like rain on the front pages of the nation. By the summer of 1921, the new KKK reported a membership of 850,000. Now, this is almost certainly an exaggeration, but the real number was surely in the hundreds of thousands incredible growth over roughly a year of PR blitzes. And this is where it gets fun. The story sort of splits 1/2 is the tale of the various assaults and murders and attempted political coups by Klansmen over the next several years. And the other story, the bigger story, is the tale of the Klan's true purpose. It was an MLM, a multi level marketing scheme. It was a pyramid scheme. The KKK. The second KKK was a ************* pyramid scheme. I'm so excited. I love it. I'm waiting for you to literally read the headlines like the dapper KKK. There's a **** load of those, but yeah, now we're going to talk about how the clan became a pyramid scheme. 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I don't have to worry about losing a contact or, you know, bringing swimming glasses or something with me. Everything is just easier. And getting it done was easy too. You know. I went in, I had my consultation. They told me I was a good candidate and then I went back in a couple of days later. But a Bing bada boom, you know, my eyes were perfect. So LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years in the industry and more than two million treatments performed. If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visit my LASIK offer. Dot com to schedule your free consultation now. We're back. We just had a handful of Tapatio Doritos which are spicing our way through this tale of racism and profiting off of racism. So, grifting? Racists? What? Grifting? Excuse me, MLM's in the far right. I am appalled. I mean, surprised I'm going to leave right now because I'm so serious. White Harvard paper called Hatred and profits under the hood of the Ku Klux Klan. I'm going to quote from that now. Great the organizational structure of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, designed by the propagation department was a hybrid that combines features of other fraternal orders with a multi level marketing firm with two distinct sets of reporting hierarchies that operated more or less independently. 1 hierarchy was made-up of the clans members from the lowliest rank and file to the highest leadership. This hierarchy corresponds to the social club aspect of the Klan, the arm that intimidated blacks and foreigners. And attempted to influence political outcomes. In addition, however, there was a nearly invisible parallel hierarchy of clan recruiters organized like a modern multi level marketing firm which represents the financial arm of the clan. This highly incentivized sales force was responsible for recruiting new members to the clan and almost all of the financial rewards accrued to either the handful of top leaders or the individuals in this auxiliary hierarchy. It was a money making scheme made-up by PR hack. This is fascinating. Yeah, it's ******* wild, right? And so many emotions. And some of them conflict with each other. This is amazing. It's a great scam. Yeah, it's an objectively great scam effect. An effective scam. Take note, Clark and Tyler, the PR agents who made the KKK great again, brought in more than $850,000 in their first 15 months. That is roughly $10 million in modern money. Slightly over a year now. Simmons got a much smaller cut of this, but he still got rich. They even gave him a 25 grand bonus, which is like $300,000 for him. Good for him. He really put in the work. It was like 6 years, you know, signed the paper, signed the paper. Now, this money came from a variety of places, which I will get to in a second, but it's important to know that Simmons, Clark, and Tyler were all pushed out by like 1922. Simmons was bought out and another new guy named Hiram Evans was made the Imperial wizard. He'd been hired as a recruiter initially, but once he was the imperial wizard, he was able to fire a clerk and Tyler, which he did. So. So the people responsible for actually getting the second KKK off the ground weren't around for most of what happens next. But they set all of this into motion and they got rich off of it. The KKK would have died with Simmons and Debted and disgraced, but that is distinctly not what happened. These two PR wunderkinds had created an incredible profit making model, one that would act as a cash spigot for a bunch of greedy racists and con millions of Americans in the process. So, tale as old as time. Tale as old as time. First off, here's how the clan was organized. This is from that Harvard paper quote. The Grand Wizard, or Emperor, served as the nominal chair of the body, with the Imperial wizard acting as the chief executive and aided by a 15 member Imperial Concilium. These included the Klaliff first vice president, the classic 2nd Vice president, the the Cloak card locks sure, the Kludd chaplain, the clickwrap secretary, the Clayby treasurer, the clad clayby. The clad conductor, the colorago, a tin man inner guard, the plextor, the outer guard, the Konsel general counsel, the Knighthawk Courier, and the four klokan auditors. These individuals were responsible for keeping the clans books, providing in-house legal advice, and