Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right[4][5][6][7] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism.[8] [9] Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist.[8] The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is classified as a hate group.[10]
The first Klan flourished in the South in the 1860s, and then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities.[11] The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings.[12]
The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the USA's "Anglo-Saxon" and "Celtic" blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries.[13] The first and third incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism and political violence, though historians debate whether or not the tactic was supported by the second KKK.
Tell the truth, but tell it slant.
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14
Wishing Bloom’s name was off ‘Oxford Project’
Peter Feldstein
My name is Peter Feldstein. I’m the co-author and photographer, with University of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom, of “The Oxford Project.”
I simply want to state that his article’s indictment of Iowa and Iowans is not in any way representative of my own feelings; also in his written defense and his radio and television interviews.
I love Oxford [Iowa] and I’ll never leave except in a box. What Bloom mostly gets wrong is that Iowans are very much aware of the issues he raises. They are being discussed and have been for a long time.
There’s not a kind word about anyone nor a recognition of anything good in the state. The article is a hit piece, not a parody, not a satire—as Bloom claims. No one is expecting “boosterism,” as Bloom calls it.
No one is expecting a writer to polish the truth. No one is expecting a writer to polish the truth. What we do expect is a balance, which I’d think is essential for a journalist writing about anything or anyone.
Instead Iowans are described as “wasteoids” and “old people waiting to die” and “toothless meth addicts” and people afraid to look around the corner for greater opportunity and religious fanatics (I don’t think we old the record for that claim) and hunters as if that is something bad (by the way, I’m not a hunter) and people who only have dogs for the purpose of hunting (I have no clue where Bloom got that idea, but it is patently untrue).
I don’t know what happened to Bloom between the making of “The Oxford Project” and his online article. What happened to the grit and strength of people attempting to survive the hardships that life presents them?
Bloom talks about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Unfortunately he does nothing but inflict pain. We Oxfordians, especially, are very disappointed and feel cheated and demeaned.
I have tried to remain out of the fray in the discussion of Bloom’s article. But for three weeks my experience has been quite unusual. Because we collaborated on “The Oxford Project” and were close friends, everybody wants to talk with me about it. They can’t understand why he continues to defend himself. Nor can I.
This is clearly not a balanced report, clearly not a parody or satire, as he insists. And with so many factual errors, how is it possible that he continues to defend his piece? Many of the factual issues have been address ad infinitum by many people, reporters and colleagues.
This is very difficult to write. We worked very hard on “The Oxford Project” to make the best book that we could. But something for me has radically changed.
A few days ago I picked up the book for the first time since the brouhaha. I had a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wish Stephen Bloom’s name was not on it.
Peter Feldstein, Professor Emeritus University of Iowa, Iowa City Press-Citizen, January 4, 2012 (Excerpts)
IOWA PUBLIC RADIO
THE EXCHANGE~IOWA PUBLIC RADIO
Thursday December 29, 2011Top News Stories from 2011
What story touched you in 2011? Flooding in western Iowa? Redistricting congressional maps? Occupy Iowa? The 2012 Caucus Campaign? We'll unveil our annual top ten list of news stories from the past year with Iowa Public Radio News Director Jonathan Ahl and Radio Iowa News Director Kay Henderson.
Listen | Download | ShareThis
http://onlinemedia.iowapublicradio.org:8010/documents/news_stories/3315.mp3
The Turkish Model: Can It Be Replicated?
by Peter Kenyon
In the Arab states that have ousted dictators and begun building new political and economic systems, many are looking to Turkey as an example of a modern, moderate Muslim state that works. Perhaps no country has seen its image in the Arab world soar as quickly as Turkey, a secular state that's run by a party with roots in political Islam. As part of our series on the Arab Spring and where it stands today, NPR's Peter Kenyon examines whether the "Turkish model" can be exported.
Among activists seeking to overthrow Arab dictators, this is a tangible sign that Turkey has finally come down on the side of the people despite its longstanding economic ties to autocratic regimes.
