A commenter a long time ago advised us that the “KKK” was called that because K is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, so that KKK=33. That may be so, but if you check my spelling above, Coo Clucks Clan, invites the third letter of the alphabet three times, or 333. They could have easily dropped one of the words for 33. Still, “KKK” is an odd marker.
Numerical signals like that are not uncommon, and of course by themselves mean nothing. So I recently journeyed to the primary source for everything, Wikipedia. Hereinafter I will refer to that source as “Lies of Our Times,” or “LOOT.”
I printed the article. It is 44 pages long! There you go – 4+4=8! Of course, a different font would have produced a different result. Numbers usually signal nothing. In fact, most of the article seems to follow the sequence of numbers, 1 through 239, without much in the way of deviation. Those deviants I noticed were as follows:
- 111 appears three times, and out of sequence, in describing peak membership in Indiana (“4-15% of the eligible population); that nearly 20% of the Indiana population were members in 1920, and that the rapid expansion in membership in the 1920s was a multi-level marketing campaign.
- 38 appears five times: In relations to bombings in Birmingham in the 1950s; in regard to the Freedom Riders in Birmingham in 1961; in regard to alliances forged with gubernatorial offices in the south; in describing the FBI’s general disregard of the Klan during the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, and finally in regard to an alliance with the office of Governor George Wallace of Alabama in the 60s, part of the forged alliances mentioned. These 38’s are late in the article, when the other surrounding footnotes are in the 170s.
Make of that what you will. It is not conclusive of anything, but does make me a little suspicious. However, that only accentuates the general sense I was left with when I wrapped up my reading: The Ku Klux Klan of all eras were and are nothing but agents provocateur.
The question I address is this: Were they a front group for a hidden hand, such as Intelligence, or did they arise spontaneously? These days “spontaneous” events such as riots, Women’s Marches or tear gassing of children on the Mexican border are planned well in advance, and organized from above to appear to be from below. Is the KKK the same animal? Most likely.
The Klan appeared on the scene in three periods – the wake of the Civil War in the South; nationwide in the early twentieth century in the wake of the movie Birth of a Nation, and finally after 1950 and to this day. Before I get into all of that, I want to address some things that should strike anyone as odd:
- KKK allegedly formed and hid their identities to be able to commit crimes and evade prosecution.
- The Ku Klux Klan of the 20th century wore white sheets with pointed hoods, which would make it difficult to drive a car, ride a horse, see anything, or run away after committing a crime. They are also highly memorable and noticeable.
- The name chosen, “Ku Klux Klan”, is said to have Greek origins, but could be Klingon for all I know. It too is highly memorable.
- From 1915 forward KKK burned crosses at meetings, but only to emphasize that they were a Christian group, and not as an affront to Christianity. Ask anyone however, if cross-burning is an affront to decency, and we know the answer. (The burning of a sacred symbol at meetings, just like they do at Burning Man, is odd, nonetheless.)
- Their membership was secret, so there has never been an accurate count. This allows for all sorts of manipulation.
- They sported US flags at their rallies, and always presented themselves as patriots first.
So it appears at once that they are making a public statement: “Look-at us! See how outlandish we are!” At the very same time, they want to commit criminal acts in secrecy. It seems, on its face, a contradiction.
The photo above, taken from LOOT, is said to depict “Mississippi Ku-Klux members in the disguises in which they were captured. [From a photograph].” They were arrested, we are told, in 1871 and this photo was taken at that time, later to be published in Harper’s Weekly. The original KKK did not sport the sheets and pointed hoods. What strikes me is how non-threatening these men are, in relaxed postures, two of them sporting guns. If is as if they were told “You’re under arrest! But wait! First, a photo.” (I hope someone can make something of the symbolic images on the costumes.)
There is not going to be a big ‘reveal’ in this post, that is, I will not be able to hold up concrete proof that KKK was meant to be agents provocateur for unstated reasons, but I will review and highlight their behaviors over the centuries to see if they point at anything that makes them more than the cranks they appear to be in public. There is a lot of activity to cover, so I will use selected instances that I find either representative or questionable, or both.
The First Clan, Post-Civil War, 1865-1871
The original Kuklux Klan (original spelling) was formed in late 1865 in the immediate wake of the Civil War. It was secret and oath-bound. They are said to have used violence against black people, including burning houses and leaving dead bodies on the roads (footnote 53). The “Prescript,” or statement of principles, was written by Confederate Brigadier General George Washington Gordon. (That first and middle name will appear again.) The prescript is, of course, a white supremacist document.
The first “Grand Wizard” (as if they are making references to witchcraft) was Confederates General Nathan Bedford Forest. He used the Klan to oppose Republican state governments, along with carpetbaggers and scalawags, two terms we all learned in high school history.
It is important for us in 2018 to understand that the terms “Democrat” and “Republican,” at least in the South, appealed to different types of people then than they do now. The South was solidly Democrat before and after the war, and stayed so for nearly a century until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After that bill was passed, there was a great exodus of southerners to the Republican Party. This holds true to this day. So the Democrat Party of the antebellum and postwar south was identified with racism, while the Republican Party with its founding in northern states was abolitionist.
The following quote is lifted directly from LOOT, citing historian Eric Foner:
“In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.”
Foner is granting high aspirations to a supposedly self-formed group that another historian, Elaine Frantz parsons, called …
“…chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.”