serving as a clan cabinet. Did you like absolute bananas, plug racism into, like, a random letter generator? And just like what? Some of those aren't even based off of real world, what is a climograph? Like clip? OK, like you clearly got a Muslim thing with the cloran. What the **** is a cloud or they I'm still stuck on the clevie. I'm also ashamed to share an initial with this. Yeah, OK. Has been ruined for me. Yeah. You only got 1K, though. You only got 1K. If you were the KKK, you'd have like a **** load of K, right, Clady? Absolutely. Clady close call. Yeah, no, and that's still one shy, and I don't even want to go down that path to the story. The clans worldwide operations were split up into several realms, one for each state, each run by a grand Dragon. They call them states. Some sticks I don't know man at the bottom of the organization where the ghouls organized into klaverns, which were headed by exalted Cyclopses. And like God. Did you say Exalted Cyclops? Those are the goals, exalted Cyclops, exalted Cyclops, heads of Claburn, yeah? OK, no. Like, like knomes. Like so like, why would you just like say you were goals, were goals? A. Glue a girls make up a Clavin. Goals. Goals make up a klavern. They're the rank and file of the Klansmen. Sorry. I'm sorry. And they're headed by a grand grand. Cyclops is absolutely more than I ever wanted to know. I exalted cyclops. So these are, like, going to get that right? Do these things I'm never gonna forget. Yeah, and I'm not happy about it. Yeah. No, it's stuck there forever now. Yeah. If you think about the KKK as a political or militant organization outside of the silly names, this structure makes sense. But once you understand the financial dimensions well, it becomes very clearly a pyramid scheme quote. Clan members generated an enormous amount of revenue. Each ghoul paid a $10 initiation fee, equivalent to 110 in 2011 dollars. 6:50 to buy an official clan robe, which cost roughly $2.00 to make an annual membership fee of $5. An imperial tax of $1.80 and Klansmen were also encouraged to purchase other clan sanctioned merchandise, including swords, Bibles, helmets, dry cleaning, and life insurance. Joining the clan was not a cheap undertaking. Using the numbers above, the first year of membership cost 2330 roughly $250. Of $2011.00 and subsequent years were $6.80 approximately $75 in 2011 dollars. At its peak in 1924, the clan conservatively generated annual revenue from all sources of at least 25 million, equivalent to 300 million in current dollars. Only a small portion of this revenue was required to fund basic operations. It was a ******* pyramid scheme. Yeah, it was a. It was a racist pyramid scheme. And I'm sorry, the dry cleaning was that for the rope, for the ropes, you got to keep those white robes. Yeah. You ever wore in a white robe? Quick, Katie. It's kind of, I haven't, you know, really. I can make some assumptions about it though, yeah. The problems that come from wearing a white robe, drinking coffee once, drink coffee once you like bloody up. Somebody shows everything. It shows every shows everything. Especially racist were the swords like Brandon. Yeah, yeah, there were brief course they were branded swords, coded. What a foolish question. I apologize. This economic growth was possible thanks to an enormous sales force started in 1921 by our PR friends and soon over 1000 people strong. Each grand dragon. The state clan heads got 250 out of each $10 membership fee. Members also paid a $1.00 yearly tax, which went to the Grand Dragon $0.50 of every $6.50 clan. Rope went to him as well. So the grand Dragons make bank and so did the sales force. the US is split into 9 domains with a goblin in charge of recruitment for each the goblin. Hires a king Kleagle, who hires a bunch of kleagles, the regular grunt sales force of the endeavor. They made $4.00 off of each membership. The remaining 350 was sent up the recruiting structure, with the person in charge of sales in the state. The King Kleagle getting a dollar, the regional sales overseer, a great goblin got $0.50. The national sales overseer, and Imperial Kliegel got $1.25, and the two most powerful men in the clan, the Imperial wizard and the Grand Wizard, split $0.75, but they're doing that for the whole country. Kleagles were paid for recruiting new members and what someone joined. None of the ongoing revenues went to the Salesforce. So for the big cheeses, the ongoing revenue is where it's at. So the sales force gets a cut of the initial one whenever you recruit someone, and then the big cheeses get anything else that they buy. So the Invisible Empire sold robes, flags, dry cleaning services, candy, every kind of thing. Imagine I'm going to quote again from the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan quote, a kluxen's nifty knife. Every word in that is spelled with a K, which was described as a quote real 100% knife for 100% of Americans. Could be bought for $1.25 a member could buy a brooch for his wife. A zircon studded fiery cross. A larger cross that a man could wear on the watch chain he displayed across his chest. Cost 290. For only $5 you could get allegedly A14 karat gold filled ring with A10 karat solid Gold Clan emblem on a fiery red