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Ku klux klan Goals
In this 1926 cartoon, the Ku Klux Klan chases the Catholic Church, personified by St. Patrick, from the shores of America. Among the "snakes" are various supposed negative attributes of the Church, including superstition, the union of church and state, control of public schools, and intolerance.
The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.[86]
The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers".[173] Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood".[174] Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism".[175] Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit.[176] During the 1930s, particularly after James A. Colescott of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to Communism became another primary aim of the Klan.[86]
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Goals>
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Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups. Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, adherents also attack Jewish people, persons who have immigrated to the United States, and members of the LGBTQ community.
From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan>
KU KLUX KLAN
Short Description of movement: Plantation Plutocracy.
Goal: White [elitist] hegemonic control of government
Political spectrum: Extreme REACTIONARY. Against emancipation of slavery and black participation in electoral politics and treatment of 'inferior' blacks as 'equals.'
Strategies: Demonize, delegitimize, and hold freed black people to a double-standard not applicable to whites;
Tactics:
Example: Populism, Racism, and Conspiracy for the masses--you are white, that is your identity, you will lose your identity if blacks and blacks are dangerous, criminal, inferior, and evil, so fear them.
Example: violent campaign of deadly voter intimidation during the 1868 presidential election From Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of Black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.
Elitist plutocratic organization created by the oligarchic 'plantation' class for the purposes of preserving the antebellum status quo. The civil war had compelled the defeated Confederacy to rejoin the union, but had NOT dampened desires among the elite for their feudal system, which resulted in an oligopolistic economic system in the largely agricultural South due the inability of the vast majority of white Southerners being able to compete with or to challenge the dominance of a tiny factional minority of large landowners operating massive plantations with slave labor. Such a system inevitably concentrated wealth and power among the elite who could afford large plantations, or the 'near' plantation' class. There was very restricted upward mobility for most whites, which resulted to a Confederate caste system--you were born into a class, and had no hope of upward mobility.
Populist movement designed, operated,
splcenter.org
Ku Klux Klan
9–12 minutes
Top takeaways
Continuing the same trajectory as years past, the number of active Ku Klux Klan hate groups again declined in 2022. The decline can be attributed to infighting that has long been a hallmark of the Klan, as well as the comparatively greater appeal of newer racist groups that feature more contemporary tactics and rhetoric that is focused online and on younger audiences.
There were very few Klan events of note in 2022, and there were 22 flyering incidents, which was the same amount in 2021. However, the subsequent news coverage they received helped maintain the false perception that the Klan is a dominant white supremacist group in America.
Key moments
Longtime themes of Klan rhetoric – including the need to “take back the country” – continued to permeate Klan propaganda in 2022. While there were Klan rallies throughout 2022, they were small, remote and operated by individual Klan organizations with little cross coordination or overlap between other groups.
Election denialism has played a role in Klan mainstream relevancy and messaging revolving around the country being lost to “undesirables.” Former Grand Dragon David Duke’s radio show continues to falsely promote that millions of votes were stolen in the 2020 election. The Klan activity is mostly confined to flyering and spreading propaganda online, most of which is spread on alt-tech platforms like MeWe and the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront. Old Glory Knights in Tennessee and the Loyal White Knights of North Carolina and Virginia were recorded as having contributed to most of the flyering in 2022, while the United Klan Nation was most active on Telegram. Stormfront remains a popular outlet for Klansmen with some updated daily channels focusing on recruitment and propaganda.
What’s Ahead
KKK activity will likely remain stagnant or continue to decline in 2023. Platforms like Stormfront that are not very publicly accessible will likely be where much Klan activity remains, and Klan events are likely to remain equally insulated. Contemporary white supremacy movements will continue to eclipse the Klan in terms of recruitment, propaganda, events, and overall success and many within the movement view the Klan as defunct or out of touch.
Background
In 1865, at the conclusion of the Civil War, six Confederate veterans gathered in Pulaski, Tennessee, to create the Ku Klux Klan, a vigilante group mobilizing a campaign of violence and terror against the African American people that benefits from the progress of Reconstruction. As the group gained members from all strata of Southern white society, they used violent intimidation to prevent Black Americans – and any white people who supported Reconstruction – from voting and holding political office.
In an effort to maintain white hegemonic control of government, the Klan, joined by other white Southerners, engaged in a violent campaign of deadly voter intimidation during the 1868 presidential election. From Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of Black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.
The first leader or “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a well-known Confederate general. Within the structure of the Klan, he directed a hierarchy of members with outlandish titles, such as “imperial wizard” and “exalted cyclops.” Hooded costumes, violent “night rides” and the notion that the group made up an “invisible empire” conferred a mystique that only added to the Klan’s infamy.
After a short but violent period, the “first era” Klan disbanded when it became evident that Jim Crow laws would secure white supremacy across the country. However, the legacy of the original Klan, and the figureheads of the Confederacy before it, have been enshrined across the country in the “Cult of the Lost Cause.” Only in recent years – after gaining significant attention through large counterprotests and after deadly attacks from far-right extremists – have these statues started being removed and public spaces renamed. On July 9, 2020, Tennessee’s State Capitol Commission voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol building. It was subsequently removed on July 23, 2021, and placed in the Tennessee State Museum.
In 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was revived by white Protestants near Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to the group’s anti-Black ideological core, this second iteration of the Klan also opposed Catholic and Jewish immigrants. A growing fear of communism and immigration broadened the Klan’s base throughout the South and into the Midwest, with a particular stronghold in Indiana. By 1925, when its followers staged a march in Washington, D.C., the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power. A series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced the group’s influence.