I draw a parallel here, as the two statements above from prominent historians seem to indicate that disgruntled and angry white men were used to serve a higher propose, lured into a group that intended to use their anger to serve other purposes, that is, to be agents provocateur. The group that comes to mind is the modern-day Tea Party, used by Republicans in the elections before 2016 to stir up resentment and put angry white men to work at purposes that even they were not aware of.
Thus it appears that the first rendition of the Kuklux Klan was not an accidental assembly of people who rose up from the farms and plantations and found common cause, but rather a group organized from above to appear that way. That is generally how it works.
The Klan are said to have killed black political leaders and to have intimidated Southern Republicans. Negroes and Republicans were afraid to vote. LOOT cites W.E.B. Du Bois in stating that the Klan killed “thousands” of Negroes (10 to 1 more than whites), and staged political riots, but does not cite other than to footnote Du Bois, who claims that, for example, in South Carolina in 18 months in 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 aggravated assaults. (Footnote 65.) (I don’t go out of my way to find these numbers … they just magically appear.)
The above drawing is said to be of the assassination of George W. Ashburn by Klan members on March 30, 1868. Note the absence of Klan costumes, wearing only masks, as if the artist was not aware of the group’s formal costumes. Also note, again, that Ashburn’s middle initial “W” stands for “Washington.” Finally, note that no one was ever prosecuted for this crime.
One of the outcomes of the Civil War was passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Here is part of the language of that amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That sounds noble and progressive, in fact, it is. I cannot sit back and say that we should ignore violation of civil rights of people when State government refuse to act. That was a problem with the original Constitution – the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States.
But the effect of this Amendment was also less pure in another regard: It essentially ended States’ rights and made all Americans subjects of the Federal Government. Here is Edward W. Snowden from his book Everything You Know About the Constitution is Wrong, speaking of the language above in regard to our Bill of Rights:
“Nothing could be more plain than that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States. Not only did none of the Framers intend it to apply to the States, the Supreme Court had determined by unanimous decision in Barron v. Baltimore that it did not. Federalism made no sense if if the federal Constitution applied to the States since state constitutions would serve no purpose.” (p 140)
Here we are perhaps beginning to shed some light on the English word “provoke” that underlies “provocateur.” The violence of the post-Civil War era was the calling card for the Federal Government to take charge of the situation. The 14th Amendment, in essence, began a new era in the United States, one we endure to this day, where the Federal Government owns our lives, and state governments must kneel before it.
That is, I suspect, the underlying motive of the hidden hands behind the first Kuklux Klan, which petered out by the year 1872, mission accomplished.
Second Klan: 1915-1944
Birth of a Nation: I heard of this film long ago, and could not fathom such open racism as it contained, though I have never seen it. Looking back at it now, it seems that its real purpose was provocation, and that its original title, The Clansmen, would have been more appropriate. The film portrayed black people as unintelligent and aggressive towards white women. It portrayed the original Kuklux Klan as a heroic force. The revival of the KKK around the time of the release of the movie appears to have been a planned event, but to what end?
The second Ku Klux Klan was founded by William Joseph Simmons, a Spanish-American War veteran who became interested in the Klan after seeing Birth of a Nation. There is not much information available on him other than his parentage, the fact that he was in the military, and his membership in two churches and twelve different fraternal organizations, only one of which is named by LOOT (Woodmen of the World, in which he was called “Colonel”). This version of the Klan is the one widely known for its sheets and pointed hoods.
Simmons claimed in a pamphlet that he wanted to protect the “interests of white womanhood,” and of course white supremacy was central to the organizing principles. Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Jew also played a prominent role, and the image and reputation of the University of Notre Dame was enhanced during this period. The Klan was most prominent in the state of Indiana.
Membership in the Klan is spotty information at best, with a 1924 number of “1.5 to 4 million.” Assuming that statistics are at the base of that estimate, the confidence interval has to be beyond six standard deviations, which to me is more like a wild ass guess, somewhere between four and fifteen percent of the population. Estimated number of Klansmen are typically vague in this manner in all eras. It could be said that because it is a secret organization, all we can do is make educated guesses. It is also, however, opportunity for exaggeration to enhance the image of the group.
The KKK was ardently in favor of Prohibition, its single largest selling point. The United States, even in the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, had a drinking problem, as it does today. While Prohibitionists are often caricatured as self-righteous women, there was a real underlying problem. So KKK chose to be on the sober side of that battle and gained much support because of it. (I suppose to make a point, in 1922 200 Klansmen set fire to saloons in Union County, Arkansas. A small event like that can have a large payoff in terms of publicity.)
The largest single event that I found in the LOOT account of Klan activities during this period was a march against Notre Dame, and a confrontation there which football coach Knute Rockne defused by forbidding students from leaving campus. In agitation activities, being the target is often good PR, so that Notre Dame indeed rose to prominence during this time. Later, they made a movie about Rockne, and Ronald Reagan played George Gipp. I am invoking Zal.
Beyond that, the KKK during this time appears to be a relatively peaceful group, anti-immigration, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, pro-Prohibition, and strongly patriotic. After reading this section of LOOT, I wondered why all the fuss, as there seems no important legislation passed in their wake, and no violent confrontations other than a few saloons burned down in Arkansas and the one at Notre Dame benefiting that institution.
So why was the KKK revived in 1915? I can only take a stab based on what I know about our current era. I often say that public opinion in this country does not matter. That is not the correct way to say it, so I add that while public opinion is never heeded, it is managed. Why? Because public opinion can be dangerous to people in power.