stone. Also for sale, where phonograph records and player piano rolls with Klan songs. Advertisements for this merchandise appeared in newspapers across the country and in Flyers at large clown vacations. Plans for profit life insurance plan claimed $3 million worth of policies in 1924. A dubious figure, it claimed to provide burial insurance as well, but the service never actually materialized because it was a scam. Now, the KKK also offered a spectacular vacation getaway. I found an ad from sometime in the night. It's well, just you wait. I'm going to hand you the ad, Katie, and you can describe it to the readers now. It's from sometime in the 20s. Duke University, which is where I found this host, didn't know. Win and it talks about, you know what? I'm just going to, I'm just going to describe this ad, Katie. All right? To all the clans and Klansmen of Texas. And then there's like a little image that says Cool Coast camp the healthiest road to the coolest summer. Or all those words spelled with a K and Cool Coast every yes, every single one that you could imagine. And the coolest summer. Cool Coast Camp, the healthiest road to the coolest summer. Do you want me to read some of these things? You can do a little bit of that ad copy will I? Greetings we the grand Dragons of the realm of Texas and the. Great Titans of the five provinces in Texas, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan hereby officially endorse the annexed proposition of Klansmen. CT Gilliam of this is. Announce realm of Texas. The realm of Texas really. Into that he proposes to give a high class service to the Klansmen of Texas at a minimum cost year rate. It goes on. It goes back to you. I want a knife that says 100% knife. One of my favorite things I've ever heard. You have to guard against it being like part fork. You don't know. You don't know, you don't know. You don't know what it's cut with. The clan would have hated Swiss army. They would have hated a Swiss army Swiss army knife. That's like race mixing for two years. Threat to knife civilization now, the cool coast camp ad is a really fun document to read. For one thing, it brags repeatedly and pointedly about how much shade their beaches have because everybody's really white. Guess what it recommends is the most sensible thing to wear. She a big Mexican sombrero. Oh my God. What is that the like? Those are the exact words. Those are the exact words. Sombrero. Ohh, there is no shortage of bigotry in the ad, but it is kind of the classic wholesome, mainstream 1920s American bigotry as opposed to what we would expect from the clan today. I'm going to read, for example, a section titled The Family that sort of advertising this camp to the rest of the family. Wonderful mothers. This camp spelled with A K is deeded to you. So cool, so restful. No work whatsoever, no drudgery, no worry. The fiery cross guards you at nights and an officer of the law. With the same Christian sentiment guards carefully all portals beautiful daughter. A beautiful camp needs beautiful ornaments. No dust to avoid. Shades natural and shades artificial to keep away the freckles cool with a K in every way the time of your life and all caps. Put a bug in daddy's ear and hug him tight. He will let you come. The sentiment reflected through humanity by the rays of the fiery cross makes you as safe at our camp as at home. And mother's arms? Mother's arms is capitalized too. The prize of a concrete Lizzy. No idea. What? I have no idea. Is that OK? I bet no one out there listening. No. The only things with THC that spelled with a C I'm so disappointed. I don't know what the **** a concrete Lizzie is, but it's that was the prize given any person who could find a more wonderful spot in America that this is a sex thing. Yeah. Yes, yes, Cody, it's a ******* thing. They were all ****** guys. And the kick kick. A concrete Lizzie. Ohh concrete Lizzie in this day and age. Ohh no. Alright, yeah well. Cool colors and a low cost at an affordable cost. And all of this? Yeah, it's affordable cost because Texas is coast is kind of ******. The realm of Texas. Texas does not have a nice coast. Speaking as a Texan, don't go to Galveston, all right? That wasn't a concern. Yeah, good, good. The KKK recognized that children represented an incredible potential market, so far untapped by the powers of commercial racism. They opened three auxiliary groups for children. The junior KKK, starting in 1923, was literally just a child's version of the KKK. One new junior KKK chapter announced its opening by blowing a horn and lighting across and the leather J on fire for junior. Ohh no, no. For young girls there was. The Tri K Club Club is spelled with A K modeled after popular sororities at the time. Now, there was plenty of racism in the trick. Historian Christina Durocher described the central message of their propaganda as quote white girls should removed themselves from contact with All Blacks. A passive way of preserving white supremacy. But the trick Club was first and foremost a social club. I found an illustrated collection of the KKK sheet music on Google Books. This Internet, and it included the ritual of the Tri K Club, which seems like it was probably patterned off the claron. It includes a