At a recent forum here on the Arab Spring, Turks were the first to admit that their model is still a work in progress. As one speaker put it, "If you copy us, please don't copy our record on minority rights" — a reference to longstanding suffering by Kurds, Alawites and others. Another noted the scores of journalists in Turkish jails and chimed in, "and don't follow our lead on freedom of the press, either."
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/06/144751851/the-turkish-model-can-it-be-replicated
Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life
Stephen G. Bloom
Stephen G. Bloom is Professor and Bessie Dutton Murray Professional Scholar at the University of Iowa. This year, he is the Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America and The Oxford Project (with Peter Feldstein). The Atlantic Magazine
IOWA CITY -- On January 3, Iowans will trudge through snow, sleet, sludge, ice, gale-force blizzards -- whatever it takes -- to join their neighbors that evening in 1,784 living rooms, community halls, recreation centers, and public-school gymnasiums in a kind of bygone-era town-hall meeting at which they'll eat and debate, and then vote for presidential candidates along party lines. Chat 'n' Chews, they are called.
These Iowa Caucuses create a seismic shift in the presidential nominating contests. Obama catapulted to the top of the Democrats' dance card when he captured 38 percent of Iowa voters in 2008, and then swept to victory at the Democratic Convention eight months later. Without such a strong initial showing in Iowa, Obama might not have been able to steamroll through subsequent state primaries to win the presidency.
Considering the state's enormous political significance, I thought this would be a good time to explain to the geographically challenged a little about Iowa, including where Iowa is, and perhaps more importantly, in both a real and metaphysical way, what Iowa is.
I haven't taken up hunting or fishing, the main hobbies of rural Iowans, but I'm a fan of University of Iowa Hawkeye football, so I'm a good third of the way to becoming an adopted Iowan. I even have a dog, born and bred in Iowa (more on that later).
Iowa is not flat as a pancake, despite what most people think. Northeast of Cedar Rapids is actually pretty hilly. It's an agricultural (corns and soybeans), landlocked state. While Iowa's landmass is a little larger than England's, its population is only three million, about 17 times smaller.
Of Iowa's 99 counties, 88 are classified as rural. Iowa's capital and largest city is Des Moines (pop: 203,000), whose primary business is insurance. The state is 91.3 percent white.
On the state's eastern edge lies the Mississippi River, dotted with towns with splendid names like Keokuk, Toolesboro, Fruitland, Muscatine, Montpelier, Buffalo, Sabula, Davenport, Dubuque, and Guttenberg. Each once was a booming city on the swollen banks of the river that long ago opened the middle of America to expansion, civilization, abundance, and prosperity. Not much travels along the muddy and polluted Mississippi these days except rusty-bucket barges of grain and an occasional kayaker circumnavigating garbage, beer cans, and assorted debris. The majestic river that once defined the United States has been rendered commercially irrelevant these days.
When Twain lived in Keokuk 150 years ago, the Gateway City was a sought-after destination; some seriously said Keokuk would someday rival Chicago as a metropolis of culture and commerce. Thirty-eight hotels crowned the intersection of the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers. The coming of the railroads changed all that, and today, Keokuk, is a depressed, crime-infested slum town. Almost every other Mississippi river town is the same; they're some of the skuzziest cities I've ever been to, and that's saying something.
In between these two great, defining rivers, Iowa is a place of bizarre contrasts. The state is split politically: to the east of Des Moines, Iowa is solidly Democratic; to the west, it's rabidly Republican. Iowa's two U.S. Senators are emblematic of this schizophrenia: Fundamentalist Republican Charles Grassley and Ultra-liberal Democrat Tom Harkin. Grassley is 78; Harkin 72; both have held seats in either the U.S. Senate or House since 1975.
Insular Iowa is also home to the most conservative, and, some say, wackiest congressman in America, Republican Rep. Steve King, who represents the vast western third of the state. Some of King's doozies: calling Senator Joe McCarthy a "hero for America"; comparing illegal immigrants to stray cats that wind up on people's porches; and praying that Supreme Court "Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsberg fall madly in love with each other and elope to Cuba." Keith Olbermann named King not only the worst congressman in the U.S., but the Worst Person in the World six times.