However, that is only the case if we are a well-informed and united front. So the object of public policy is to manage us and keep us divided. Having an inflammatory group like KKK come front and center in the middle of Prohibition served, I think, as a great distraction, something for us to be either for or against. It did not matter which side we took as long as we took a side. Look at their costumes! Listen to their rhetoric! If this group was not set up solely for the sake of getting our attention, then it was just a joke at our expense.
And do not forget what else was going on in this era – the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, woman’s suffrage, and entry into the Great War. KKK might have been seen as useful to distract from the real agenda of that time.
That is the best I can do as to their purpose at the turn of the twentieth century.
Here are some photos from LOOT:
A cross burning in 1922, this photo stands out because there are three Klansmen and one cross. This is quite different from depictions we see in publications and movies.
These are two marches in Washington, DC, each framed so that the Capitol Dome is in the background. In the photo on the left I count 15 marchers in the foreground. I am suspicious of the background knowing that numbers are often exaggerated in photo dark rooms by addition of ghost-like images in the background to enhance crowds. I can easily be wrong, however, as if doctored, it is a good job. There could have been as many as 50-60 marching that day. Notice that those whose faces are visible are women. LOOT tells us that in the 1920s KKK did have a women’s auxiliary.
In the photo on the right, I count 12 marchers. (These are two separate events, one in 1928 (left) and the other in 1926 (right).
Here we have a large field, a single bus, and 26 Klansmen in the background, two in the foreground along with two children. It is a posed photo, everyone lined up and facing the camera. Is this the best they could muster?
KKK 1950-current era
I draw your attention to the photo above knowing you have seen it before and that I believe it to be fake. This means that the famous Selma-Montgomery March in 1965, even though real, was hyped. More likely it was organized from above. Other photos show more people.
To be clear, I do not disparage the Civil Rights Movement in any way. Its leaders, at least those who gained national prominence, were most likely controlled opposition. It would be SOP, if a real Civil Rights Movement were in the making, to co-opt it, and this indeed what I think happened.
Reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s, then, would not be a natural event, but instead would have been spurred on by the same people who infiltrated the Civil Right Movement. KKK’s job would be to provoke.
That in mind, here is a partial list of murders by KKK members in the 1950s and 1960s:
- In 1951, Harry and Harriette Moore’s home was bombed, and he died shortly after. Both were said to be activists in the NAACP, another group that needs closer scrutiny (on another day). The deaths, reported by LOOT, are loaded with spook markers. Here’s just one: “The Moores were rushed to the nearest hospital that would treat African-Americans in Sanford, Florida, a 29.8 miles … drive by car.[9]” LOOT could easily written “nearly thirty miles” but instead opted for a number that contains both 8 and 11. Other footnotes used 8 and 3 at once. The event is suspiciously laden with such data. Four men, said to be Klansmen, were blamed, but even after five separate investigations spanning sixty years, no one was charged.
-
Dr. Richard Kimble Willie Edwards was forced to jump from a bridge to his death by four Klan members on January 23, 1957. Because of decomposition the cause of death was undetermined. The case was prosecuted 19 years later, and even as one of the four suspects submitted an affidavit in exchange for immunity, the charges were dropped since the judge could not say with certainty that a 125 foot drop (38.1 meters) would cause a person’s death. (Apparently that judge had just watched the movie the Fugitive? Did he see Dr. Richard Kimble survive such a fall? Oops – wrong time frame.) I am just a tad suspicious here that there was indeed a body, it was indeed Willie Edwards, and that the decision to blame it on the KKK in 1976 was political.
- Speaking of the Selma March above, Viola Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King and left her children in Detroit to travel to Selma, Alabama. She was spotted with a black man in her car by a group of four men, one of whom was an FBI informant. They allegedly overtook her, shot her in the head and killed her. In this case three men were convicted and served time, while the informant entered the Witness Protection Plan. It is odd that the car had an FBI agent in it, and that he did not stop the crime from being committed.
- Vernon Dahmer, Sr. died of smoke inhalation due to a fire in his house set by members of the KKK. Fourteen men were indicted, four convicted. One served a three-year sentence, the other three were pardoned. Eleven were charged with conspiracy, but the only one to serve time was Sam Bowers, who was finally convicted 25 years later, and who died in prison.
And on it goes. I am gratified that the pursuit of justice led to prosecution decades after-the-“facts” of these events. There are quite a few others, and some of the larger ones – the Selma-Montgomery March of 1965, Bloody Sunday, and the murder of three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner, are separate projects – as it is I have been taken off course throughout this effort, and want to stay focused on the role of the KKK in the 1960s as a force for provocation.
At this time I want to focus on that role, and try to understand the broader meaning of the Civil Rights movement in light of just the four events I highlighted above, each suspicious. Others have written about the odd circumstances that brought Rosa Parks to the fore, and of course the strange, possibly fake murder of Martin Luther King. Using those two events as bookends, I see a natural anger within the black population given credence, and then via various staged events in between, was allowed to rise to a boil before 4/4/68, when they killed hope.
Was that its purpose? In a similar manner, Charles Manson was used to kill the anti-Vietnam War movement even as various fake events in between – Kent State, Napalm Girl, Jane Fonda’s fake trip to North Vietnam – we used to bring it to a boil. What I am seeing here is population management – my favorite (and overused) analogy is a paddock of sheep that has within it a fence. It is very easy for the sheep to be on one or the other side of that fence, or to jump over it or go around it. The important feature of the paddock is that the sheep are divided among themselves. The shepherds on the outside looking in never lose control.