pledge song of this racism sorority. I'm going to read just the first verse, which is all I could find. We pledged you our friendship, true through happiness and tears. The tie that binds our hearts to you will hold throughout the years beneath this flag that waves above this cross that lights our way. You'll always find a sister's love in the heart of each trip. K I'm I got no. This is this is good for girls friends. Yeah, yeah. Burning Cross is a little weird. Yeah, it was just a bright it's bright cross. Burning. Yeah. Burning. Yeah. You don't know how it why it's lit up, just illuminated in flame. Yeah, it's weird how prescient you saying that is about to be now. Hiram Evans, who ousted the PR people at the end of 1922 and became the next Imperial wizard, still wanted to make money, but he was also someone for whom straight up racism was a huge part of the appeal. Here's the second coming of the KKK. His first career as a dentist might seem modest. One of his rivals like to call him a tooth. Fuller and he took advantage of the impression, calling himself the most average man in America so as to normalize the clan. His short, plump stature added to his everyman image. In fact, he was capable of serious violence. And Dallas, where he joined the Klan in 1920, he had organized black squads that kidnapped and tortured at least one black man. Dallas, by the way, used to be known as the most racist city in America around this time, the city of Hate. And it was actually really cool story. The Dallas Morning News crippled the Klan in that city by like, having reporters find where their meetings were and take down notes of all of the license plates they saw to, like, figure out which elected members and who was in the Klan and, like, published that. **** like that was Morning News. Did a lot of damage to the K thanks. Ducks. The ******* fascists. Yeah, yeah, did a great job. So yeah. Dallas Morning News is Antifa, I guess. Yeah. Evans decided that the clan should be more than an MLM. It should be a political party. He moved the KKK's headquarters to DC and established a magazine Fellowship forum that was not explicitly tied to the KKK, but existed to further its political aims. The Fellowship Forum build itself is standing for pure Americanism. There were also, in a number of the documents I read the sentiment America first, which I apparently came from the KKK before it became the center of Charles Lindbergh's organization. You found that on a lot of their documents. There was also just recently come out, there was talk about a wall at one of the big clown vacations they held like a guy talking about we need a silver wall and keep out immigrants. But he was not talking about 1:00 at the Mexican border. He was talking about a wall of laws to stop people from like Italy. They really hated Catholics, yeah, yeah. So racist, but different, different, differently racist from fundamental concepts. Same fundamentalist it, dress it up a little differently, put it over. They wanted the Mexicans because they need those sombrero. They work in sombrero to stay in the shade when you go to the cool coast. Ohh, good God. Soon after taking charge, Evans realized that the leader of the Indiana KKK, David Stevenson, had some potential he put him in charge of recruitment for seven states. Here's that book again. I'm a nobody from nowhere, really, but I've got the biggest brains, he boasted. I'm going to be the biggest man in the United States. But Stephenson was a fraud. Several times over, he claimed to be the millionaire son of a wealthy businessman and who have earned a decoration for bravery in World War One. In fact, he was the son of a Texas sharecropper, his education at a parochial school. Ended with the 8th grade and his stint with the army was as a recruiter in Iowa. He boasted of owning a wholesale coal supply and auto accessory companies, but in fact worked as a salesman for someone else's coal company. He married at least three women, drank heavily, got into fights, beat his wives, and attempted to rape several other women. But the ************ could talk and convince people to join the KKK, so he stayed. Under his leadership. 23% of the native born white men in southern Indiana joined the KKK. He refused to be called by his name. Going by the old man, Stevenson made millions off of his. Racist down line and was able to buy a mansion and a yacht. We'll come back to him later. He does get his just desserts well, he wasn't comfortable with all the the lofty titles. Just call me the old man. The old man. This man. Yeah. I'm gonna be the biggest man in America, yeah. For a good long while in the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere. At its height, as many as four million Americans, roughly 4% of the country, were members. It is to this day the largest explicitly racist organization in American history. If you don't count the Confederacy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 4,000,000. Now, the clan did not draw in that many members by focusing on the racism up front. Was always there a calm backdraft in their propaganda? And at every outing. But they knew you'd catch more flies with honey than with water. Enter the clown. Occasions these which gigantic outdoor