The Klan arose a third time during the 1960s to oppose the civil rights movement and attempt to preserve segregation as the Chief Justice Earl Warren-led U.S. Supreme Court substantiated civil rights in multiple rulings. Bombings, murders and other attacks by the Klan took a great many lives. Murders committed by Klansmen during the civil rights era include four young African American girls killed in 1963 while preparing for Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and the 1964 murder in Mississippi of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.
Throughout the second and third eras of the Klan, many Black Americans left Southern states in the Great Migration. While those who moved North were seeking economic prosperity and social opportunities, they were also hoping to escape the racial terror centered around the Klan’s ideological stronghold in the South. With over 6 million Black Americans taking part in this migration, the demographics of the country shifted dramatically.
With the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the subsequent return of American soldiers, several key figures arose within the Klan. Louis Beam, upon his return from Vietnam, joined the Alabama-based United Klans of America. His teachings on “leaderless resistance” and early adaptation to technological advances helped bridge neo-Nazi and Klan groups into the organized white power movement. Similarly, David Duke – founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1975 – maintained a distinctly antisemitic hatred that closed ideological gaps with neo-Nazis.
Through a series of court cases aimed at bankrupting the Klan and closing the group’s paramilitary training camps, the organization has been greatly weakened. Internal fighting and government infiltrations have led to a seemingly endless series of splits, resulting in smaller, less organized Klan chapters. Given the Klan’s insistence on remaining an “invisible empire,” it is nearly impossible to estimate how many active members there are today. However, it is fair to assume that the infighting, rigid traditions and the uncouth image of the Klan are not attracting significant new membership.
2022 KKK hate groups
View all groups by state and by ideology.
* - Asterisk denotes headquarters.
American Christian Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Christian Revival Center Harrison
Arkansas
East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire
Pennsylvania
Honorable Sacred Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Madison, Indiana
Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Pelham, North Carolina
Virginia
Old Glory Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Santa Fe, Tennessee
True311.com
Tennessee
United Klan Nation
Tennessee
White Christian Brotherhood of the Ku Klux Klan
Maryland
White Christian Brotherhood of the Ku Klux Klan
Dayton, Ohio
Klan glossary
AKIA: A password meaning “A Klansman I Am,” often seen on decals and bumper stickers.
Alien: A person who does not belong to the Klan.
AYAK?: A password meaning “Are You a Klansman?”
CA BARK: A password meaning “Constantly Applied By All Real Klansmen.”
CLASP: A password meaning “Clannish Loyalty A Sacred Principle.”
Genii: The collective name for the national officers. Also known as the Kloncilium, or the advisory board to the Imperial Wizard.
Hydras: The Real officers, with the exception of the Grand Dragon.
Imperial Giant: Former Imperial Wizard.
Imperial Wizard: The overall, or national, head of a Klan, which it sometimes compares to the president of the United States.
Inner Circle: Small group of four or five members who plan and carry out “action.” Its members and activities are not disclosed to the general membership.
Invisible Empire: A Ku Klux Klan’s overall geographical jurisdiction, which it compares to the United States although none exist in every state.
Kalendar: Klan calendar, which dates events from both the origin and its 1915 rebirth Anno Klan, and means “in the year of the Klan,” and is usually written “AK.”
Kardinal Kullors: White, crimson, gold and black. Secondary Kullors are grey, green and blue. The Imperial Wizard’s Kullor is Skipper Blue.
K.B.I.: Klan Bureau of Investigation.
KIGY!: A password meaning “Klansman, I greet you!”
Klankfraft: The practices and beliefs of the Klan.
Klanton: The jurisdiction of a Klavern.
Klavern: A local unit or club; also called “den.”
Kleagle: An organizer whose main function is to recruit new members. In some Klans, he gets a percentage of the initiation fees.
Klectokon: Initiation fee.
Klepeer: Delegate elected to Imperial Klonvokation.
Klonkave: Secret Klavern meeting.
Klonverse: Province convention.
Kloran: Official book of Klan rituals.
Klorero: Realm convention.
SAN BOG: A password meaning “Strangers Are Near, Be On Guard.”
Terrors: The Exalted Cyclops’ officers.
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Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Founded by David Duke in 1975, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has attempted to put a "kinder, gentler" face on the Klan, courting media attention and attempting to portray itself as a modern "white civil rights" organization. But beneath that veneer lurks the same bigoted rhetoric.
From <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/knights-ku-klux-klan>
Massacre of Communist Workers' Party protesters
On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, in what is known as the Greensboro massacre.[279] The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area.[227] Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>
Chattanooga, Tennessee, shooting
In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly Black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months.[281][282][283] In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.[284]
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>
Michael Donald lynching
After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997.[285] It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.[286]
With the support of attorneys Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother Beulah Mae Donald sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987.[287] The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.[287][286]
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Massacre_of_Communist_Workers'_Party_protesters>
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
splcenter.org
The group's leaders, from Duke to current chief Thomas Robb, have been plagued by their own racist views, which inevitably shine through the smokescreen, and by the attacks of other Klan members who view their interest in mainstream media and politics as hypocritical and counterproductive.
In Its Own Words
"Non-whites who reside in America should be expected to conduct themselves according to Christian principles and must recognize that race mixing is definitely wrong and out of the question. It will be a privilege to live under the authority of a compassionate White Christian government."
— The Knights Party website
"[T]here are politicians in Washington D.C. working around the clock chipping away at our liberty, but thanks to the foresight of our founding fathers America has held out the longest against the global, race mixing, homosexual, anti-Christ forces working to wipe out White Christianity the way we have always known it."
— The Knights Party website
"The Mexican birthrate in this country is five times that of white people. The black birthrate is four times larger. America will become a Third World nation if these trends continue. Unless we slow down and cut off immigration by beefing up border control and encourage welfare recipients to have fewer kids, the white population in America will be swamped."