Agitation said to be by KKK went on into the 70s, 80s and 90s, a supposed massacre of communist protesters in 1979, (11/3 to be exact – 3 x 11 =…) the shooting of four elderly black women in Chattanooga in 1980, a lynching in Alabama in 1981. In 1995 KKK reappears as Neo-Nazi. In our century KKK is said to be present and working on immigration, civil unions and same-sex marriage. Whatever the issue of the day, they are with us and used to create tension and stage events to bring in high-profile news coverage. They are, and always have been, in my view, an Intelligence front.
A final note here … thanks to our friend Kevin, I encouraged my wife to consent to our spending $239.88 annually to join Ancestry.com. Throughout my reading and writing I have looked into the lineage of various participants, and have not much to show for it. Most surprising was George Corley Wallace, Governor of Alabama at various times from 1967 to 1987, who was famously shot and confined to a wheel chair, has less ancestry apparent than me with my pauper ancestry.
Wallace stood at the doorway of the University of Alabama in 1963, refusing to allow black students to enter. If ever there was a staged event … to the right he is being confronted, apparently, by Nicholas Katzenbach. As always, I question the perfect framing of the photo and the positioning of the photographer in just the right place at just the right time.
The end result of this confrontation and others with Wallace at the center, of course, is yet another blow to States’ rights. Mixed as I am about that outcome, knowing that justice is as rare at the state level as federal, I suspect that Wallace was hired as a mascot during those years to achieve that end. So I was surprised that his lineage stops at George Corley Wallace, his father, in 1898. LOOT tells us that he was one of five generations bearing the name “George Wallace.” I have had similar results with every prominent person I have researched in this manner on this project. With blacks it is no surprise, as so many of those families have no background before the Civil War. With prominent whites, it is a little more troubling.
It is time to close this piece so this is an odd-duck thing that makes for a good ending. William Stetson Kennedy was an author and activist who allegedly infiltrated the Klan in the 1940s. He is said to have played a large role in the demise of the Klan by providing inside information to police and to the writers of the Superman radio series, who used it to ridicule the KKK.
I thought with a name like “Stetson Kennedy” I might hit pay dirt, and indeed I did though not as I expected. See below.
Do you see what I see? We don’t know his mother, but his father bore the name “George Wallace Kennedy.” I want to make an MM group-style ancestral broad jump, but instead I leave it there, stumped.
Piece of Mindful 
What a nice case of synchromysticism, Mark! While you wrote this excellent and detailed post about “the Klan”, I looked at the other side of the pond for more Nazionism (which the Klan also is of course) stuff.
I will read the post in detail later, but have to say that I always had the idea it was the “Cuckoo’s Clan” (33), with the cuckoo of course the personification of “controlled opposition”/inside job in the animal kingdom…
Another example of TRIOMF.
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“We have stricken the (slave) shackles from four million human beings
and brought all laborers to a common level not so much by the elevation
of former slaves as BY PRACTICALLY REDUCING THE WHOLE
WORKING POPULATION, WHITE AND BLACK, TO A CONDITION
OF SERFDOM. While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to
conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have
NATIONALIZED A SYSTEM OF OPPRESSION which, though more
refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.”
–Horace Greeley (1811-1872), founder of the New York Tribune, speaking on post-civil war or ‘14th amendment’ citizenship
From Clint’s STRAWMAN book.
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As with Kubrick, it is interesting to take a look at the previous film of director Griffith (Birth of a Nation), which may help answer the question “why the 1915 revival?”.
The movie was released 6 days after a very suspicious and probably staged event (on 2-2), the Vanceboro bridge bombing.
The perpetraitor:
This “bombing” was allegedly masterminded by Franz von Papen, the one who pushed Dolfy Hitler as candidate… small world it is after all.
The movie before “Birth of a Nation” was a movie about and with! Pancho Villa, main actor in the Mexican “Revolution”, released on 9-5-’14 (14-14). With “The Klan” opposing Mexicans as “impure”, it could have been prescriptive programming for the hit in 1915 (and the 100 year later plot with Trump and David “KKK” Duke vs. “the evil Mexicans”).
Actor Ráoul Walsh played in both films, “stage killer” John Wilkes Booth in Birth of a Nation and a young Pancho Villa…
Thomas Dixon, the author of the book “The Clansman” which was the basis for the movie, was “a founding member of the Kappa Alpha Order” (Wiki says on his page, but is not listed on the KAO one). But a strong “Klan” vibe there.
Famous members of that fraternity include:
– J. Edgar Hoover
– CEOs of FedEx, American Airlines and Coca Cola
– George Marshall, namesake of the Marshall Plan and Nobel “Peace” Prize recipient
– Richard Harrison Truly, the first “former astronot” to head NASA (??)
– and more names you probably recognize
A funny one I noticed is an actor called Mark Lewis Walberg…
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As opposed to Mark Wahlberg. Small world indeed.
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I agree Mark that this is a staged photo/paste up combo:
– there is a clear gap between the foreground marchers (I count 16) and the ones behind that
– another layer appears to be behind the second one, where the “Klan members” are not marching in rows anymore, but spread out
Clue is also the audience watching the march. The people on the extreme right (pun not intended) of the photo do not watch the people marching right in front of them, but have their heads tilted all towards the back (Capitol), as if they are expecting “the Saints come marching in”…
This is a hilariously small group of marchers. Indeed typical photowhorenalism trick trying to pass this bunch off as some massive march.