events akin to massive state fairs or even carnivals, which they held in order to draw in new members and foster solidarity with Klans members. Here's how the nation described one such gathering. On July 4th, 1923, for instance, a crowd estimated at between 50,000 and 200,000 attended a clan picnic in Kokomo. IN the convocation boasted 6 tons of beef, 55,000 buns, 2500 pies, and 5000 cases of soda. Children had their own play center, while adults could take their pick of entertainments, including a boys singing quartet, a talkie film, circus performers, A6 round boxing match, and a daredevil who performed aerial acrobatics on the wing of a circling plane. All right, yeah, all right. Sounds like. Sounds like a good time. And that was the idea. We hold this not like we're going to try to get all the racist, but, like, we're just hold up, throw a big party for white people, and then maybe they'll want to join the clan and then we'll get more money. Yeah. Yeah. Thousand burgers. They also charged admission and stuff. They made a profit, like 1520 grand, which, you know, $1923.00 is a **** load of. Yeah, they cleaned up. And the biggest of these was in 24, had like 200,000 people show up, the largest clan gathering ever. And, like, a lot of people didn't know it was necessarily like, oh, this is like, for the clan stuff. It's like, no, I'm going to go to a fun party. Quite clear. But it was like, it was like, is the clan? It's yeah, it wasn't weird then like that. People met and fell in love there. I bet they did that. A lot of lot of clan babies, a lot of clarification kitties. Wasn't a reason poll like about like the number of people in America who like are OK with white supremacy and Neo Nazis and stuff. And it was about 4%, something like that. I think that's about right. Like recently, like last year, there's just a lot of racists in ******* Toronto 23. 1000 people voted for Faith, Goldie and explicitly neo-Nazi candidate. 23,000 Canadians. So, and they're Canadians. Things are going well, things are going great. Want like a fun BBQ to go to? So it's like thousands of buns. Thousands of Speaking of thousands of buns, EDS. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. 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Dot com to schedule your free consultation now. We're back. We're talking about convocations, the KKK's primary method of recruiting new Klansmen. I hate these words. There's way too many cases being set up in here. I slightly cringe every time. Cringe with OK. Absolutely clear chlorine. Ohh, large cross burnings were also held at Klein vacations. But unlike the 1st and ladder types of cross burnings that we're familiar with today, these were not primarily hateful spectacles. So like a cross burning is like the most racist thing you can do. These were not like they were pro Protestant and everyone knew the Klan was anti Catholic, but the cross burnings were like a firework show like they would. They would compete to see who could build the biggest like cross and which were like 50 feet tall, some of which were too big to even burn they would like. Up sometimes it would make gigantic crosses and cover them with light bulbs. Like, it was like a look at this cool thing that we're doing, monster Truck Burning Man. It's like burning a little bit of that because they weren't, like, going to like black people's houses and putting them on their lawns like, I'm. That may have happened out in the sticks sometimes, but like, the main purpose was to, like, entertain people, right? That was the goal of the cross things. So in this context, at this convocation, at a convocation, but when you're out in the wild much more anyways usually is we will be getting to that. I will be talking about the violence and stuff, but from what I read cross burnings were not a huge part of the violence at that point. Like that was more of like a showy thing that you did at the big events and the violence was the violence. The clan did describe themselves as the army of the Cross and I do want to really point out how much anti Catholic bias was critical to this too because they were super racist against. Catholics as well as black people and Jews and I guess you're not racist against socialist, but they didn't like socialist either. Anybody that wasn't like, yeah, that wasn't very specific kind of card carrying member of the very legitimate organization, the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, yeah. The Klansman also played highly publicized baseball games, often against teams of people that they defined in their propaganda as aliens. The second coming of the KKK notes, quote, the Youngstown clan team challenged the Knights of Columbus and the Klan played wichitas crack colored. Team the Monrovia fans the clan lost, finally. In areas of Klan strength, it operated Sandlot teams that played in recognized leagues, sometimes semi pro teams. Indiana, a clan stronghold, fielded a dozen such teams. These leagues might play in stadiums, and the newspaper coverage might list all team members. No secrecy here. In Los Angeles, the Clan team played A3 game charity series against the Benay Breath team, and in 1927, in Washington DC, The Clan played against the Hebrew All-Stars, newspaper