Considering the above, not just a few Iowa heads turned when a District Court in Des Moines in 2007 declared same-sex marriages legal. Iowa, at the time, was the second state in the U.S. to allow gays to marry each other, a decision the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld two years later. In retaliation, Iowa conservatives in 2010 mounted a successful campaign to oust three of the justices who ruled on behalf of same-sex marriage. Marriage between two same-sex people is legal in Iowa for now, but may not be for long. So far, Democrats have blocked a statewide referendum on the issue (Dems hold sway in the Iowa Senate 26-24), but if Republicans take control of the Senate, gay marriage could -- and likely would -- be repealed.
In between these two great, defining rivers, Iowa is a place of bizarre contrasts. The state is split politically: to the east of Des Moines, Iowa is solidly Democratic; to the west, it's rabidly Republican.
Whether a schizophrenic, economically-depressed, and some say, culturally-challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president isn't at issue.
There are few minorities, no sizable cities, and the state's about to lose one of its five seats in the U.S. House because its population is shifting; any growth is negligible. Still, thanks to a host of nonsensical political precedents, whoever wins the Iowa Caucuses in January will very likely have a 50 percent chance of being elected president 11 months later. Go figure.
Rural America has always been homogenous, as white as the milk the millions of Holstein cows here produce. Many towns are so insular that farmers from another county are strangers.
In the large towns (population more than 2,500), towering grain elevators are what you first see from a distance. In mid-sized towns, its church steeples, their bell towers once a call to farmers toiling in the fields. Just about every town, no matter what size, has a water tower with the town name scrawled or stenciled on the tank's side.
But there also are too-many-to-count empty storefronts (and not coincidentally scores of flourishing Wal-Marts). The region has suffered terribly, particularly since the 1980's when the ravaged farm economy started spinning out of control into free-fall.
After winning the Iowa Caucuses three years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama didn't mince words about the lingering impact of the Farm Crisis. Obama got scalded for his comments.
Obama might have been wrong for telling the truth, which seldom happens in politics, but the future president was 100-percent accurate when he let slip his comments on the absolute and utter desperation in America's hollowed-out middle, in particular in the state where I live.
There's the idealized version of rural America, then there's the heartbreaking real version, the one Obama was talking about.
Take One: The fairytale rendering is pastoral and bucolic; sandy-haired children romping through fecund, shoulder-high corn with Lassie at their side. Its Field of Dreams meets Carousel with The Waltons thrown in for good measure. The ruddy, wooden Bridges of Madison County (where John Wayne was born) may be in the background as the camera pans wide.
Take Two: The nightmare reality is tens of thousands of laid-off rural factory workers, farmers who have lost their land to banks and agribusiness, legions of unemployed who have come to the realization that it makes no sense to look for work, since work pretty much no longer exists for them.
In part, rural Iowa's economic malaise has been made all the more in-your-face by the thousands of undocumented immigrants arriving every month, trolling for work that pays indecent wages in some of the most dangerous jobs imaginable, mostly on under-regulated, non-union kill-floors of the rural slaughterhouses.
And some immigrants head directly inland, altogether bypassing American coastal cities. In Iowa, they almost all come for slaughterhouse jobs, where entry-level positions are plentiful and workers don't need to know a word of English. The only requirements are a strong stomach and a strong back, and a willingness to accept that the work and the pay don't match. It's no wonder Iowa locals spurn such jobs as knockers, stickers, bleeders, tail rippers, flankers, gutters, sawers, or plate boners, all of whom work on what amounts to a disassembly line. Turnover at these grueling jobs is higher than 100 percent a year; health benefits at most plants don't kick in for several months; but the first months in a slaughterhouse are the most dangerous, when accidents are most likely to occur.
Mega plants in rural outposts became the norm. Hourly wages for union meat-production workers in 1980 peaked at $19 per hour (1980 dollars), not including benefits. Today, starting pay is often barely minimum wage at rural slaughterhouses. Because packinghouses are located in such isolated pockets of America, employers don't have to pay wages competitive with jobs in more urban venues. It's take it or leave it, and most locals would rather leave it. For undocumented workers, though, these jobs are a bonanza.
