Ku Klux Kristmas

So, one day Mike Sweet was showing me the Resistance Records messageboard and there was a post on it that said something along the lines of "Hey guys, I play on my high school baseball team and the star pitcher is a nigger, what should I do?" The first response was "You should obviously kill him." I'm pretty sure that was the exact moment that resparked my obsession with white power. Or maybe it was a different thread on the same messageboard discussing whether it was ok or not to like Dave Chapelle cause even though he is a nigger, he is just telling it like it is and part of what makes him funny is that niggers can't even understand that he is making fun of them.

Many years prior to that I became fascinated with white power subcultures when I saw HBO's documentary about Bill Riccio's Aryan Defense League. The guy ran this club out of a trailer that he owned where he would take in what seemed like your average metalhead from a fucked up family that needed someone to look up to who would let them drink beer and not enforce too many rules. The highlight of the hour long special was when Bill is given a cake with a swastika on it and one of the boys in the ADL tells him that it brings a ear into his eyes when he stares into Bills due to the overwhelming resemblace to Hitler that he has. That was it. That's when I said, fuck this shit is unreal and the obsession began.

So, now back to about 2 years ago. I'm looking at the Resistance website and linking fro it to other websites and I see an announcement for a KKK Kristmas party with Ku Klux Klaus in Osceola, Indiana which was going to be happening in 3 days. I instantly call up Imperial Wizard Ray Larsen and end up leaving a message saying that I am a photographer working on a series of photos depicting how family traditions are passed down through generations and that I would be interested in coming if permission was ganted. Later that day I get a call back from Larsen and we chat it up on the phone a bit. I further explain why I am interested in taking the photos and he tells me more about the event. The conversation ends with him inviting me and my friends with a chuckling "just don't bring no niggers or no jews"

So now, I only had a couple days to convince people to go with me which was actually easier than I thought and I gather an all star cast of 3 of my room mates, Jesse Rosemoore, Crystal, and Mike Sweet. Friday night we leave NY trying to figure out what we were getting ourselves into. After about 12 hours of driving which included stopping in a remote MI town for breakfast where your typical we're not from around here so everyone stares at us and probably talks about how we are faggots thing went down, we arrive in Osceola, IN. We drove by the supposed compound, unlike Bill Riccio's, it wasn't on some plot of land surrouned by woods. It was just a normal looking Suburban house with neighbors on the left and right and across the street. Honestlly, there was a feeling of relief but also one of confusion, so we drove around the neighborhood a little more and it exactly what you would expect from a small town in Indiana. Some developments, some houses, people had decent amount of property, fairly clean, woods in the area, nothing out of the ordinary. When we drove by the house the second time, things were a bit different. There were two flags erected, one being a KKK flag, the other a confederate. We pulled up in front of the yard and started getting out. The thing we instantly noticed was a cazy fucking dog charging at the fence, fomaing at the mouth and barking like it was ready to kill and we were soon greeted by Ray and a couple of his buddies who told us to park on their fenced in property and for Crystal to go help the women which she pretended to not hear.

We got a small tour of the compound, which consisted of a house, a very crookedly built shack in the backyard which was where the party essentially happened and a big back yard filled with broken down cars and trucks which I was instructed to not take photos of so that they don't look white trash. There was maybe a total of 15 people at this event and we were trying to figure out if another 50 or 100 were going to show up as the day went on or if this was it so after getting the tour Ray and his friends told us a brief history of their family, the problems they have with one of their neighbors who ironically works for the Anti Defemation League, their troubles in court, general ways of life and some general anecdotes about nigges and jews. One of the main things that they kept explaining to us is how they aren't racist, they just don't care about people who aren't white. "And while that may be hard for people like you from Jew York City to understand, that's just how we see it" Ray was filled with all sorts of good puns like that, Jew York City, Jew Jersey, Chink-cago aka Chi-congo, you could probably name any major city in America and he'd be able to racist it up just a tad.

The majority of the day was kinda awkward, we hung out with them in the party shack which I shit you not was filled with grape soda (probably some sort of a test for new comers) hot dogs, chilli, crackers, and some meat and cheese. We learned a lot of things like how their dog was named after a biblical figure who speared a nigger and how he killed a ramb that was on their property. Pretty gnarly dog I'm telling you. They told us how they got in trouble cause the dog bit some kid, so one of them shot it at point blank range in the jaw and he didn't die. He brought the fucked up close to show us, he had a bad scar and apparanly couldn't utilize that part of his mouth that well, but seriously, the crazy fucker was still alive.