The Capitol by the way seems sharper (more in focus) than the marchers (ok, moving) and the audience on the left. Hmm…
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You should do a study (of the upper photo) using some math to gauge the distance between the man at the front of the march and the crowd behind him, as you say, facing away. On my screen he is 2.5 inches, and the man closest to us in the crowd whose full body is apparent is one-half inch, or one fifth his size. Assuming for sake of simplicity (close enough is enough) that both are the same height. At what distance does a man shrink to one-fifth his height?
Remember, I was a CPA, and we do arithmetic, not geometric perspective. The only way I could solve this would be to actually march it off outside.
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The US American flag is officially 3 x 5 feet, so a quick comparison would make the man in front of the upper photo about 5.5-6 feet.
I agree the people in the back are very small, so would be far behind, farther than at a glance seems correct. We would need the width of the avenue (from tram line to the side), for a proper calculation.
But I don’t know how camera lenses were in 1926, that may play a role too. I fear too many unknowns and a hard time nailing it. Also we don’t know what happened in the process of scanning this photo (distortions) in the past 90 years.
A real photo expert can say much more I guess.
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Possessing the original negative’s for all the photos of the past umpteen years? Priceless.
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Pennsylvania Avenue is a wide street that in part runs between the White House and the Capitol Rotunda. Using a precise design schematic, I calculated its width at arrival at the rotunda at 141 feet, and assume that to be its width throughout its most important section.
The trolley rails will be about 4.85 feet, and using that I measured the entire section of the avenue that is taken up by the two trolley lines to be 27.5 feet. Assuming that section of the avenue is in the middle, allowing traffic on both sides, the distance to the curb will be 141/2, or 70.5 feet minus 27.5/2, or 13.75 feet, or about 57 feet.
This photo is of me (with shit-eating grin) in our driveway. I have placed a 5 foot 4 inch ladder 57 feet away. I am 6 feet tall, or used to be. The ladder takes up .143 as much vertical distance as I do in the photo at 57 feet.
Of course, in the photo, the people are behind the man in front, so that if you swing a 57 foot arc around, it will not reach them. Even so, they take up .20 as much vertical distance as he does in the photo.
Of course I am forced to make assumptions throughout, but my judgment is that the people in the background, who are looking away as you say, are at least 1.4 times as big as they should be, at least, relative to the man in the foreground. This would make the photo, as you say, a paste-up.
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Do you in Colombia know the expression “Rube Goldberg?”
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Never heard of it.
I try to follow your calculations. If the avenue is just 141 feet (just 43 m) wide, I would still think those people are far too small, at just 21.5 m/70.5 ft distance away? But if your calculations show they are too big, I must be wrong.
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I thought exactly as you and was surprised by the outcome. Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who built very elaborate machinery to accomplish simple tasks.
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Here is teh solution to the perspective problem above if any want to take a crack at it. We want to solve for distance between the two men on teh assumption they are both the same height.
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This photo also looks suspicious to me:
1 – the date this “Singing Revolution” was happening in Estonia; September 11, 1988 (9/11-88)
2 – it has the same hallmarks of before; a foreground, a missing/too small middle ground and a background; it has this “Apolloesque front screen projection feel”, hasn’t it?
3 – what is curious is the big Estonian flag in “the audience” in the back. All the flags in the front are small, not the official size of the flag, but handheld ones. The flag in the back is far bigger than 1.5-2 heads wide, as the ones in the front would be. Why would there only be 1 huge flag in the background and just a handful of smaller other flags? Why only 1 or 2 protest signs in the back, but nothing in the foreground?
4 – those flags in the background (what looks like the projected screen behind the dozens of people in the front) look like copies from the ones in the foreground; the “huge flag” sticking out in the background has the same shape as the center one in the front, the one further in front to its left (above the blonde people) looks like the one also to the left of the clearest front flag (above the curly haired smiling woman) and looks even cut in half? and the others also very much resemble the shapes of the ones “before the screen”.
Or am I imagining things here?
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Look at the rounding of the crowd in the background. There is a line there.
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What do you mean by “rounding of the crowd”? I see a “line” running just underneath the protest signs (white horizontal, left of the center), where the crowds above and below have a different tone/look, do you mean that?
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No … look in the background, almost as if they are all standing on the moon. It is a perfect arc. It looks hinky.
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I count maybe nine people in the foreground that are real.
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I see what you mean now, the arching line between the crowd and that what’s behind indeed looks strange; the flag poles (without flags on them?) do not align.
I count 18 people that could be real and some others that may be obscured by those 18.
9/11 88 is probably the spookiest date ever (with 9/11 33 of course).
“Kristallnacht” was 9-11-38 by the way. European dates, so November 9, 1938…
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A crowd that big needs lots of toilets. I would hate to be in the middle and have to go.
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Lol Mark, good point!
It’s funny how, in our Hollywood saturated version of reality, we forget to remember the little details of real life. In the real world, there are bathrooms, and people need to use them. What, no portapotties on the side lines? No pathways for people to walk? No cops? Hell, even a local little league game has more facilities!
In the real world, besides having to use the restroom, there is heat stroke, claustrophobia, mob hysteria….but haven’t these same folks also sold us the story of much smaller/less concentrated concert crowds (etc.) trampling people to death and basically descending into chaos within minutes?