— David Duke in the run-up to the KKKK's 1977 "Border Patrol" operation
"Dats when A'hs does what A'hs want. Dat's also when A'hs kin have da white girls, and da free food stamps."
— KKKK leader Thomas Robb, The White Patriot
"Fear of the Klan will never win our people over but rekindling the love for their heritage will — and love of heritage is what we want. Love of Race, Love of Nation, Love of Faith. This is our Goal — This is our Hope!"
— The Crusader, 2005
Background
In true David Duke style, the foundation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK) is shrouded in political myth. Duke's claim that the Knights were founded in 1956 by Ed White (a pseudonym for Jim Lindsay) has, however, been largely discredited as a propagandistic attempt by the budding Klan leader to fend off depictions of his group as an inconsequential upstart. The group seems to have first appeared briefly in New Orleans in 1973, with Duke billing himself grand dragon and Jim Lindsay grand wizard. But records show that the KKKK was not formally incorporated in Louisiana until 1975, following Lindsay's murder, when Duke listed himself as founder and national director and his then-wife, Chloe, as secretary.
Duke's attempts to win over the old guard of Klan leaders, both by re-imagining the origins of his group and by reaching out early on to fellow "Klan brothers," belied his revolutionary plans. Famously calling on fellow Klansmen to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms," Duke saw himself as the leader of a slick, new Klan which would captivate the public through political discourse, eschewing the violent methods of the past. Duke thus brought the art of media manipulation to the Klan, wooing mainstream media personalities such as NBC host Tom Snyder and attracting dozens of reporters to write excited stories about the Knights' 1977 "Border Patrol" publicity stunt, a supposed effort to close the U.S.-Mexico border to undocumented entrants that lasted just a few days. Under Duke's management, the Knights opened its doors to women and Catholics (while never giving up entirely on the view that women are, above all else, best utilized for producing white babies). This all served to reinforce the public image of a more modern, educated Klan, an image that Duke reinforced by shunning Klan robes for suits and ties.
Duke also revamped the Klan's particular brand of bigotry. No longer a mere horde of cross-burning minority-haters, the Knights, like many other American hate groups, became "Nazified" — focused on Jews rather than blacks as the primary enemy — with Duke spinning elaborate theories about everything from Jewish control of the Federal Reserve to a Jewish conspiracy behind the civil rights movement. Likewise, the leadership of state KKKK chapters boasted a pantheon of budding neo-Nazi figures, including notorious anti-Semite Don Black in Alabama, White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger in California, and David Lane, a future leader of the terrorist group The Order, in Colorado.
For a while, the Knights prospered, hosting in 1975 one of the largest Klan gatherings in decades in Walker, La. By 1979, Duke had built membership in the KKKK to an estimated 1,500, with another 10,000 non-member supporters. Duke and his tactics were arguably the catalyst for the Knights' growth, but the egocentric leader also posed a constant threat to his group. Even one of the Knights' greatest successes, the Walker rally in 1975, contained the seeds of trouble. In the rally's wake, its organizer, Knights member Bill Wilkinson, quit in disgust over Duke's management of the proceeds. This kind of criticism soon became common, with aides to Duke, also including Metzger and others, eventually alienated by what they portrayed as his corruption, his womanizing and his self-serving desire for personal political glory. A series of schisms rocked the Knights, and by 1980, the breakaway group that Wilkinson had formed following his departure — the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — boasted more members than Duke's KKKK.
Thus, by the time that David Duke left in disgrace, after being caught on camera trying to sell the Knights' membership list, the KKKK was already weakened. That, plus the prosecution of several group leaders including Duke for allegedly inciting a riot at a New Orleans meeting, decimated the Knights. Many of those KKKK members who remained followed Duke to his new, non-Klan group, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the KKKK almost entirely collapsed several years later with Don Black's 1981 arrest for conspiring to invade the Caribbean nation of Dominica. Leadership of the weakened KKKK passed to Stanley McCollum and the 1980s saw a decline in Klan activity, with the Knights claiming only a few hundred members when Thom Robb took over in 1989.
Robb, who eschewed the Klannish "Imperial Wizard" title in favor of the more businesslike "National Director," led the group to something of a revival in the early 1990s, even attempting at one point to start a family-oriented Klan camp near the KKKK's new headquarters at his home in Harrison, Ark. Claiming, like Duke, to represent a "kinder, gentler" Klan, Robb followed in Duke's media-exploiting footsteps with the added boon of expanded Internet communications. Robb's was the first Klan site on the Web and he managed to develop a number of linked sites, thus creating the impression of a mushrooming cyber-movement. A gifted public speaker, Robb was also an adherent and pastor of Christian Identity theology who wooed his listeners with speeches embracing a more subtle form of hate cloaked behind white "pride" and Christian compassion. But these promising efforts could not stop a series of schisms similar to those that plagued the KKKK under Duke.
Like Duke, Robb also had a sharp interest in financial matters. He "formalized" KKKK recruitment, abandoning initiation rites in favor of a simple mail-in fee, in return for which members received booklets and tests allowing them to pay for their "promotion" to the next level. Complaints arose that this practice made Klan membership virtually meaningless. The salesmanship exhibited by Robb has sparked other controversies about money management, as well. In 1994, a number of high-ranking members split with Robb amidst accusations that he had made off with telephone hotline funds and a $20,000 donation to the group. These peoples were also highly critical of Robb's "kinder, gentler" approach and went on to found more confrontational Klan factions. One of the splinters that emerged was a Michigan-based group that promptly hosted a more "traditional" Klan rally, hoods and all, in Lafayette, Ind. Ed Novak, an ex-lieutenant of Robb's, founded the Chicago-based Federation of Klans and took with him roughly one third of Robb's membership.
