Most people these days at least know who the ‘Insane Clown Posse’ is (once voted the ‘world’s most hated band’). They’re a rap group consisting of adult males wearing clown makeup who have an avid following of people named ‘Juggalos’ who also paint their faces to look like clowns. Each year they hold a ‘Gathering of the Juggalos‘ event that’s been covered exhaustively in the media.
These people see themselves as the faces of clowns in America, and rapper Violent J, one half of ICP, penned an Op-Ed in TIME.com in response to the outbreak of clown sightings in America and in it he put the establishment on trial, blaming the NSA and FBI for the creepy killer clown epidemic in America. I’ve pulled some excerpts from Violent J’s TIME.com Op-Ed but you can read it in full here:
Cut to 2016. Everyone once again is seeing so-called “killer clowns” everywhere—popping out of bushes, threatening people on social media and assorted other public pranks. Cops have actually arrested a few people this time around, though, because there’s a lot of copycats out there and mass hysteria has a way of making people do stupid s—.
But as ICP has discovered over the last decade, there’s a whole army of scary, terrifying and dangerous clowns out there in this country trying to suppress the rights of thousands of people to exercise the most basic part of the Declaration of Independence, which evokes the freedom to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The only difference is these clowns don’t wear greasepaint.
Keep in mind that Juggalos have officially been named a gang by the FBI, so any of these Insane Clown Posse fans dressed up like clowns appear in an official gang database and this isn’t something these rap-loving adult clowns are very enthused about…So when he says there are clowns not wearing greasepaint he’s talking about law enforcement and implying that this clown epidemic is all about free speech…
If you want to see the ultimate example of these “killer clowns” in action, consider what happened to our hard-working, mostly blue-collar fans, the Juggalos. In 2011, the FBI named the Juggalos in its National Gang Threat Assesment. Ever since, they have been targeted, profiled and blatantly discriminated on by law enforcement agencies across America. Over the last four years, we’ve been working with our legal team and the ACLU of Michigan, to prove to the U.S. Department of Justice that this completely ridiculous gang label slapped on Juggalos is literally destroying lives.
Fact: People simply walking their dogs while wearing an ICP shirt have been stopped, searched and added to the local gang member database—when no crime has been committed. This has happened hundreds and hundreds of times across the U.S., and the stories just get worse from there. Recently, there was a probation officer who was let go for being identified as a Juggalo, and her employer had no problem writing it as the reason for her severance in her termination paperwork. Others have lost their jobs, custody of their kids and been subject to illegal search and seizure.
After that excerpt, Violent J then goes on to announce a September 16th concert at the National Mall in D.C., where he and thousands of clowns will be protesting against the persecution of clown people in America. His explanation for this rash of creepy clown sightings? That the FBI are clowns, not the people dressed like clowns.
That’s all fine and dandy but he seems to be blissfully unaware that encouarging his followers to go out into the night dressed like clowns and stir up drama is going to eventually get some people gravely injured, and that’ll be on the Juggalos when it happens, only furthering the FBI’s claim that they’re a legitimate gang… And for what it’s worth, these are the people demanding to be taken seriously:
Anyways, to read his full Op-Ed in TIME.com you can CLICK HERE!…