G.O.A.T. Tournament Day 3: Organizations and Companies
It's day three of our tournament to find greatest oppressor of all time! Cast your vote now!
Welcome to day three of our journey to find the greatest racist in American history! If you missed the first round, here’s how this works:
Each day, we’ll focus on one division. Readers will have three days to vote on each matchup, and the winner will move on to the next round. At the end of the competition, we will crown the G.O.A.T. of white supremacy (You can see the whole bracket with updated scores here. Only subscribers to ContrabandCamp can vote).
On Tuesday, our single-elimination tournament focused on the political giants who embedded white supremacy into the fabric of our country. On Wednesday, we watched the racist influencers compete for a spot in the second round.
But racism is not always an individual act; sometimes, it is a group project. So today, we highlight the civic groups, organizations and institutions that cast inequality in the starring role of the American dream. Unlike the competitors who compete in the Mobs and Movements division, this category was limited to entities that have organized bodies, charters or membership rolls.
Here are the contestants in the Organizations and Companies division:
Belonging to one of these to one of these groups doesn’t necessarily mean you’re racist. After all …
Being a Republican doesn’t mean you made America great.
Although many people think of the Ku Klux Klan as a despicably racist organization, they still defend the ideas and racist propaganda that only exist because of the KKK. More Klansmen have been elected to the Senate (11) than Black people (nine). They outnumber Black governors 6-5. An estimated one in seven white men were members of the Second Wave Klan and two-thirds of their leaders were Christian ministers in the 1920s, when they popularized the term “America First.” While their death count is elusive, more Black people died from Klan violence in 1868 than on 9/11.
In 1876, in U.S. v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Klansmen who were trying to disarm Black men. They were literally convicted under the Ku Klux Klan Acts, but the court declared that the federal law that forbade Klansmen from having guns was unfair — even though they were disarming Black men who were actually part of a “well-regulated militia.”
The KKK was the first group to argue that the Second Amendment gave individuals the right to bear arms.
Long before Joe Rogan had a podcast, the John Birch Society created all of the conspiracy theories you now associate with Elon Musk and other right-wing nutjobs. Founded by wealthy tycoons like Charles Koch and the billionaire Bradleys, they made the GOP the party of right-wing extremist by weaponizing “anti-communism.” Their contributions include fighting sex education, opposing civil rights legislation and casting Black activists as “Marxists.” They were the ones who cast “big government” as part of a “New World Order.” They sabotaged the Equal Rights Amendment and reintroduced “states rights” to justify segregation. Their legacy continues with Jim Jordan and Rand Paul. They inspired the militia movement and the fight against fluoride in drinking water. Literally everything from anti-vaxxers, Obama’s birth birth certificate, Hillary Clinton’s emails, and pizzagate traces back to JBS.
Ironically, the rich group of elite powerbrokers started JBS and took over the world because they were worried that a rich group of elites were trying to destroy democracy and bring about one-world government.
This one might be harder than you think.
The police need no introduction. But when we love to note how Black people are disproportionately shot and killed by the police every year, we rarely mention how many people cops shoot, maim, beat, frame and unlawfully arrest every year. That’s because we don’t actually know how many. That’s because they don’t have to tell us. We also don’t talk about how often police lie on police reports, how poorly they are trained, how their biases shape the demographics of people who are arrested, which shapes how we view Black people as more criminal, which shapes how we view drug arrests, which determines the demographics of how people Black people are incarcerated, which affects how many Black children grow up without parents. But there’s one subject we almost never talk about:
Even with all the money, authority and immunity we give to police, they don’t solve, deter or reduce crime.
Even if this one seems like a no brainer, consider this:
According to Pew Research, most Americans get at least some of their news from social media. Black and Asian users are more likely to tweet and are overrepresented when it comes to news consumption on X.
But Elon Musk controls the algorithm. A man who salutes Nazis controls the news for 106 million U.S. users. The race scientist who is dismantling DEI is determining what we see and the narrative of current events — not just for X users, but for journalists, artists and people who control other forms of media. His friends control the Washington Post, the White House press corp and two of the three other largest social media companies in the world.
He is the new millennium Joesph Goebbels.
We should stop referring to the Supreme Court as “Republican-controlled.” There are a Federalist Society majority. Five of the current justices (Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett) are members. Chief Justice John Roberts served on the steering committee (essentially hand-picking judges) but was not a dues-paying member. They choose the best and brightest and groom them to do what they want. Amy Coney Barrett was specifically chosen to dismantle abortion. Roberts’ was selected to destroy the Voting Rights Act. Thomas was tasked with destroying affirmative action.
Aileen Cannon, the judge who gave Trump unqualified immunity? Federalist Society member. So is Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). So was Patriot Act co-author Michael Chertoff. Their members did not recognize Trump as a legitimate conservative …
Until he agreed to “subcontract” his Supreme Court nominees to the Federalist Society.
Do I even need to list the FBI’s greatest hits?