Although weakened since the 1994 split, the KKKK has continued to stage rallies and other events, garnering the most media attention for its involvement in several "free speech" lawsuits. The group was represented by the ACLU in a 1999 Missouri case in which a local KKKK chapter was initially barred from participating in the state's "Adopt-a-Highway" cleanup program (the Adopt-a-Highway technique had been advocated by David Duke himself). And, that same year, it engaged in a failed attempt to underwrite St. Louis, Mo., broadcasts of the National Public Radio new program "All Things Considered." Most recently, the Knights were sued by the conservative tabloid Rhinoceros Times in North Carolina for allegedly inserting Klan leaflets into papers that were then distributed to local residences.
Today, Robb's website continues to bill the Knights, somewhat disingenuously, as "the most active white rights organization in America" (it clearly is not) and still offers Klan membership (and promotion!) for a price. Robb recently began calling his organization "The Knights Party" in an attempt to emphasize what he sees as the need for a softer, more political approach along the lines of David Duke's tactics. In order, apparently, to finance political activity, the Knights website offers numerous wares for sale, such as handcrafted, glazed-ceramic statues of Klansmen.
splcenter.org
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Splc comprehensive report
Ku Klux Klan
A History of Racism and Violence
SIXTH EDITION, 2011
COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/Ku-Klux-Klan-A-History-of-Racism.pdf
https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism
Exploiting Fears
The message was clear — the new Klan was serious. That meant expanding its list of enemies to include Asians, immigrants, bootleggers, dope, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, sex, pre- and extra-marital escapades and scandalous behavior. The Klan, with its new mission of social vigilance, soon had organizers scouring the nation, probing for the fears of the communities they hit and then exploiting them to the hilt.
And the tactic was immediately a raging success. By the late summer of 1921, nearly 100,000 had enrolled in the Invisible Empire, and at $10 a head (tax-free since the Klan was a “benevolent” society), the profits were impressive. While Simmons made speeches and tinkered with ritual, Clarke busied himself with expanding the treasury, launching Klan publishing and manufacturing firms and investing in real estate. The future looked very good.
But during that summer the Klan leaders in Atlanta ran into their first trouble — controlling their far-flung empire. While Klan officials talked of fraternal ideals in Atlanta, their members across the nation began to take seriously the fiery rhetoric the recruiters were using to drum up new initiation fees. Violence first flared in a rampage of whippings, tar-and-feathers raids and the use of acid to brand the letters “KKK” on the foreheads of blacks, Jews and others they considered anti-American. Ministers, sheriffs, policemen, mayors and judges either ignored the violence or secretly participated. Few Klansmen were arrested, much less convicted.
From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>
Blacks were regularly lynched by white mobs.
The Klan Exposed - drove up RECRUITING
In September 1921 the New York World began a series of articles on the Klan, backed up by the revelations of an ex-recruiter. Another newspaper reported some of the internal gossip and financial manipulations within the Atlanta headquarters. And even more embarrassing was a story in the World that Clarke and Mrs. Tyler had been arrested, not quite fully clothed, in a police raid on a bawdy house in 1919.
The Klan was accepted as part of american life in the early 1920s.
The article badly tarnished the Klan’s moralistic image and precipitated a serious rift within the ranks. The World exposés also brought demands for countermeasures, and congress responded in October 1921 with hearings into the Klan’s activities. Although the congressional inquiry so upset Clarke that he considered resigning, the actual hearings did little damage to the Klan. Simmons explained away the secrecy of the Klan as just part of the fraternal aspect of the organization. He disavowed any link between his Klan and the nightriders of reconstruction days, and he denied — just as Forrest had done 50 years earlier — any knowledge of or responsibility for the violence. The committee adjourned without action, and the Klan benefited from all the publicity.
From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>
More Violence at BLACKS…but then WHITES!
And its violence was clearly revealed. Under Evans, the Klan launched a campaign of terrorism in the early and mid-1920S, and many communities found themselves firmly in the grasp of the organization. Lynching’s, shootings and whippings were the methods employed by the Klan. Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Mexicans and various immigrants were usually the victims.
But not infrequently, the Klan’s targets were whites, Protestants and females who were considered “immoral” or “traitors” to their race or gender. In Alabama, for example, a divorcee with two children was flogged for the “crime” of remarrying and then given a jar of Vaseline for her wounds. In Georgia, a woman was given 60 lashes for a vague charge of “immorality and failure to go to church”; when her 15-year-old son ran to her rescue, he received the same treatment. In both cases, ministers led the Klansmen responsible for the violence.
But such instances were not confined to the South. In Oklahoma, Klansmen applied the lash to girls caught riding in automobiles with young men, and very early in the Klan revival, women were flogged and even tortured in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
In a period when many women were fighting for the vote, for a place in the job market and for personal and cultural freedom, the Klan claimed to stand for “pure womanhood” and frequently attacked women who sought independence.
Political Gains
During the period of its most uncontrolled violence, the Klan also experienced unprecedented political gains. In 1922, Texas sent Klansman Earl Mayfield to the U.S. Senate, and Klan campaigns helped defeat two Jewish congressmen who had headed the Klan inquiry. Klan efforts were credited with helping to elect governors in 12 states in the early 1920s.
With two million members, new recruits joining the secret rolls daily, a host of friendly politicians throughout the land and his internal enemies subdued for the moment, Evans wanted to influence the presidential election of 1924. He even shifted his national headquarters from Atlanta to Washington. The Klan had a foothold in both parties since Deep South members tended to be Democrats while Klansmen in the North and West were often Republicans. But of the three major Presidential candidates, two were outspoken enemies of the Ku Klux Klan. And when the Democratic convention opened in New York, many Democrats were demanding the party adopt a platform plank condemning the Ku Klux Klan. The resulting fight tore the convention apart. After days of bitter wrangling over the issue, the platform plank denouncing the Klan lost by a single vote.