The bulk of jobs here are low-income ones most Iowans don't want. Many have simply packed up and left the state (which helps keep the unemployment rate statewide low). Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that "The sun'll come out tomorrow."
It's no surprise then, really, that the most popular place for suicide in America isn't New York or Los Angeles, but the rural Middle, where guns, unemployment, alcoholism and machismo reign. Suicides in Iowa's rural counties are 13.55 per 100,000 residents; New York's suicide rate is 5.4 residents per 100,000. Hunting accidents are common, perhaps spurred by the elixir of alcohol, which seems to be the drink of choice whenever a man suits up in camo or orange overalls. Mental-health clinics have all but been shuttered in Flyover Country; in a budget crunch, they're the first to go. Other, more nuanced reasons for the high rate of suicide: Farmers and ranchers by occupational nature rely on themselves to solve problems; the stigma of depression prevents those affected most from seeking help -- if help existed. Some residents turn to church leaders (as Obama said), but few are genuinely qualified to offer that kind of counsel.
Of the students I teach, relatively few will stay in Iowa after they graduate. The net flow of Iowans is out, not in. Iowa's greatest export isn't corn, soybeans, or pigs; it's young adults. Many born in rural Iowa grow up educated due to the state's still-strong foundation of land-grant universities (although, that too is eroding) and abiding familial interest in education (on a per-capita basis, Iowa has more high school graduates than 49 other states). But once they're through college, they leave. Iowa is the number-two state in the nation in losing college-educated youth (only North Dakota loses more).
An interesting sidelight to the outflow problem is the rapid influx of Chinese students at the University of Iowa. The university vigorously recruits Chinese undergraduates, and has even set up an office in Beijing with the express purpose of attracting Chinese to study in Iowa (no other recruiting office exists anywhere else). Almost all come from well-heeled families, who pay full tuition for their children to attend college. Few speak passable English, almost all congregate in majors that require little English (math, biology and actuarial science), and many drive around town in brand-new sports cars. It's a strange sight to see in Flyover County -- dozens of Chinese students moving together en masse, the girls chattering away in Mandarin, always holding each others' hands. These wealthy, ill-prepared bonus babies are seen as the future of the University. If Iowa has fewer and fewer young people each year to fill the University's cavernous lecture halls, and the state is still a tough sell to coastal American kids, then it's China that's the next frontier as state support for higher education dwindles.
Today, half of Iowa's 952 incorporated towns have populations of fewer than 500 residents, and two-thirds of the state's towns have less than 1,000. Iowa is home to the highest per-capita percentage of people older than 85; the second highest of residents older than 75, and the third highest of people older than 65. The largest and most elegant house in many rural towns is the local funeral parlor. The graduating classes of most rural high schools are so small that an Iowa tradition calls for silk-screened T-shirts with the names of all classmates on the back.
Iowa is a throwback to yesteryear and, at the same time, a cautionary tale of what lies around the corner.
To me, it summed up Iowa. You'd never get a dog
because you might just want to walk with the dog or to
throw a ball for her to fetch. No, that's not a reason to
own a dog in Iowa. You get a dog to track and bag
animals that you want to stuff, mount, or eat.That's the place that may very well determine the next
U.S. president.
K STREET BAGMAN STRIKES POLITICAL PAYDIRT IN IOWA
The Ku Klux Klan Rebounds
In this report, ADL documents a noticeable spike in activity by Klan chapters across the country:
- Longstanding groups have increased their activity and experienced a rapid expansion in size.
-
New groups have appeared, causing racial tensions in communities previously untroubled by racial issues. They hold anti-immigration rallies and recruitment drives and distribute racist literature with a new emphasis on the immigration issue, and Hispanics.
- Klan groups have become more active in parts of the country that had not seen much activity in recent years, including the Great Plains States such as Iowa and Nebraska, and Mid-Atlantic states such as Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The report includes a state-by-state listing of active Klan groups.
