How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents? (10)
The Grand Dragon promised to expose the Judas in their midst.
“The damage has already been done,” said one Klansman.
“Our sacred ritual being profaned by a bunch of kids on the radio!” said the Kladd.
“They didn’t put it all on the air,” the Grand Dragon offered.
“What they didn’t broadcast wasn’t worth broadcasting,” said the Kladd.
The Dragon suggested they change their password immediately, from “red-blooded” to “death to traitors.”
After that night’s meeting, Kennedy phoned in the new password to the Superman producers, who promised to write it into the next show. At the following week’s Klan meeting, the room was nearly empty; applications for new membership had fallen to zero.
Of all the ideas that Kennedy had thought up—and would think up in the future—to fight bigotry, his Superman campaign was easily the cleverest and probably the most productive. It had the precise effect
he hoped: turning the Klan’s secrecy against itself, converting precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery. Instead of roping in millions of members as it had just a generation earlier, the Klan lost momentum and began to founder. Although the Klan would never quite die, especially down South—David Duke, a smooth-talking Klan leader from Louisiana, mounted legitimate bids for the U.S. Senate and other offices—it was also never quite the same. In The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, the historian Wyn Craig Wade calls Stetson Kennedy “the single most important factor in preventing a postwar revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the North.”
This did not happen because Kennedy was courageous or resolute or unflappable, even though he was all of these. It happened because Kennedy understood the raw power of information. The Ku Klux Klan was a group whose power—much like that of politicians or real-estate agents or stockbrokers—was derived in large part from the fact that it hoarded information. Once that information falls into the wrong hands (or, depending on your point of view, the right hands), much of the group’s advantage disappears.
Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
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[...] The answer was, “Yes, as long as the forty-four-year-old gave it his best shot.” And I then said, “OK, next question. Same vantage point, same younger guy. Let’s assume the forty-four-yearold knew what he wanted to do, had identified it, but decided that the risk for social failure and economic failure was just too great and therefore never did it. How would the seventy-fiveyear-old feel about that?” And I thought that would be unforgivable. Next, a very weird thing happened to me: It was almost a physical sensation. At that instant, I lost the fear of failure, and it has never come back. It was like losing vertigo. By the way, I am not indifferent to failure. I worried about what people would think and what would happen if I failed. [...]
Posted on February 18th, 2009 at 8:03 am
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