Although politicians became increasingly uncomfortable with Klan allies as a result of the turmoil, the success of the Klan candidates across the nation in 1924 buoyed Evans’ spirits. His notoriety peaked with a parade of 40,000 Klansmen down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument in August 1925. Evans boasted of having helped reelect Coolidge, of having secured passage of strict anti-immigration laws and of having checked the ambitions of Catholics and others intent on “perverting” the nation. The Klan was riding high.
Losing Ground
But the decline of the Ku Klux Klan was already well underway. By 1926, when Evans tried to repeat the parade in Washington, only half as many marchers arrived, and they were sobered by the news of political defeats in areas that a year before had been considered safe Klan strongholds.
Increasingly the Klan suffered counter attacks by the clergy, the press and a growing number of politicians. Then, in 1927, a group of rebellious Klansmen in Pennsylvania broke away from the Invisible Empire, and Evans promptly filed a $100,000 damage suit against them, confident that he could make an example of the rebels. To his surprise, the Pennsylvania Klansmen fought back in the courts, and the resulting string of witnesses told of Klan horrors, terrorism and violence, named members and spilled secrets.
Newspapers carried accounts of testimony ranging from the kidnapping of a small girl from her grandparents in Pittsburgh to a Colorado Klansman who was beaten when he tried to quit. One particularly horrible story described how a man in Terrell, Texas, had been soaked in oil and burned to death before several hundred Klansmen. The enraged judge threw Evans’ case out of court.
The next year the Democrats nominated Al Smith — a New York Catholic and longtime Klan foe — for president against the Republicans’ Herbert Hoover. The Ku Klux Klan had a perfect issue which Evans hoped to use to whip up the faithful. But his Invisible Empire had melted from three million in 1925 to no more than several hundred thousand, and the Klan was no factor in Hoover’s election. Americans had clearly tired of the divisive effect of the masks, robes and burning crosses. What was left of the Klan’s clout disappeared as its old friends in office, smelling the new political winds, deserted the organization in droves.
During the 1930s, the nation struggled through the Great Depression, and the Klan continued to shrink. It became primarily a fraternal society, its leaders urging its members to stay out of trouble and the national headquarters hoarding its meager funds. After Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, the Klan began to charge that he was bringing too many Catholics and Jews into the government. Later they added the charge that the New Deal was tinged with communism. The red menace was used more and more by Evans and other Klansmen as the rallying cry, and communists eventually replaced Catholics as one of the Klan’s foremost enemies.
Only in Florida was the Klan still a factor in the 1930s. With a membership of about 30,000, the Klan was active in Jacksonville, Miami, and the citrus belt from Orlando to Tampa. In the orange groves of central Florida, Klansmen still operated in the old night riding style, intimidating blacks who tried to vote, “punishing” marital infidelity and clashing with union organizers. Florida responded with laws to unmask the nightriders, and a crusading journalist named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated and then exposed the Klan, rousing the anger of ministers, editors, politicians and plain citizens.
Women’s auxiliaries of the Ku Klux Klan formed their own marching corps and joined in mass Klan demonstrations.
New Leadership
Evans was replaced in 1939 by James A. Colescott of Indiana. He led the Klan in the Carolinas, where unions were trying to organize textile workers, and in Georgia, where nightriders flogged some 50 people during a two-year period. An outcry from the citizens of Georgia and South Carolina brought arrests and convictions, and the Klan was forced to retreat.
In the North the Klan suffered another reversal when some local Klan chapters began to develop ties with American Nazis, a move Southern Klansmen opposed but were basically powerless to stop. The end came in 1944 when the Internal revenue Service filed a lien against the Ku Klux Klan for back taxes of more than $685,000 on profits earned during the 1920s. “We had to sell our assets and hand over the proceeds to the government and go out of business,” Colescott recalled when it was over. “Maybe the government can make something out of the Klan — I never could.”
Powerful social forces were at work in the United States following World War II. A new wave of immigrants, particularly Jewish refugees, arrived from war-torn Europe. A generation of young black soldiers returned home after having been a part of a great army fighting for world freedom. In the South, particularly, labor unions began extensive campaigns to organize poorly paid workers. The migration from the farms to the cities continued, with a resulting shakeup in old political alliances.
Bigots began to howl more loudly than in years, and a new Klan leader began to beat the drums of anti-black, anti-union, anti-Jew, anti-Catholic and anti-communist hatred. This man was Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor. Green managed to reorganize the Klan in California, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. But both federal and state bureaus of investigation prosecuted Klan lawlessness, and Green found that his hooded order was surrounded by enemies. The press throughout the South had become increasingly hostile; ministers were more and more inclined to attack the Klan, and state and local governments passed laws against cross burnings and masks.
By the time of Green’s death in August 1949, the Klan was fractured internally by disputes and hounded by investigations from all sides in response to a wave of Klan violence in the South. Many Klansmen went to jail for floggings or other criminal acts. By the early 1950s, the Invisible Empire was at its lowest level since its rebirth on Stone Mountain in 1915.
From <https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism#the%20invisible%20empire>
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splcenter.org
2021Jul15 SPLC analysis - Neo-Nazi's Bitcoin History Suggests Russian Darknet Link
July 15, 2021 | SPLC LINK | BY Michael Edison Hayden and Megan Squire
ANALYSIS
Hatewatch identified Anglin’s transactions through software that specializes in analyzing cryptocurrency transactions. Hatewatch believes based upon our reading of that software that in 2016 Anglin paid money to a Russian darknet site that traffics in hacked personal data, drugs, ransomware, stolen credit cards and money laundering. Hatewatch could not determine exactly why Anglin transferred currency to the apparent darknet site highlighted through the software. He did not respond to an email requesting comment on the findings published in this story, but he did deny them in a neo-Nazi forum he operates.