coverage typically. Created the clan team like all others, with no particular attention to clan politics. Thus baseball functioned and normalize the clans that it could appear as a benign club akin to the Elks or again, a labor union. Wow, KKK play in the benign breath in baseball. Never have guessed that was the thing that happened in history. Yeah. Now while this was going on, there were Klaverns, who took to the KKK's more traditional activities violently oppressing minorities. A number of klaverns exercised vigilante justice. That is an important story, which I've waited until the end to cover. That's because I think it's important to understand what the second Klan was in context. The first clan was awful, and a clear terrorist organization was viewed by most Americans as a terrorist organization, at least outside of the South. But the only real ethos of the second Klan was making money. The racism and bigotry. Was just there because in 1922 it sold. If the same PR people that had hatched this scheme were around today, there May would have made a fraternal order that was super woken PC because there's more money there. Now. I'm sure they were racist too, but that it wasn't about that. It was about making the money and the clan again. It is. It's important to understand if you're going to understand the 20s, that everyone knew the clan was racist but everyone was racist. Like the woke people were racist. Like, yeah, our grandparents were racist, everybody was. What is. Yeah. Is only a grift because of the money making structure wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. It was not considered extreme. Not. Yeah. Not radicalizing anybody or anything like that. Yeah. Now what we're going to talk about. The violent part was extreme, and that is an important factor. But that was an ancillary thing that happened because of the original KKK's history and because a lot of racists are violent. The violence was not primarily the goal of the organization. It was a pyramid scheme. Yeah. So in the early 1920s, urban crime rose by 24. Percent in the United States Klan propaganda heavily emphasized these rising crime rates and build the clan as like their predecessors regulators. Much of this crime was driven by prohibition, and prohibition was a cause that KKK firmly supported. Also women's voting rights. There's a feminist angle to the clan too. We're not going to get into enough of it here, but there was a women's auxiliary KKK very popular like the the Klan was because one of the two PR people who founded this was a woman, was one of the first organizations in America to realize like, well women are voting now, so they have political power. They also have more money. Now, so we should go after him, right? Should get that. We should get that ******* money. Well done. Did. Yeah. More women in the KKK, KKK feminist icon? The KKK. Yeah. Representation is important. It's super important. Not just men in the clan these days, yeah. Some people even called the clan the militant wing of the temperance movement. Generally Klansmen and individual Clarance were willing to use violence against black people, of course, but also any other bugbear of that era's right wing. They carried out a raid that arrested 52 bootleggers in Anaheim, got 125 people arrested in Indianapolis, again, bootleggers in the northwest. They spent a lot of time threatening labor organizers, 1 Oregon Kliegel sent out this morning. If you are the mouthpiece of American labor in this locality, warned, and do not endorse the above principles, then you should be a fit subject for a vigilance committee. I found another piece of sheet music in the KKK. Puts forward this regulator depiction of the KKK. It's titled there's a Klansman watching you. You guys want to sing this for me, Cody? That's all you got? Yeah, you're right. You you did the other thing and also you musician. There's a plus of people patriotic in their work, always on their guard, always watchful, misspelled and alert. They all make good citizens. They're friends of Uncle Sam. They fight for right with all their might. They're called the Ku Klux Klan. That's the verse. Keep going man. You will find the boat in the country. You will find them in town. There is thick as bees in Clover. You can't tell when there all round. You might think that you're going to fool them. Have a care what you do. The cool Klux Klan or always watching the show? Watching you. There's a second verse that I will not do. Wow, wow. Wow, that was a virtuoso performance. Let's yeah, that's how it goes. Those are those are the notes that goes. So where did they sing this again? What was meeting? Records. They had records, Kate. Ohh. They had a publishing press and a record press. My God. So that's like you're having a dinner party and you're like, let's put on the new clan record. You guys heard, you guys heard there's a Klansman watching you. The fire, yeah, Oregon and Oklahoma, where particular centers of Clan Vigilance Committee violence, the second coming of the KKK, summarizes quote 3 Oregon cases known as the Oregon outrageous captured widespread press attention when Knight riders terrified their victims with such lynching threats. JF Hale, a piano salesman White, was accused