Spinoza’s ethics is concerned with the achievement of maximum human happiness. To that end, he develops a theory of human knowledge, emotions, and relationships that, deductively, yield a form of behavior, that of the “free man”, which should constitute a happy and fulfilled life. For Spinoza, “everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being.” That is, each individual object is essentially a conatus, an inner striving that seeks self-affirmation. In that sense, each individual object (humans, states, bacteria, or ethnic groups) exists strategically, seeking to become more, to have more power, and to be more the cause than the effect of what occurs to it (Lean, 2013).
In essence, the evolution and adaption of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) have over time developed recruitment strategies that appeal to human emotion. As terrorist organizations begin to bolster their regard for emotional concern in the recruitment of members, the success in adapting such a strategy represents and appeals to many of the social, political, and economical changes depicted around the environment. Given that the KKK has managed to maintain an active status over the years, the organization manages to continue to fuel hatred and terror as their primary means of maintaining the sense of identity and purpose for so long that it has brought significant changes to their recruitment process. In this paper, I will examine the many social and political ideologies that arose after the Civil War, which resulted in both the assistance and maintenance of the such organization. In addition to their recruitment strategies, which is an essential tool in the development of the formal and repute status of the organization, in the essence that it has become an influential concept that oversees the recruitment process.
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In early December of 1915, the birth of a nation, David Wark Griffth’s epochal motion picture, came to Atlanta, Georgia, for the first time. The picture was supposed to be a patriotic portrayal of the division and reunion of the United States during and after the Civil War. It also represented a remarkable advancement in the technological development of motion pictures, but the most conspicuous feature of the film for nostalgic Southerners was its depiction of white-robed Ku Klux Klansmen (Alexander, 2015).
Since the early 1800s, when the extremist organization of the KKK came to rise it allowed for the development of ideology principles that promoted and influenced both white supremacy as well as white nationalism. During the 1920s many writers tried to explain the phenomenon of the Klan movement. Most of them, like H. L. Mencken and his staff on the American Mercury, is about grown men in white robes and hoods burning crosses on hillsides and trying to scare their neighbors. Others ventured into the hinterlands, to places like Birmingham, Tulsa, Dallas, Indianapolis, Denver, or even Augusta, Maine, to observe the Klan in action (Alexander, 2015).
In their attempt to advance political agenda that supported the minimization of immigration, the Klan would eventually begin to openly launch scathing attacks against those they considered the abomination of the white race by specifically targeting religious organizations, particularly the catholic church when this allowed for its members to engage in a plethora of violent and terrorist attacks as means of advancing their respective belief system. In February of 1921, the Texas Klan emerged with a vengeance, initiating a campaign of violent moral and social reform (Alexander, 2015), that paved the way for many murders, threats, kidnaps, and hate crimes to become acceptable and observable behavior of its organization.
In recent years, the shift in legitimizing actions portrayed by members of the KKK has become more acceptable as the population within their group continues to grow. Despite the mysticism or secrecy of their existence throughout the nation, the KKK remains a focus of both political and social debate that over the years has become a prime example of right-wing extremist willingness to go to extreme lengths in order to advance and protect political agendas that glorify the existence of the white race by further implementing institutions or transgressions that support segregation and equality.
With the rising threat of right-wing terrorism supporting white supremacists and anti-government extremists, organizations such as the KKK, are imperative to the fact of maintaining a substantial amount of members that will continue to spread and impose their agenda amongst members of society. The mounting factors that influence guidelines of recruitment strategically support their method of pinpointing members they sought after. An example of such, is Colonel Simmons strategically placed advertisements for his new organization in Atlanta newspapers, alongside promos showing ‘the birth of a nation.’ He solicited new members by billing the Ku Klux Klan as a “high-class order for men of intelligence and character.” Simmons used fraternal ties as means of recruiting new members, and drawing upon the skills he crafted as a circuit-riding preacher, used fiery religious oratory in public-speaking engagements to motivate audience members to join his new organization (McVeigh, 2009).
By further implementing the use of recruitment services, such was the case during the 1920s when COL Simmons acquired professional organizers Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler. Clarke and Tyler’s ‘southern publicity association became the propagation department of the KKK. The propagation department sent recruiters, Kleagles, into the field working on commission. It kept 80% of all fees collected from new members (initiation fee $10), paying commissions and other expenses out of its 80% share (McVeigh, 2009). The fact that the Klan compensated individuals with higher wages and rewards for the successful recruitment of members, motivated the intrinsic aspects of money as this generated a rise of individual effort that allowed for the rise of social structure and political activity as a merit to the increased recruitment. In other words, the utilization of rewarding the recruitment process with monetary rewards assisted the recruitment practice that is responsible for the existence of the Klan over the years.
Aside from monetary rewards, Kleagle members have managed to create leverage through various dynamics affecting American culture. Jackson argues that the Klan lacked a meaningful reason for its existence and relied upon emotion rather than reason. David Chalmers, the author of what is perhaps the most widely read historical study of the movement, describes the Klan as a response to a breakdown of traditional social order embodies in the religious and moral values of small-town America (McVeigh, 2009). By generating and/or re-enforcing beliefs of white supremacy, individuals are then more likely to influence the agenda of the Klan.
The complicity of recruiting members can then be understood by the foundations of social, economic, and political changes that attribute to human emotion. With changes implied, the role of white members changes the representation of society. As social status or class citizens begin to consider emotional experience to the environmental changes they are then more likely to influence behavior and provide a foundation for understanding human cognition. It is here where personal values and beliefs are developed and reinforced by the idea of emotional experience that is encountered by the individual. These same emotional experiences are then utilized in the form of manipulation by Kleagles in order to facilitate the process of recruitment. Despite social and economic class, educational levels are fundamental values that influence the necessary core principles of the Klan. The emotions of historical events and social changes have since guided the process that is desired by the Klan as it becomes the tool that amplifies its population.
The industrial revolution in the United States began, in earnest, in the aftermath of the American civil war. In light of the ending of the Civil War, former slave owners in southern jurisdictions experienced what the Klan would see as an emotional connection victory when the Northern Army managed to abolish slavery. As former slave owners relied on slave labor for financial gains, the abolishment generated no income for them, therefore, facilitating the need to join the Klan. As slave owners leveraged wrongful doing in the abolishment of slave work, this then allowed the opportunity for slaves to educate themselves as they continued to experience oppression. Because white supremacists were intimidated by the concept of black citizens who in time would have the same value as them in society, the principles of personal attacks resulted in the search for extremist organization practices (McVeigh, 2009).
In other words, the exposure to emotion and appeal of social and political change only fuelled the recruitment process post-civil war, the Civil Rights Act that came about nearly 100 years later, and the actions that followed served the new interpretation in strategy for Kleagles to leverage members into the organization. Such practices continue to be illustrated through the utilization of hatred and extreme racism by further implementing the fascist political agenda they once refused. To this day, many continue to believe and suggest the idea that now more than ever, media outlets facilitate the division amongst race, gender, and ethnicity in an attempt to continue to divide and manipulate.
In observance of this, media outlets manifest their use of the recruitment process to those that are most vulnerable to the recruitment process and the pressures of society. An example of such a by-product would influence, the economic changes of the preceding generation to create profound social strains and widespread misery. Mothers worked for long hours in unsafe factories in exchange for fewer dollars than single people, let alone families, could survive on in decency (McVeigh, 2009). In other words, the Klan has managed to develop leverage with those that society pressures and underestimates. The belief system implemented as means of providing financial support and membership to white supremacy increases popularity, thus allowing for the survival of the Klan by spreading necessary attention to their agenda.
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