Recently, as
a few people may have noticed, there was a bit of controversy surrounding the
removal of the Confederate flag from outside of the South Carolina state
capital building. In response to the state senate’s vote the Ku Klux Klan demanded and
received a rally on the Columbia court house steps. 
This was
something that I never expected to see in my lifetime. When I consider the Ku
Klux Klan, I think of some bygone era, cast in sepia tone, just after the Civil
War with a group of men come swooping in on horseback to rape, kill, and burn-
or maybe I’m just remembering Birth of a
Nation. So, being a
naturally curious person, I ambled off to the rally to see what I could see and
while there I noticed several things:
1. There Was
Counter “Black Power” Rally That No One Went To: I went to this one first,
mistaking it for the Klan rally. The New Black Panther Party had sauntered in
from New York and Los Angeles to protest the other protest. It looked well
organized. A group of people stood up on the courthouse steps, each taking
their turn yelling into a microphone. It was relatively peaceful, due mostly to
the fact that they barely had anyone listening to them. Even the majority of
their own group, had abandoned the Black Power rally to go yell at the Klan.
The counter-protest’s
main message, as usual, was that black people, “must offer renewed and vigorous
resistance to generations of oppression.” I walked away as a young lady, with a
strong Brooklyn accent, was describing how the song Amazing Grace was one of these tools of oppression.
2. The
Klan Seem to Have No Reason for Being There: Ostensibly they were there to
protest the removal of the Confederate flag, but you wouldn’t know that from
their actions. First they gave no speech or declaration of intent, which is
standard at a rally. They hadn’t even bothered to bring a megaphone. All they
really did was march about waving Confederate and American Nazi flags, with one
man holding up a sign promoting free speech.
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| That will change some hearts and minds. |
This was not
so much a Klan rally as a Klan/Aryan Nation rally. There were, off and on,
about 30 members there- not counting the children. No one was hooded, granted
it was over 100 degrees, but I saw plenty of AB and Aryan Nation patches on
jackets and a few were wearing the pseudo-bund outfits of the American Nazi
Party. But this is hardly surprising as these groups tend to intermingle, despite being
officially separate.
As I’m sure
you’ve all figured out, their real purpose there was just to agitate. The
Confederate flag issue being a pretext for them to flash their asses. They paraded
about here and there, sporadically yelling “White Power” in an uncoordinated manner
(to which “Black Power” was screamed back) and screech obscenities at the
crowd, trying to get them riled up enough to crash the police barriers
surrounding the protest.
They then
produced the flag of Israel, stomped on it, spit on it, and tore it to pieces-
all for reasons which were beyond me. This being South Carolina, I assume most
of the crowd had no idea which country the flag was representing, and if they
had, quite a few of them (including the New Black Panther Party) might have
joined in. Had they actually wanted to start something, they should have done
it to one of those red, green, and black pan-African flags which were being
waved about by the crowd. That would
have created quite a stir. But they proudly stuck to their delusions that
America is secretly controlled by an Illuminati of Jewish bankers, and thus any
impact was lost.
3. The Crowd Quickly Became Much More
Interesting to Watch: Having arrived
15 minutes late, I decided to stay for the rest of the rally. The crowd came
and went in waves. Spectators would mosey up, scream, holler, and threaten,
then leave after a few minutes. Very few people stayed for the entire thing.
Well again, it was over a 100 degrees that day.
The feeling
I gathered from the crowd was that everyone wanted something to happen, but no
one was willing to be the goat and start it. No one jumped the police
barricade, no one threw anything at another group. It was simply an exercise in
taunting, where neither party could fully hear what the other side was saying.
Both wanted the other side to attack first, knowing that that group would get
the hammer smashed down on them faster than you could say “Jack Robinson”, but
neither side took the bait.
While the
screaming continued, I decided to walk around and look at the crowd. I quickly
discovered that the emergence of these two fringe groups brought a lot of other
fringe groups out of the woodwork, all using the spectacle to pimp their
politics.