Why was this ridiculously huge mob so calm? Staying in their place amongst thousands, waving flags, not a care in the world. I mean look at how HUGE that crowd is supposed to be! I mean, really, the mass they’re trying to imply is just insane! If a line is more than five customers long at Walmart the people start getting cranky! I guess Estonian people in the 80s were just a really mellow bunch when singing revolutions were involved.
And where did they even come from, lol?? I mean, how did they get to that spot? Where would these people have parked? Was there an enormous field rented out for parking that day or did people park all along the city roads and walk to the event? Again, it’s the mundane real life details that foil the whole thing… think about the parking! Was there a hawker selling water and refreshments up and down the rows? How long does it take for a mob of that size to even form? Who would stay put while being engulfed by thousands upon thousands of other people, no exit in sight? Even giant outdoor concerts have designated lanes and some sort of organization…And plenty of portapotties!
This photo is clearly a fake, and a really bad one. Upon zooming in, the rows immediately behind the front 9 people in the foreground seem to be a Where’s Waldo esque cut and paste job… reminds me of really bad collage work, with heads popping up in such funny and unnatural ways and half formed flags blended in. Zoom in even closer and you can see distinct outlines around the random heads. The rest of the background might as well be a blurry close up of cauliflower.
As I was zoomed in I noticed this one part that is really bugging me. I don’t know if I’ve just been looking at the picture too long so that I’m just seeing what I’ve told myself is there,like one of those magic pictures, but :
(Apologies for crap formatting, errors etc, I’m using my iPad 😛 )
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Ack, sorry! Don’t know why the last portion of text is highlighted and clearly I don’t know how to post a picture here, lol! No clue what happened there xD
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Great points Sarah and indeed good observations about the zoomed in version. Also notice the white “aura” of the guy in front of “anorexic wrist”.
(I edited your post to fit the lay-out)
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Thanks for fixing it!
I now notice that the ‘anorexic wrist’ is actually, seemingly, part of the jacket of white-aura kid. I was seeing that white portion as skin, but is appears to be a highlight on the jacket. Still leaves some weird shapes in the back that I took for fingers but they aren’t attached to what I thought was a wrist, although they are the same color.
These hack job photos are sort of like looking at clouds, so many strange shapes and shadows it’s easy to get confused lol!All around a really bizarre ‘photo’, thanks for sharing!
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Nice work, Sarah. The longer we look at these types of photos, the more they dissemble right before our eyes. They are crafted for immediate impact, and not for close examination. We glance, buy into the back story, and move along. They do not stand scrutiny.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Week_in_Spain Birds of a feathers…small world.
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https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/75570700/william-stetson-kennedy
‘William Stetson Kennedy was born in Jacksonville on October 5, 1916, to George and Willye Stetson Kennedy.’
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Agreed. His father’s full name was George Wallace Kennedy. That name threw me for a loop. I was hoping to hit on some Kennedy’s. Thanks for finding Willye. Ancestry knows nothing about her, but her DOD is 11/11/33 – yikes! (Only kidding … everyone dies on one of 366 days.)
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Seeing that William Stetson Kennedy was born in Jacksonville made me recall Lynyrd Skynyrd who were from there too, and think about their planecrash in ’77.
https://gw.geneanet.org/tdowling?lang=en&n=van+zant&oc=0&p=lacy
The Van Zants are related to Tim Dowling, who’s seems to be related to everyone and anyone (in)famous.
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I bet a family relation to JFK. Also, his VP was a Klan member:
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/lyndon-johnson-kkk/
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I did not know the Klan was pro prohibition. That raised an eyebrow as Rockefeller put a huge amount of cash behind the temperance movement. His goal was to outlaw booze because, prior to prohibition, a car owner could cook up a still full of hooch and run his automobile on the drinkable stuff. Once outlawed, a driver had to pull up to the Rockefeller owned pumps to get to work.
It would follow that John D would be the cash-cow for the Klan in furthering federal control. The KKK then would be similar to the Corn Belt binLadens I wrote about a while ago (https://pieceofmindful.com/2016/12/19/vintage-psy-opera-corn-belt-bin-ladens/). Pushing aside the state’s rights for federal overseers in the wake of deliberate (largely fake) provocations.
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C. Albert Pike. Dismissed? Nothing to see there neither.
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As the Industrial Revolution geared up the Klan with their scare tactics and out right rottenness was useful in getting poor Southern Blacks to move to Chicago and Detroit to be part of the labor force at the stockyards and the burgeoning auto industry. The Reformation in the south also saw Blacks being part of law making bodies on a state and national level. The Klan was useful in killing hope in that era also. With Indiana and Kansas seen as largely Klan states it almost seem like a bit of containment of where it was a safe place to live for Blacks. Either way out west or the industrial centers were places where housing jobs and living conditions were better than the South.
The Klan seems to be the historical boogyman used to reinforce beliefs and keep people from looking at who the real instigators are that cause so many problems. And the Birth of the Nation tie in just reinforces the Hollywood as an arm of Intelligence.
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They need to conceive an enemy in order to reinforce the illusion of authority and to manipulate human behavior to their benefit. Covid-19 is a perfect example.
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Mark, you simply used different focal length, hence the difference in perspective. The old KKK pic simply seems to be made with more zoom than your pic. Old analog cameras used a relatively wide film material (24mm or often even 60mm for the popular middle size camera). Modern digital cameras usually use a very small sensor, often much less than 5mm wide. They translate modern focal length to compare with the old 24mm film cameras using so called crop factor but it is only an approximation. If you use for instance a compact camera with the popular 1/2,3″ sensor and a corresponding focal length it will never look like an old analog picture made with the 24mm film and the 50mm standard lens because the distances between the lens and the sensor in both cameras are different. What I’m trying to say is, you can’t prove the KKK pic is a fake by comparing the perspective.