“This is totally fake. I don't even know what any of this is about. I never bought any Russian darknet drugs lol,” Anglin told other forum users in a comment on July 16. “I have never used bitcoin for anything other than website stuff.” You can read Anglin’s complete response to this analysis by clicking here.
Anglin, a neo-Nazi known for leading internet-based harassment campaigns against women, Black, Jewish and Muslim people, among others, issued the Bitcoin payments in July and August of 2016, Hatewatch determined. At that time, Anglin produced a deluge of propaganda promoting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. (Anglin voted for Trump that year via absentee ballot from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.) The Southern Poverty Law Center successfully sued Anglin for $14 million over the terror campaign he organized against Tanya Gersh, a Montana-based Jewish real estate agent he targeted through his website in December 2016. Anglin has hidden from the public in recent years and has so far failed to pay out the judgment against him.
Promoting the darknet to a generation of extremists
Anglin and his Daily Stormer collaborator Andrew “weev” Auernheimer have promoted the darknet among the site’s community of readers for years. By darknet, Hatewatch refers to a layer of the internet that is only accessible through Tor, a peer-to-peer web browser that enables users to be anonymous. In an era when typically only those with money can obtain privacy online, activists endorse Tor as a means of protecting one’s identity from those who seek to steal data or create harm. Anglin and Auernheimer seek anonymity through Tor to help them engage in pro-fascist activism without outsiders detecting their activity, which often includes stirring up online harassment campaigns. Anglin advocated for his readers to download and employ Tor back in August 2015, when explaining how to skirt around software that blocks IP addresses.
“We already know how to deal with the IP blocking. We just use Tor,” Anglin wrote in that post, encouraging his readers to troll a comment section. “Download and use Tor browser. It’s very simple. Comment on the top stories until you’re banned, reset Tor, repeat. The Android version of Tor also works great, if you want to Troll on the move with your smartphone.”
Tech companies such as GoDaddy and Google originally provided web services to the Daily Stormer, but they cut ties with the hate site in August 2017 following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which Anglin promoted. Anglin and Auernheimer moved the Daily Stormer to more than a dozen different domains in the months that followed, often using a darknet address as a permanent home for the site at times when readers couldn’t access it on the clear web, where most internet activity happens. (Anglin sometimes refers to the clear web as the “normie web” to his readers.) Anglin wrote an entry on a personal blog on Aug. 25, 2017, calling the site’s move to the darknet “fitting.”
An early proponent of cryptocurrency
Anglin adopted cryptocurrency within years of it becoming available, and today operates at least 200 Bitcoin addresses. In addition to the addresses he uses to solicit donations, many of the other addresses are created as byproducts of his long history using the cryptocurrency. Each time Bitcoin holders receive “change” back from transactions on the blockchain, that “change” is held in a new address. Hatewatch determined that Anglin frequently combined the coins from his “change” addresses with coins held in his known donation addresses in order to make new payments.
Anglin’s transaction history also stands out for the money he holds relative to other extremists, his volume of transactions and his apparent interest in websites that traffic in illegal goods, stolen data and money laundering, Hatewatch determined. We also found that Anglin has traded at least $1,144,648 worth of Bitcoin in total across 6,147 transactions, 4790 inbound and 1357 outbound, spanning six and a half years. Anglin wrote in his denial that “[Hatewatch] just print[s] whatever amount of money to try to stop people from donating.” Anglin commonly solicits donations from his readers, sometimes threatening to stop working if he runs out of funds.
“We have long been banned from operating within the normal financial system. As far back as 2014, we were banned from PayPal and credit card processors, and switched to Bitcoin,” Anglin wrote of cryptocurrency in a February post.
Hatewatch found a series of transactions involving an address known to belong to Anglin on Dec. 24, 2014, which marks his first known use of the Bitcoin blockchain. On that date, two unidentified Bitcoin users sent Anglin four payments in quick succession of 0.008814 BTC each. (White supremacists place symbolic significance on the numbers 14 and 88.) Hours later, on the same date, someone also sent Anglin a 0.04 BTC payment. The person who sent the payment also transacted multiple times with the white nationalist Don Black, Hatewatch determined. (Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, created the white supremacist forum Stormfront and invested early in Bitcoin.) Hatewatch reached out about the transactions by email to Stormfront, Black’s website, but no one wrote back.
Anglin later spent Bitcoin at sites associated with darknet services, according to Hatewatch’s interpretation of the blockchain analysis software. In summer 2016, Anglin made payments to a Russian darknet website, Hatewatch found. He paid out roughly $19.68 on July 3, 2016, $31.74 on July 19, 2016, and $15.04 on Aug. 6, 2016, according to our reading of the software. Around the same time, Anglin transacted with addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain associated with trafficking in money laundering practices. In cryptocurrency parlance, these “mixing services” allow multiple users to combine their coins to obscure their precise destination. Anglin began receiving payments from users through mixing services in October 2016 and continued as recently as January 2020, Hatewatch found.
Daily Stormer’s move to Monero
Today, Anglin no longer solicits Bitcoin donations on his Daily Stormer website, but instead encourages readers to donate Monero, a privacy-focused coin embraced by the criminal underworld. Designed to obscure transactions from public view, darknet market shoppers spend theoretically untraceable Monero tokens to evade law enforcement scrutiny. For that reason, Hatewatch can analyze only fragments of Anglin’s cryptocurrency history right now, emphasizing payments he either made or received through known Bitcoin wallets.