A lot of these
alternative agenda types lacked staying power. Many of them flitted in and
out of the crowd like mayflies. Perhaps they had dreams of spell-blinding those
assembled with their mystical oratory, and magically melding them into a force
that would follow them- if they did, they had been watching too many movies, because
in the real world that never happens.
First I bumped
into what must be South Carolina’s only two Communists, who came out protesting
in sweaty t-shirts and berets. They handed me a leaflet entitled, “Why Ignoring
the Klan Sends the Wrong Message”, which called for solidarity in protesting
against the Klan (which is what everyone there was doing, so handing it out was
a waste of time) and “other forces of economic oppression”- You can fill in the
blank on what was meant by that. This was an obvious attempt to gather support
for their own cause, by uniting people against a perceived common enemy (kind
of like how the Nazis gained power). They were loud for half a minute, then quieted
down, until they finally slunk off after 10 minutes. They just don’t make
Commies out of the same steel as they used to.
One young guy,
hoisting the South Carolina State Flag, kept trying to lead the crowd in
prayer.
“This is the
third time in a month that the people of South Carolina have come together in
prayer.” He yelled.
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| All of this fittingly occurred around the Strom Thurmond Memorial |
I hadn’t
heard of the first two, and this certainly wasn’t a third. He started screeching
The Lord’s Prayer but stopped after three lines, when no one else joined in. He
looked about, desperate for attention. The crowd wasn’t just uninterested in his antics,
they were actively ignoring him. Even in the heat, I could feel cold shoulders
spring up about him. As far as they were concerned, he could peddle his crap
elsewhere. He moved to a different part of the crowd and tried again. And then
again, and a third time. No one wanted to hear it. Probably because, this being
South Carolina, every other meeting has some joker trying to start a prayer
circle! He was a dime, a dozen.
A passing woman, tarted up in
coke-bottle glasses and a drab dress, handed me a free newspaper. It was the Freedom Socialist: The Voice of
Revolutionary Feminism- an outfit run out of Seattle, Washington. It was
supposed to cost $1 (with a “solidarity price” of $2, whatever that means), but
she was obviously having difficulty giving the damn things away, since I sure
as Hell don’t look like a woman, revolutionary or no.
A few more people showed up, blasting
a beat from their Mp3 player over powerful speakers. They yelled over the
speakers that they were here to “dance for justice.” A few young people joined
in, gyrating like spastics. But once again the Klan hogged all the attention
and the justice dancers left downhearted.
4. The Police Were the Only Competent
Group There: I read several news articles about the rally with headlines
like, “KKK, Black Panther Party Clash Over Confederate Flag” and “KKK Faces Off
With New Black Panther Party in Heated Competing Rallies.” These are much more
dramatic than what occurred. The groups never clashed. Their rallies were on
opposite sides of a very large building. And if they were competing by sheer
numbers, then the Klan won hands down- not that it was full of people
supporting them.
And the reason the rally didn’t get
out of hand is because the police were on the ball. Nothing got past them. Every time things were
about to get out of hand with the protesters, the cops were on them like white
on rice. I couldn’t believe how fast they moved.
There was one incident near me, where
a skinhead, in suspenders and Doc Martens, rushed right in the middle of some
New Black Panthers waving a Confederate flag and yelling “White power.” We all
know what could have happened. Out of nowhere in jumped the police and, in less
than half a minute, shut the whole thing down. There were multiple accounts of
this all through the rally.
And Then They Left- When the hour was up, the police
surrounded them and led them away. The Klu-Kluxers marched off, leaving us to
ponder… what? Not much. There was no real point, just an exercise in lung
power. No one was happy on either side. I doubt anyone had been convinced to
change their opinion. Nothing constructive occurred. It was a show for the sake
of a show. Shock for shock’s sake. The only thing I got out of it was a sunburn
from the hour I spent watching the demonstration.
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| Damn you Racism! |
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