Read an Excerpt
***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***
Copyright © 2014 John Safran
1.
THE BEGINNING
Melbourne
This story begins when I’m ten years old. I’m at a bar mitzvah with my family. And my dad taps me on the shoulder and points to a guy by the buffet, scooping food onto his plate.
“See that man?” my dad whispers.
“Yes,” I say.
“See the tie he’s wearing?”
“Yes.”
“See that little symbol on his tie?”
“Yes,” I reply, squinting my eyes.
“That’s the Freemason symbol,” he says. “They’re a secret society. They don’t like it when you ask them about it.”
“Wow.”
“Go up and ask him about it,” he tells me.
So I shuffle over to the guy and ask if he’s a Freemason.
“Yes, um,” he splutters, his eyes darting about. “But, listen, we don’t do anything unusual.” He then backs away from the buffet and creeps
out of the room.
In that moment I learned there are secret worlds out there. We can glance over a landscape and think we’re seeing everything, but there are realms operating just out of our lines of sight.
I became hooked on secret worlds. And the clunky encounter with the Freemason taught me you can ask questions even when you’re not supposed to. That’s why I became what I became, a documentary filmmaker of sorts. I say “of sorts” because mine are not the straightest of documentaries. I often ask dangerous people indelicate questions and try not to get thumped. And I often ask them about race. I’m a bit of a Race Trekkie—like a sci-fi Trekkie, but with race, not space.
So the murder at hand? That part of the story begins—although I didn’t know it at the time—about ten years ago. I was filming a segment for a television series called John Safran vs God, in which I tried to join the secret world of the Ku Klux Klan even though I’m a Jew.
My First Meeting with the Klan
I’m boxed in at the Ku Klux Klan compound in Orange County, California. Swastika flags run along the wall. I sit across the desk from the Grand Dragon, a man called Chris. Jesus Christ eyeballs me from the painting hanging behind the Grand Dragon. Four Klansmen stand at attention along the edge of the room.
“I’m a little confused about who can and can’t join the Klan,” I tell the Grand Dragon. “Are you allowed to join the Klan if you’re not American?”
“Yes, absolutely!” he assures me.
“And what about if you’re Catholic?”
“You know, Catholics are every bit as Christian as anyone else,” he says. “Sure.”
“And what happens,” I ask, trying hard not to squirm in my seat, “if you were brought up Jewish but you don’t do anything Jewish anymore? Because that’s where I’m at.”
The Grand Dragon shoots his eyes to his fellow Klansmen.
“Was your mother Jewish?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