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I think I already said that … the Rube Goldberg reference.
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Is there a German equivalent for ‘mansplaining’?
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hmm…I had to google that. Looks like English is the only language with a word for men talking condescendingly on women. I’m wondering why is that so? lol.
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Re: Second Klan
There’s a book called The Unseen Power about the history of Public Relations in the 20th century. Each chapter is about a different major PR practitioner. One is devoted to the man (and wife — they were both PR pros) who built the Second Klan using mass media PR tactics. He was an innovator whose techniques were copied for other organisations and promotions. The name you mention may have been the titular head, but more of a front man for this PR guy. A major motive seemed to be simply profit making, as it did work like a multi level marketing scheme, with each tier of the pyramid taking a cut from the dues of new recruits. He became wealthy from it, IIRC, according to that book.
The book incidentally is interesting, though tedious at times, and with clumsy writing. My speculation, based on the intro, is that the author, an older academic, had put the project off for decades; and was strongly urged by some gray eminence of the field, to finally write this history of the men who created PR. It is occasionally revealing, but seems also itself a bit full of myth and spin. Interesting that many of the chapters were based on the theses of graduate students who were colonels, of all things — the ubiquitous colonels highlighted by MM.
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Can you tell me more about the book? A quick search does not locate it.
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it has to be this Scott M. Cutlip book. It costs about a hundred bucks and has no comments. I’ll pass. Expensive books never thought me anything of value and I had to read some professionally.
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Yes, it’s this Scott M. Cutlip book:
The Amazon blurb includes this bit:
Two Atlanta publicists, Edward Clark and Bessie Tyler, took a defunct Atlanta bottle club, the Ku Klux Klan, in 1920 and boomed it into a hate organization of three million members in three years, and made themselves rich in the process.
There is a used copy for $12, although I’m not saying it’s a “must read.” An interesting reference though for the “lives of the PR men”. Many of them contain biographical anecdotes that often have that sense of being scripted, or at least embroidered. Not surprising for professional propagandists, I guess…
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It looks like another multilevel marketing scheme:
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I heard that modern PR came into being after the massacre caused by Rockefeller’s sending in the troops at Ludlow following a strike.
‘Rockefeller also brought in pioneer public relations expert Ivy Lee, who warned that the Rockefellers were losing public support and developed a strategy that Junior followed to repair it.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Massacre
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Yes, the same book has a chapter on Ivy Lee and his work for Rockefeller and others.
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Ludlow is surrounded by spook markers, its 4/20 date being the most readily apparent. It has long been on my list of events in need of critical analysis. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, and I am not any sort if “expert,” just a damned impenetrable skeptic.
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The National Guard General was a John CHASE:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chase_(general)
‘Chase was active in Freemasonry and reached the 32nd degree. He was also Knight Commander of the Court of Honor and grand marshal of the Conclave in 1912.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle C. Albert Pike was involved top to bottom in these ‘fraternities’ Especially his Scottish Rite sect. All have vows or oaths, usually pain upon death when they feel betrayal has been committed.
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Interesting ex-members –
John Wilkes Booth
Jesse James
Samuel Mudd
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News is PR pure since the beginning of mass media. They’ve put lots of money and effort to develop fast printing technology and to print daily papers being immediately distributed allover the world just for the purpose of PR. Daily papers had to be cheap of course so everybody could afford them. The invention of Radio made it then more easy and faster to spread the news. Radio receivers hat to be cheap also otherwise nobody would listen. Then TV broadcast made it even more convincing. All the time kids in schools had to learn to believe in news. And they get conditioned to receive their daily news. It happened in every country, no matter if poor or rich. This is the world religion. It replaced the priest’s speech in the church during the mess, which could be seen as the first form of mass media and PR. In every country no matter how small or unimportant, people on full hours turn on their receiving devices to receive the news. It actually started with the world wars. Without mass media the both world wars wouldn’t even be possible. The first war got out of control because of lack of radio communication. They only had the telegraph back then which required cables. They had to stop it and restart when radio communication was sophisticated enough. After this everything became a scripted show. Today people don’t even realize that they participate in or watch a scripted show. They even get excited who will win the World Wrestling Championships and other scripted shows.
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This introduces something that has grated on me for years. Popular programming, entertainment shows that I see and hear, have a caricature they use … the “reporter.” This person is always dogged and stubborn, unregulated by superiors, and prying into every angle. The idea that “the press” catches wind of something casts a specter of fear in power sectors. It is as if the news media, owned by the same powers that it supposedly reports on, operates without boundaries.
Real reporters I know are the most lacking in self-awareness as any humans around. “Editors” keep them on short leashes, and the editors only rise to positions of authority because they have proven themselves to be the most submissive to real power, the owners of the media company. Trained journalists have learned a system that keeps them out of trouble called “objectivity” … they have turned off their brains and get a quote here and there and report it without weighing it. That is how they survive. Those who do not know to turn off their brains eventually leave the field and make an honest living doing something else.
But don’t tell them. As a rule journalists are smug and insulated. I’d rather dine alone.
