Think racism, white supremacists, and a KKK rally are no laughing matter? Folks in Bloomington, Indiana might disagree with you.
It’s not that these Hoosiers cotton on to racists — quite the opposite, in fact — they’ve just found a unique way for dealing with them.
The hilarious photo shown below — with a lone, grim-faced man holding a white supremacist sign and getting photobombed by grinning white, brown, and black people — is making the rounds on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit with variations of the following caption: “Man tries to start KKK rally.”
A Twitter user named @Shortieteee tweeted the image on July 9, 2014 and got over 17,000 shares. Alas, the original tweet can no longer be seen because she’s deleted her account.
dude tried to start a KKK rally and this just shows black people gives no f*cks about y’all’s racism, 😀 😀
I did a little sleuthing and discovered where the photo came from, and even found a video to go with it.
In 2012, the photo was first posted on IMGUR with the following caption:
“This guy tried to stage a ‘white heritage (Klan)’ rally in my town, I don’t think he got the turnout he was hoping for.”
Indiana Public Media reports that on April 7, 2012, a man tried to hold a KKK rally and it backfired.
The activist Thomas Buhls held a cardboard sign that had an image of a confederate flag and read “CELEBRATE YOUR WHITE HERITAGE.” A crowd of protestors gathered closely around, using expletives to tell him to “go home” and “get out of Bloomington.”
Unfortunately for Buhls, nobody else was on board with his “white heritage” celebration. Locals showed up to troll him, and paraded about in clown suits and makeup with silly noisemakers to show what they thought of his antics. And Bloomington hasn’t seen any KKK rallies since.* (NOTE: That may change with Donald Trump in office).
Watch: Bloomington residents tell lone KKK rally-goer to “go home.”
A version of this first appeared on Americans Against the Tea Party.