“Every Bitcoin transfer is visible publicly,” Anglin wrote in February about moving Daily Stormer donations to Monero. “Generally, your name is not attached to the address in a direct way, but spies from the various ‘woke’ anti-freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try to link these transactions to real names. With Monero, the transactions are all hidden.”
The private security company CipherTrace claims to have developed the capacity to trace Monero transactions on behalf of law enforcement, according to an August 2020 statement on their website. CipherTrace notes in their statement that 45% of darknet markets now carry out transactions in Monero, making it the second most-used cryptocurrency for such transactions behind Bitcoin.
Russian darknet services, American crimes
One example of the type of Russian darknet site Anglin may have paid is “uniccshop.ru,” which the Justice Department (DOJ) described as being part of a “transnational criminal organization” when they issued cybercrime-related charges against 36 people connected to it in February 2018. A man named Andrey Sergeevich Novak operated the Unicc.ru site at the time Anglin made the apparent payments. Novak used the aliases “Unicc,” “Faaaxx” and “Faxtrod” while he participated in a shadowy group known as the InFraud Organization, which victimized “millions in all 50 states and worldwide,” contributing to losses of over $530 million through hacking and data theft, the indictment said. Hatewatch reached out to the DOJ for an update in the case against Novak and a comment on Anglin’s apparent use of darknet markets and is awaiting a response.
Law enforcement has also cracked down on Bitcoin mixing services in recent years. Federal authorities arrested Roman Sterlingov, the administrator of a website called BitcoinFog, on money laundering charges in April. Hatewatch reached out to the Internal Revenue Service for a comment on users of Bitcoin mixing services and an update on the Sterlingov case. If they respond, Hatewatch will update this story.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the analysis of Andrew Anglin’s bitcoin wallet data was made by an SPLC analyst interpreting data from a blockchain analysis software. Hatewatch also updated the analysis to include Anglin’s comment about our findings.
Photo illustration by SPLC
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/07/15/neo-nazis-bitcoin-history-suggests-russian-darknet-link
Semantics Matters: "Conditional if" and "Unconditional"
To properly understand Kelner's use of the word "unconditional,"we must first consider the case of United States v. Watts (1969) 394 U.S. 705, 22 L. Ed. 2d 664, 89 S. Ct. 1399 on which Kelner relied. Watts was convicted of threatening the President of the United States. He had stated, in a small Discussion group during a political rally,
"And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going.
If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J. [President Lyndon B. Johnson]." (Id. at p. 706.) The Supreme Court reversed Watts's conviction, holding that the trial court erred in denying his motion for acquittal.
Defense counsel had stressed the alleged threat "was made during a political debate, that it was expressly made conditional upon an event -- induction into the Armed Forces -- which [Watts] vowed would never occur, and that both [Watts] and the crowd laughed after the statement was made." (Id. at p. 707.)
The Supreme Court concluded that taken in context, and considering the conditional nature of the threat and the reaction of the listeners, the only possible Conclusion was that the statement was not a punishable "true threat," but was rather political hyperbole privileged under the First Amendment. (Id. at pp. 707-708.) The Watts threat was not merely conditional in the abstract, but conditioned on an event which the defendant "vowed would never occur." Thus, far from conveying an immediate prospect of execution, this threat explicitly contained a condition the defendant promised would not come to pass.
United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d 1020 involved a televised press conference called by the Jewish Defense League in which Kelner, dressed in military fatigues and armed with a weapon, stated that his group was going to kill Yasser Arafat, who was to be in New York for a meeting of the United Nations.
When questioned by the media, Kelner stated that the assassination had already been planned, and that it would indeed "come off." (Id. at p. 1021.)
At his trial for communicating a threat in interstate commerce, Kelner argued that his statement was political hyperbole protected by the First Amendment rather than a punishable true threat.
Kelner contended that in order for a threat to be a true threat, the threatener must have specifically intended to carry it out. (Id. at p. 1025.)
New Standard - Personal Intention vs. "True threat"
The Kelner court disagreed. Instead of an inquiry as to the defendant's intent to carry outthe threat, the Second Circuit concluded the Constitution mandated only an inquiry as to whether the threat convincingly expressed an intention of being carried out. (United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.)
The Kelner court formulated this requirement in several interchangeable ways. Thus, in addition to the language incorporated in Penal Code section 422, the court also defined true threats as "only those which according to their language and context conveyed a gravity of purpose and likelihood of execution so as to constitute speech beyond the pale of protected [attacks on government and political officials]." (Id. at p. 1026.) In adopting this formulation, the Second Circuit relied on Watts.
The reversal of Watts's conviction because his threat was a jest and used conditional language was simply an illustration of the general principle that only threats which express an intention of being carried out are punishable true threats, not the adoption of a bright-line test based on the whether the defendant used conditional language. (See Ibid.)
Clearly, the Kelner court did not intend "unconditionality" to prohibit punishment of threats including "if" language.This is evidenced by its Discussion of the "purpose and effect" of the "true threat" requirement.
It "is to insure that only unequivocal, unconditional and specific expressions of intention immediately to inflict injury may be punished -- only such threats, in short, as are of the same nature as those threats which are . . . 'properly punished every day under statutes prohibiting extortion, blackmail and assault . . . .'"(United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1027.) By definition, extortion punishes conditional threats, specifically those in which the victim complies with the mandated condition. (See Pen. Code, § 518 ["Extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, . . . induced by a wrongful use of force or fear . . . .]; Pen. Code, § 519, subd. 1 [fear as will constitute extortionmay be induced by a threat to do unlawful injury to the victim].)
