Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Lots of people have reviewed Expelled. To some the movie has served to confirm their persecution complexes; to others the movie has demonstrated the utter dishonesty of the anti-evolution movement. But here comes Thomas Robb, national director of the KKK (and a Baptist minister), with a thoroughly unique take on the movie: it was made to encourage race mixing. No, I'm not making that up. He begins by pointing out that Ben Stein is a Jew and that he has "set a trap":
Is the person who puts out the cheese, carrot etc a friend or are these things being set out to entice and to trap a victim. So Ben Stein has set a trap in the form of a movie to catch Christians and destroy their resistance to race-mixing.
Riiiiiiight. For Robb, making the connection between evolution and racism is an insult - to racists!
According to Stein and others like him such as Ken Ham, racism is a by-product of evolution. If you reject evolution then you must also reject racism. According to this devilish teaching interracial marriage is commendable and should even be desired. True Christians are to reject racial integrity as strongly as they reject evolution...The message of the movie is not about creationism but to trap Christians into accepting, tolerating, promoting and engaging in interracial relationships and marriage. After all as Christians we don't want to promote the evils of Darwin - do we?
Ben Stein's ignorance of the subject has been met and raised by Robb.
Politics
Comments
I was wondering how long it'd take to hear from these guys about this.
Posted by: Julian | May 21, 2008 9:35 AM
Slightly OT, but I was under the impression that there hasn't been a national KKK for many decades; just several splinter groups in different states. Have they reorganized?
Posted by: Savagemutt | May 21, 2008 9:50 AM
There's a phrase I keep handy for king-sized absurdity like this, matching two wretched 'titans' head-to-head:
Scum Vs. Scum
Posted by: Vic | May 21, 2008 9:54 AM
Actually this is somewhat surprising.. Cranks are generally friendly to other crank ideas, even when the positive claims they make are contradictory, just as long as they are against the same evil conspiracy. Here you have cranks rejecting other crank ideologies. I think it's refreshing! ;)
Posted by: mike | May 21, 2008 10:11 AM
That article is awesome. The reason he dislikes the movie is because it dares to say bad things about Hitler. You'd think a modern person would have become accustomed to such things.
Hilarious.
Posted by: DuggleBogey | May 21, 2008 10:19 AM
At last a controversy worth teaching.
Posted by: kehrsam | May 21, 2008 10:34 AM
Savagemutt: You are correct, the white power movement remains highly fragmented. What organization and coordination that does exist comes through the website Stormfront, which is controlled by Mr. Robb. He also publishes The Crusader, which was of considerable importance back in the 1970s but seems to have regressed in recent years (it is much smaller, although the print quality has not much improved). The Southern Poverty Law Center is your best resource for more information.
Posted by: kehrsam | May 21, 2008 10:42 AM
White Supremists are an interesting lot. Their racist ideology trumps all over considerations. Another example is the war in Iraq. They are against the war in Iraq because they see it as been pro-Israel. They also point out that many neo-cons who argued for the war are Jewish. So their hatred of Jews trumphs any other arguements regarding the war. Amazing.
Posted by: Cheddar | May 21, 2008 11:33 AM
Mr. Brayton, why don't you cross-post this to The Panda's Thumb?
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | May 21, 2008 12:19 PM
Why do I get the odd feeling that Robb may soon be used to a) make the creationists look rational by comparison, and b) try to link opponents of creationism to racism and Hitlerism? I think we can predict the cdesign proponentsists' next tack: "Liberals and racists oppose ID for the same reasons: they're both in favor of racism and eugenics!"
Posted by: Raging Bee | May 21, 2008 12:44 PM
One of my favorite comedy bits (I wish I could remember the comic in question) is something I saw years ago on San Francisco's KQED. The show was Comedy Tonight and the comic was doing some jokes about bigots:
"Hey, if you're part of the master race, shouldn't you be able to spell supremacist?"
Posted by: Zeno | May 21, 2008 1:28 PM
I feel sick. That guy has my name in reverse.
Posted by: Deepsix | May 21, 2008 2:03 PM
Wasn't there a movie about these two? Dumber and Dumberer?
For some reason though, I think they are actually a perfect match, and suspect Casey Luskin will soon be modeling himself in a beautiful little percale number...
Posted by: J-Dog | May 21, 2008 2:24 PM
"The message of the movie is not about creationism but to trap Christians into accepting, tolerating"
Christians need to be trapped into following what Jesus said?
Stupid begets stoopid.
Posted by: AlinTaiwan | May 22, 2008 2:48 AM