- Klan groups increasingly are cooperating with neo-Nazi groups.
- The Klan has adopted new publicity tricks and has embraced the Internet as a means to spread anti-Semitism and racism.
ADL has identified the following states as being notable for active or growing Klan chapters:
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
Mississippi
South Carolina
Tennessee
TexasIndiana
Kentucky
Michigan
Ohio
NebraskaMaryland
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
The basic ideology of the Ku Klux Klan today is not very different from that of many other hard-core white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis.
Although some Klansmen may still hold cross-burnings dressed in robes and hoods, today’s young Klansmen are more likely to look virtually indistinguishable from racist skinheads or neo-Nazis. Today’s Klansmen may be as likely to gather at white power music concerts or socialize at so-called ‘unity rallies’ with other white supremacists, as to participate in ritualistic cross burnings in the rural wilderness. Klan groups have become increasingly “nazified,” with members embracing and immersing themselves in neo-Nazi and racist skinhead subcultures, adopting the music, dress, tattoos and imagery of neo-Nazis.
Rick Santorum: The Underdog With A Loud Bark
by JEFF BRADY
Rick Santorum receives a call at his campaign headquarters during his Senate re-election bid in 2006. The former senator was attempting to keep his Pennsylvania Senate seat, which he later lost to Democrat Bob Casey Jr.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is campaigning in New Hampshire after finishing a very close second in the Iowa caucuses. His success in the Hawkeye State was a surprise because Santorum was polling in the single digits there just a few weeks back.
I have been expecting a Rick Santorum to appear on the political scene for some time. If you study the Great Depression—you will find that the 1929 financial crash in the United States brought on a desire for strong mythical fascist leadership, i.e. Hitler and Mussolini, just to name two, even in the United States.
At present we are living through echo of the history of Europe in the 1930 as the American demigods have arrived in the presence of the Republican candidate’s jocking for first position in the 2012 election. They build their political capital on the inbred hubris of the American people and institutionalized racism, or else how could sensible people believe that Black people are the majority Americans pulling down the welfare system.
Even the representatives of the so-called liberal press fail to understand that Stephen Bloom’s piece in The Atlantic is a cross between Sinclair Lewis’ I Can’t Happen Here, and Elmer Gantry; and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is its didactics. They prefer to see themselves as Pharisees and Bloom as a tax collector exacting cultural tribute. To see the dedicated Iowa press corps form a high-tech lynch-mob is very enlightening in the face of the First Amendment as to the validity of the US Constitution in the face of American hubris.
IS WHITENESS FORM OF MORAL BLINDNESS
Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) that race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological “race” ever was. Expensively kept, economically unsound, a spurious and useless political asset in election campaigns, racism is as healthy today as it was during the Enlightenment. It seems that it has a utility far beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, and has assumed a metaphorical life so completely embedded in daily discourse that it is perhaps more necessary and more on display than ever before.
Morrison posits that I am prepared to be corrected on this point insofar as it misrepresents the shelf life of racism in social and political behavior. But I remain convinced that the metaphorical and metaphysical uses of race occupy definitive places in American literature, in the “national” character, and ought to be a major concern of the literary scholarship that tries to know it. (63)
Morrison does not have to be corrected because Santorum had been wondering in the wilderness of Iowa’s 99 counties making no traction for months until that fateful day in The Daily Grind when he played the Race Card. Finally, like Superman, he donned his sheet and hood and that cross tattooed on his chest to reveal who and what he truly is. Rupert Murdoch understands this and how this will cause controversy and sell newspapers. He knows Santorum do well in South Carolina as he did in Iowa. Racism is indeed part of the American “national character.”
IT HAS INVADED IOWA PUBLIC RADIO
As a literary reference Morrison has a point because like the
circus clown in Stephen King’s IT, the talking heads of our local
NPR affiliate keep grinning about the positive effect of the Iowa
Caucuses, and threatening to lynch Professor Bloom and never
said a mumbling word about Santorum’s racist remark, or that
Bloom’s work has journalistic merit, thus making themselves
collaborators, not only with Santorum but also with the KKK.
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