There was that time they tried to get MLK to commit suicide. Then there was COINTELPRO. And when they framed Marcus Garvey for mail fraud. Or when they hired KKK member Gary Rowe but forgot to mention that he was part of nearly every murder and act of terrorism during the Civil Rights Era. Or how they hid the names of the terrorists who killed four girls by bombing 16th Street Baptist Church? How they watched state troopers shoot 28 unarmed Black college students during the Orangeburg Massacre? But shielding, hiring and murdering Black people is not what makes the FBI racist:
For 100 years, the FBI has infiltrated and monitored every single Black organization and movement for freedom and justice — from the Universal Negro Improvement Association to the Black Lives Matter.
They have yet to record a single murder.
The Heritage Foundation funded the anti-CRT movement. They were the original proponents of dismantling the Department of Education. They began the crusade targeting the handful of trans athletes. They want to dismantle every agency’s civil rights division. They’ve had DEI in their crosshairs for years. They are the people behind Reagan’s racism, the war on drugs, the first Iraq invasion, the second Iraq invasion, race science entering the mainstream politics and the idea that immigrants are coming to take everyone’s jobs.
Project 2025 is its magnum opus.
Don’t believe the hype about Moms for Liberty. They are not a group of conservative moms who are taking over school boards. They are funded by the Council for National Policy, a secretive Christian fundamentalist, billionaire-supported think tank. In May 2021, Moms for Liberty partnered with Parents Defending Education, a Koch-affiliated charter school advocacy foundation. Founder Tiffany Justice is a contributor to the Federalist Society. They are a well-funded political lobbying firm that wants to install white supremacy into the education system. The only thing preventing them is the U.S. Department of Education.
Oh, wait …
The United Daughters of the Confederacy is a Klan-affiliated, anti-Black, pro-slavery, murder-supporting, history-whitewashing, truth-manipulating, lying, thieving collective of Ku Klux Karens who built the largest monument to white supremacy in the history of the world. They are responsible for most Confederate monuments and created the Lost Cause mythology, in part to whitewash the legacy of the KKK. They literally wrote the book on the Klan.
The Home Owners Loan Corporation created redlining.
That’s all.
If you think the Ku Klux Klan was bad, the White League was worse.
During Reconstruction — the worst era of racial violence in U.S. history — the White League committed one of the single greatest act of terrorism in history (The Colfax Massacre). They were responsible for the Coushatta Massacre. They slaughtered dozens during the Battle of Liberty Place. They killed a 17-year-old Black girl for teaching Black children to read. But Unlike the KKK, the White League didn’t wear masks. Terrorism was not their ultimate goal. They wanted to overthrow the government and reinstall white supremacy.
The Dixiecrat Party wasn’t just about segregation. When the Democratic States Rights Party announced that they “oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting and local law enforcement,” they shifted politics forever. But here’s the thing about the Dixiecrats: Aside from Strom Thurmond, most of the Dixiecrats didn’t actually join the Republican Party. Most of them returned to the Democratic Party and begrudgingly embraced integration.
The racist white voters left the Democratic Party.
This has nothing to do with gun violence or the defense of the Second Amendment. Owning guns is not racist. Black people own guns, too. But the NRA is not a Second Amendment organization. Most Americans don’t oppose common-sense gun laws. If the NRA cared about responsible gun ownership, they would’ve spoken up when police kill licensed gun owners like Atatiana Jefferson of Philando Castile. But the NRA does not get money from gun owners. It is a money laundering operation for corporations to fund conservative politicians. It just so happens that they fund the most extreme, most anti-Black lawmakers.
Turning Point USA is responsible for making Candace Owens a thing. They gave us “Blexit” and Kanye’s “White Lives Matter” shirts. They doxxed educators who teach “anti-racist” Black history. They welcomed Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, on their board. The organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, attacked Simone Biles and defended insurrectionists. He hates George Floyd and MLK but loves Trump.
Fox News is the mainstream source for wypipo news. You know what it is.
Now let me get to the USDA.
I struggled with this one because, even though I know people hate the KKK and murderers and cops, I believe the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the biggest contributor to racial inequality that ever existed in America.
In 1873, using the Homestead Act, the USDA gave 270 million acres of land reserved for newly emancipated freedmen – about 10% of the total land area of the United States – handed 90% of it to white people. They took Black taxpayer money and gave it to white farmers during the New Deal. They facilitated the theft of more than 20 million acres of Black-owned land. They subsidized white dairy farmers and gave Black people government cheese. They denied loans to Black farmers and made it rain on White farmers. Since 1986, they’ve taken $13 billion from land-grant HBCUs and funneled it to white colleges and universities. They gave Brett Favre millions and gave Black people food stamps.
They run commercials on Fox News.
Happy voting!
Great exercise. I struggled with which of a pair and learned a lot from your explanations. Seeing how others voted after I did was so interesting Valuable!
I love all your classes Mr. Harriot! I learn so much☺️