of illicit sexual affairs and the would be lynchers demanded that he break off the improper relationships. He may have also been targeted because he owed money that a Klansman was having trouble collecting, Sam Johnson described as part. Mexican was accused of stealing chickens and being an idler. Arthur Burr, an African American boot black accused of bootlegging, received the worst treatment. Vigilantes abducted him and took him to the very Crest of the Siskiyou Mountains, where they strung him up and let him down three times, releasing him. They fired revolvers near his feet, demanding that he leave the era permanently, yelling can you run inward, though charges were brought against three groups of Klansmen and each case. Juries acquitted the culprits on the grounds that because the victim provoked, violence became so widespread, with a reported one flogging for every night of the year that the governor placed. Rights of the state under martial law clan efforts got him impeached in 1923. Wow. Oklahoma law officers sometimes handed suspects over to clan whipping parties or even participated in the beatings and Kansas clansman abducted an anti Klan mayor, tied him to a tree, and laid 30 stripes on his bare back and bloody Williamson as one southern Illinois County became known. The local clan and the Anti Saloon League merged into the Williamson County Law Enforcement League, which soon became run by the Klan. Attacks on the operators of the wide open bars produced lethal battles in 1924 and 25. Involving gunmen in the deployment of military forces and ended by forcing the anti Clan sheriff out of office. These armed skirmishes killed 20 people so do not want to be ignoring the violence. This is still happening. Parking, like it wasn't the purpose, the clan was more about money, but also the violence was occurring within the society was fine with us. This is not a countercultural act. Again, they were acquitted generally when they were brought to trial because most people were fine with what most white people were fine with what they were doing, right? Like vigilante cop figure, exactly like taking care of business, because the government is not going to do it so horribly violent, but not horribly violent against the wishes of the majority of their white Protestant country. And in fact, we're kind of saying this heroes by a lot of people, which was true only in the South. For the original KKK, right? N was not cool. Yeah, so again of racist Batman. It's kind of racist Batman. Exactly. And America's always loved the vigilante ******. That's the punisher. But racist, right? Yeah. In 1925, the KKK even carried out an attack on the home of the young Malcolm X when he and his parents lived in North Omaha. Here's a quote from Malcolm's autobiography. It actually is how his autobiography starts when my mother was pregnant with me, she told me. Later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, NE, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it, standing where they could see her pregnant condition. She told them that she was alone with her three small children and that my father was away preaching in Milwaukee. The Klansman shouted threats and warnings, had heard that we had better get out of town because the good Christian white people were not going to stand for my father's spread and trouble among the good ******* of Omaha with the back to Africa preachings of Marcus Garvey. My father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Baptist minister, a dedicated organizer. When Marcus Aurelius Garveys you and I a united ***** Improvement Association, with the help of such disciples as my Father, Garvey, from his headquarters in New York City's Harlem, was raising the banner of Black race purity and exhorting the ***** masses to return to their ancestral African homeland, A cause which had made Garvey the most controversial black man on Earth. Still shouting threats, the Klansmen finally spurred their horses and galloped around the house, shattering every window pane with their gun butts. Then they rode off into the night, their torches flaring as suddenly as they had come. Yeah, it's horrifying. Now, like all good and bad pyramid schemes, the Klan had to come to an end. It was finally brought down, not by the US government, because probably most of the US government was fine with it, but by the incompetence, greed and corruption of its leaders. But it's always that with these kind of far right gangs, Phillip Fox, editor of the Imperial Nighthawk, a major clan newspaper, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering another Klansman he considered a rival. Hiram Evans called it a personal affair. Governor Ed Jackson of Indiana, a Klansman, was indicted for bribery. Officers of the Klan bank were also indicted for embezzlement and grand larceny. There were countless scandals and arrests, a fight with the FBI that led to 19 people being charged, members caught drinking and bootlegging, and paying for back alley abortions. They picked a fight. J Edgar Hoover's not a smart guy to pick a fight with. 1924. Really bad guy to pick a fight with that period of time. They did not win that fight. The final nail in the KKK's coffin was the conviction of Indiana Grand