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think of war reporters who put their life at risks to get to the front lines where the fighting is and their life has to be spared by both fighting sides because you don’t shoot the war reporter even though he will make you look bad later. All we know about wars is what war reporter told us. They are honest by definition, passionate and dedicated to tell all the truth because people have the right to know. It’s basically the same thing as with doctors (medics). Then there is boulevard and quality press. Both are fed from the same source (Reuters). The first for the common men, the second for the better ones. Everybody gets what they deserve. Bestseller writers today always have to include some given things in their stories. They have to use strong women as often as possible for instance. Emphasize the difference between fake news and real news is another such thing today or the importance of politicians and democracy. Dark web, bit coins, artificial intelligence, religious fanatics, relativity theory, global warming, space travel, vaccines, billionaires, ingenious scientists, fake news, etc. The list is long. They will never become bestseller authors if they wouldn’t put those things in their books. If there wasn’t any news business, there wasn’t any bestsellers. And vice versa. Also you have to study bestsellers in schools. And analyze papers. That way they teach you how to feed your head.
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War reporters are above suspicion? Remember what the dormouse said –
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Mark, again why so black and white? In a general sense I think you’re right, but to group all journalists in the world in this is not justified. Do you think people are all robots or so (“turned off their brains”)? Like you thought about scientists, and now medics (who seem only “admirable” when they’re jewish?) and journalists.
Even when you don’t see it, people disagree with “the system”. You might want to talk to them in person instead of basing judgment on generalities.
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Gaia, it gets very tedious to label every generalization with things like “of course is this not true of all of them,” a universal given. It is understood on all sides that when we generalize, there will always be exceptions.
However, in the news business, where is the power? I assure you it is not the beat reporter. You have to look up.
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in a daily paper of one of my colleagues I read today that kids in the USA are conditioned to consider the school as a place of possible terror attack and live constantly with the fear, that something can happen in their school anytime. So do the parents of course. I had to live with the fear of a nuclear attack back then in the 70-s. I know now this was orchestrated and not real. So are today’s terror attacks. So tell your kids my fellow Americans, there is nothing to fear except the fear itself. Don’t worry, be happy.
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Yes, school attacks are the new duck and cover.
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I’ve been trying to figure out the symbols on the Mississippi trio and came up with niente, I came upon this couple of Kuckoos –
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I would like to take a look at W. E B. Du Bois and see you hat kind of evidence he puts up for rampant violence and thousands of blacks murdered in a lawless environment. No doubt there was a lot as KKK did all it could to encourage disenfranchised whites.
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I must admit I’d never heard on WEB Du Bois before, so I took a look at his wiki page –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois
This stood out –
”When the silent film The Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915, Du Bois and the NAACP led the fight to ban the movie, because of its racist portrayal of blacks as brutish and lustful.[119] The fight was not successful, and possibly contributed to the film’s fame, but the publicity drew many new supporters to the NAACP.”
And – ‘Waco horror’, the interesting footnote number by wiki [119], and his profile pictures.
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Very interesting! Also his photo says W.E.B. Du Bois circa 1911. I only knew the name growing up because of my very right wing mother listening to her radio shows. Du Bois was, I was told, a communist. But he appears more to have been juiced.
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Du Bois is a common French “Huguenot” (passed off as “protestant”, but more probably expelled chosenites) surname. The settlement of South Africa after the first Dutch settlers had a wave of these French Huguenots too; it is a common last name there.
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Du Bois, as a surname = Bush, Busch, Bosch, Bysshe (Percy Shelley), Bosque, and even Mata.
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Two members of the Ku Klux Klan, illustration from Harper’s Weekly, December 19, 1868. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-119565)
Looks familiar?
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Very much so.
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One on the left is holding his pistol differently in the sketch for some reason. In the photo its obscured by his (her?) left hand. A secret sign?
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I am sensing it’s a woman on the left too. It seems strange that they would be posed for a photo. Part of the supposed power of the Klan was the mystery of who was under the sheet. The hidden identity created increased fear and mistrust for the victims.
This reminds me that I had started looking into the Southern Poverty Liberty Colition group that has come under some recent fire. I have a feeling some more shady shenanigans are being undertaken by them. They always seemed too good to be true.
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Is this the same as the Southern Poverty Law Center?
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The Birth of a Nation, all 3 hours of it, is still on youtube, now remastered!
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I am curious, but life is short. Please report back.
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A few quotes from Birth of a Nation –
“This is a historical representation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Period, and is not meant to reflect any race or people of today”.
“Here I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland’s hills.. I quench its flame in the sweetest blood that ever stained the sands of Time!”
Lincoln ‘Assassination’ aftermath – “0ur best friend is gone, what are we do now?”
[Didn’t the Byrds sing ‘He (JFK) was a friend of mine’?]
“White men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation, until at last sprung there sprung into existence the great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country” quote from Woodrow Wilson.
Interesting, if overlong, film. Hollywood, MSM etc are rewriting history still, history is bunk.
Is Remastering cheap?
Character name – Austin Stoneman [mason?]
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The thought came to me that the swastika was another symbol of the fiery cross, and the KKK were the Nazis Mark I. Defeated in war, punished by reparations, striking costumes/uniforms, etc
German party CDU’s new leader is kent as AKK, that would be 11111
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That’s 3 hours I won’t get back, however, despite some of the over-the-top acting, it was more interesting than the film of the same name.
Booth shoots Lincoln, goes on the stage (so theatrical these assassins) and cries, ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic_semper_tyrannis
“Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt with this phrase and a picture of Lincoln on it when he was arrested on April 19, 1995, the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.” Spooky!
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