Likewise, many threats involved in assault cases are conditional. A conditional threat can be punished as an assault, when the condition imposed must be performed immediately, the defendant has no right to impose the condition, the intent is to immediately enforce performance by violence and defendant places himself in a position to do so and proceeds as far as is then necessary. (People v. McCoy (1944) 25 Cal. 2d 177, 182, 193, 153 P.2d 315 [assault with a deadly weapon accomplished by defendant's demand, with knife held over victim, that victim not make any noise or the knife will be used].)
It is clear, then, that the Kelner court's use of the word "unconditional" was not meant to prohibit prosecution of all threats involving an "if" clause, but only to prohibit prosecution based on threats whose conditions precluded them from conveying a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.
Cases subsequent to Kelner have reached the same result. In United States v. Malik (2d Cir. 1994) 16 F.3d 45, 51, the Second Circuit upheld the following jury instruction as "substantially following the language of [Kelner]":5"'A threat is a statement expressing:
an intention to inflict bodily harm to someone of such a nature as could reasonably induce fear as distinguished from idle, careless talk, exaggeration or something said in a joking manner.
You must determine whether the threat was a true threat when Judged in its context [-- a] serious expression of intent to inflict injury and not merely a vehement or emotional expression of political opinion, hyperbole or arguments against government officials.
[P] Among other things, you should consider whether on their face and in the circumstances in which they were made defendant's statements were so unequivocal, unconditional and specific as to convey to the recipient a gravity of purpose and apparent prospect of execution.'"
Under the Kelner language adopted in Penal Code section 422, conditionality is only one circumstance to be considered in the overall analysis of whether the threat is a true threat, and is not a bright line separating actionable threats from protected ones.
Substantial Evidence
Because we have concluded the use of the word "if" in defendant's threat does not absolve defendant from liability, her substantial evidence challenge is easily resolved. Defendant threatened to hire someone to kill Foss if he did not join her Universe Reform Party. Although grammatically conditional, this threat contained a considerable degree of unconditionality, since compliance with defendant's condition would be practically impossible. The other three factors, unequivocality, immediacy and specificity, were also present in significant degrees. The threat was directed to Foss and specifically identified not only the manner in which it would be carried out (carjacking), but confirmed defendant's possession of the means to accomplish it ($1,000 to hire gang members). The threat was also unequivocal and immediate. If Foss refused to join the party (a virtual certainty), the injury would occur. Thus, each of the four factors was sufficiently present to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution. As a result of the threat, Foss was frightened and nervous and altered his habits in order to preserve his safety. The jury's Conclusion the threat was sufficiently unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific to convey to Foss a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution was thus supported by substantial evidence and will be upheld.
Defendant also contends that there may not have been a threat at all and Foss's fear for his safety was not reasonable. Because Gormly did not immediately give the phone message to Foss and Foss did not immediately contact the police, defendant claims Foss must have known the phone call was "just another in a long series of foolish, harmless communications" from her. We disagree. The telephone call was concededly different from all earlier communications Foss had received from defendant, in that it contained an explicit death threat. Gormly could not have immediately notified Foss of the phone call; he did not know how to reach Foss. Foss did not call the police until after receiving the package because the package greatly changed the circumstances of the earlier threat. The postcard had indicated to Foss that defendant was no longer in an institutional setting and was in the Los Angeles area. The package proved that defendant had access to Foss's office. Nor was the package an innocent collection of documents, but it contained a threatening item -- the dead cat. All of these circumstances combined to make the telephoned death threat more threatening than it originally appeared and provided substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict.
Disposition
The judgment is affirmed.
ARMSTRONG, J., and GODOY PEREZ, J., Concurring.
Disposition
The judgment is affirmed.
1. On May 25, 1994, defendant's appellate counsel filed an opening brief requesting independent review of the record by this court pursuant to People v. Wende (1979) 25 Cal. 3d 436, 158 Cal. Rptr. 839, 600 P.2d 1071. On July 18, 1994, in light of the conflicting appellate authority, we requested counsel to brief the issue of whether the statute could be violated by a conditional threat. Defendant's appellate counsel then filed a supplemental brief addressing that issue, as well as raising insufficiency of the evidence as to the existence of any threat or any reasonable fear on the part of the victim. A respondent's brief was filed. Defendant subsequently submitted a brief, in propria persona, raising the issue of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Based on the record on appeal, defendant has failed to establish ineffective assistance of counsel.
2. The message addressed to Foss stated that Stanfield of the Universe Reform Party had called at 8:05 a.m. on August 9, 1993, and stated: "Has 1000.00 to pay to gang banger to take care of you. She will call back at 1:30 today."
3. The police logged the contents of the package, which also included a white bra with an earring attached, a cloth, a book entitled "Sexist Justice" and articles on women's rights.
4. The Brooks opinion relied on the general development of federal law subsequent to Kelner in determining the meaning of the California statute. (People v. Brooks, supra, 26 Cal. App. 4th at pp. 146-149.) To the extent Brooks relied on cases that may have implicitly differed from the Kelner rule, we respectfully disagree with its analysis. The California Legislature has chosen to codify the Kelner rule. While it is appropriate to consider other courts' interpretations of this rule, it is inappropriate to consider subsequent developments in First Amendment jurisprudence. At the time it was enacted, Penal Code section 422 may have been intended as the broadest terrorist threat statute possible under First Amendment restrictions. However, the Legislature did not choose to use terminology that would allow the statute to grow in accordance with First Amendment jurisprudence, and has instead frozen California law at the Kelner formulation.
5. The particular language the instruction was found to have followed was the precise language adopted by the California statute.
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This Document Cites the Following Cases:
People v. Brooks