Dragon Stevenson, who we talked about earlier for kidnapping, ****** and murdering his secretary. What, now that? Only the classiest high class? I mean, I was waiting to be like white collar, like a tax thing or something. No. Yeah, like he's straight up paying for, like, a terrible thing. He did well. And here's here's what it's actually even. Worse than it sounds, because he did not technically murdered her. He raped her and assaulted her, and then she killed herself. But the jury convicted him of murder because they believed he'd ruined her, which is also why she killed herself. So it's like even worse than, right? Just because it's the 20s and it was a garbage time to exist? Yeah, it's it's messed up. But Stevenson went to ******* prison. Did he die in prison? I think so, yeah. He was convicted of second degree murder. Yeah. By 1927, the KKK had gone from its high. Like 4,000,000 members to less than 350,000 active members nationwide, it never quite went extinct entirely. Men continue wearing Klan robes and being racist up until the modern day, but the giant money making and political enterprise that it once was fell apart. Are there still dues? And I mean, I mean maybe an individual chapters, but there's no yeah, you know, not the structure is saying it was. Yeah, there's some people that try to be that, but like it's pretty shadows of themselves. The legacy of the KKK outside of its existence as an MLM and the vigilante violence it inspired is unclear. During its height the KKK was extremely politically active, but there is substantial debate as to whether or not it actually influenced politics on a mass scale. A number of clan backed candidates were elected and the Klan was a massive fundraiser, but that. Coverage studies analysis claim that the actual political achievements of the group were fairly minimal just because those people were already gonna get elected. They were elected because their clansmen, everybody was ******* racist, right? They just happened to be in the clan. However, in the conclusion of the second coming of the KKK, Linda Gordon makes this note. Some scholars and contemporary observers have seen the 1920s Northern clan as a failure because it was short lived and because its campaigns against Catholics and Jews did not manage to confine them to second class citizenship. But transience is common to most social movements, moreover the clan. Client, in part because it had triumphed in several respects. State eugenics laws providing for forcible sterilization of those of defective stock spread to 30 States and those labeled defective were typically the poor and people of color. The biggest clan victory was immigration restriction, and Imperial Wizard Evans repeatedly claimed credit for its passage. I mean, it is pretty disappointing that their eventual, like, downfall or decline was not because people started to know better or, like, people stood up, like this whole story. I'm sitting here thinking, like, yeah, but when does it like, oh, this person? Like, there's this big altercation and people started just public opinion started to change. Nope. It was they were fine with the racism and the vigilante murder. Yeah. It was the abortion thing. That really. Yeah. Back alley abortions really turned America against them. Hurray. Hurray. We got through it. All this stuff. I know, the wall stuff, the immigration stuff. It's just always so fascinating. Like, why do you think these things align with, like, maybe it's even like you recognize that other people who aren't white have invented things you like, like sombreros. I know guys without Mexicans. How are you going to go to the cool? Come on. You're going to have a bad time. You're gonna have a bad time. You would have got anywhere there playing the benign breath in baseball. Jesus. That is fascinating. That was a twist. That was a yeah. And now I know what MLM means. So little marketing. Yeah, it's a really important in the politics of today. Yeah, I just hadn't heard that abbreviation money lives matter. There is a Direct Line between the strategy behind the KKK and the strategy behind Amway, which is the source of the fortune of Betsy DeVos. Ohh, but but we can't. We don't have time to talk about her. Like we don't have time to talk about her. Yeah, that's a good segue into the next episode. Yeah, we will be doing another thing very soon. Plugs, plugs, plugs, plugs. Plugs. Plug. Check us out on the Internet. Twitter. Some more news twitter.com/somemorenews. I was getting there, OK? It seemed like you were just like passing it off. No, no, no, you do it. Then you said on the Internet, that's pretty bad. Our YouTube show also some more news. Our podcast even more news. Yep, that on the Twitter. Personal Twitter. It's Katie stole mine. You can see, yeah, we'll get good at this one day. Give them money, some more news, Patreon dollars and would love that. Go to go there, go to there. You can find me on the Internet at I write OK on Twitter. I have a book called A Brief History of ice. It's not about the plan. It's about me putting a friend in the hospital with dangerous drugs. It's fun. It's a good time. Everybody. Everybody enjoyed it. Twitter and Instagram. 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