On the topic of guns, they slo explained to us how what they carry are actually antiques because they were made before whatever the cutoff year is for something to go from antique to gun and even though they shoot the exact same bullets it's perfectly legal to walk into a hospital or court roo with one. "Or if you really want to raise some hell, you can walk into a high school with it" These guys were pretty initmidating, you know, and they are explaining these things to you and then going outside and shooting their antiques in front of you on their property. It's fun, but not all games.

They explained to us how they've had trouble in the court and how the town thinks they are white trash but "it sure is amazing what an educated white trash man with a bible can really do to the judicial system." There was this one guy there who used to be involved with some skinhead shit and had covered up swazi tats on his hands, he was the dude that was gonna be Ku Klux Klaus, "Which is an easy costume cause we just take traditional KKK outfit and just put a beard on him" And he definitly had it in for Crystal, with her viking roots and all, she was probably like a nordic princess to him. Anyway, he had to kind of keep his indentity secret from the public cause he competed in martial arts tournaments, which is one thing i didn't really understand. Some of these guys were so out in the open with their beliefs and other had to kind of hide it? I mean, I could tell by looking at his hands for 5 seconds that he had covered up swazi tats, but apparantly it was too dangerous for his martial arts buddies to know thins information. There was this weird duality of what was allowed to be out in the public, kind of like no photos of their kids.

Which was another thing, imagine being in school and kids finding out your dad is in the Klan. I can't even comprehend what goes on with that. They had one kid there who was probably in middle school. He told us that he "usually dresses more like a freak" but his parents wanted him to be presentable at the party. He seemed like your pretty average middle school kid, he liked Slipknot, was overweight, and didn't like school.

Everything is going fine throughout the day which pinnacles at Ray explaing to us the Klan's beliefs on race mixing "What if you were eating vanilla ice cream, right?" And at this point I am thinking, ok, he's going to say that if you mix it up with chocoalte icecream it just becomes a mess and you can distinguish what's vanilla and what's chocolate and both flavors lose their identity or something along those lines. Nope. "So, you are eating vanilla ice cream ..... and i put cow shit in it, would you keep eating it?" I thought about it for a split second and even though the answer is much deeper than what I gave him, I did answer that I would not eat the vanilla ice cream mixed with cow shit.

There was a lot of downtime at the party and a couple slip ups of comparing their dog to 50 cent cause of it getting shot in the mouth and Mike making a joke about throwing Jesse in the fireplace, but overall the mood wasn't really tense until their Russian lawyer from Chink-cago showed up. This dude totally changed the mood up. He got there, asked to see our IDs and had a meeting with the rest of the group outside for a little while. I have no idea what they thought, if maybe we worked for a magazine or the fbi or a local police force or what, but it was definitly tense after that and they barely talked to us.

There was also this one out of state guy there who was probably new to the movement. He came with his little kid and was asking us if we were going to the upcoming white power concerts up in Michigan which he found out about on the ADL website. If anything, this dude seemed like a narc, not us. Regardlesse went outside and hung out with their kid for a little bit. I decided to go take a piss in the port-o-pot when all of a sudden it started shaking and i had piss all over my leg. A lot of things are going through your head when you are involountarilly pissing on yourself on KKK soil and when I opened the door to see no one even close to me I asked if the dog ran into the john which the kid answered yes to but I was later told that he just did it, so like I was saying before...pretty average middle school kid.

(photo by crystal)

That's what made the whole thing really weird, how average they were. They worked normal blue collar jobs, owned property, were in tune with pop culture, baseball and apple pie, take out the whole white power thing and they would be your all american family, but that's not exciting to think about, so on to the cross lighting.

"The reason it's called a cross lighting and not a cross burning is cause cross burning has a negative connotation and the true meaning of this is to illuminate the spirit of Jesus" Now, at times, they wrap the cross in carpet, but it was too expensive, so they soaked it in gasoline and with the help of a pick up, erected it. They stood around it and said a Klan Prayer. And took turns passing the flame from torch to torch and lighting the cross.

(photo by crystal)

Oh, I forgot to mention that at this point a lot of them were in full garment and the out of state guy was taking photos of his little kid in front of the lit cross. Well, I guess we were too.

(photo by crystal)

I kind of wish that we were wearing hawaiin shirts or something to make it a little more festive, but overall it was still a cool experience.

At this point we had been there most of the day and were ready to get the hell out of there. The Knights explained to us how they had some ceremony to go to that we couldn't come along to, which I think was someone getting knighted and we tried to thank all the guys we talked to for letting us come before we left. We pulled out of the compound, got the hell out of osceola, and stopped at the first exit with a taco bell a couple miles away. I think all of our heads were about to explode. It was like a mental overload. One minute you are seeing a cross up in flames, the next you are eating a 7 layer burrito, kinda weird.