March of the Clowns
Source: Washington Post
MARCH OF THE CLOWNS
Nudity. Debauchery. Eating a live scorpion. Insane Clown Posse fans are definitely outrageous. But are they a criminal gang?
The Juggalos, the most rabid and notorious fans in all of music, were restless. Wild hoots erupted as a tattooed man at the back of the tent hurled an empty pizza box into the air. It twirled skyward and crashed on a group at the front waiting for their beloved Insane Clown Posse to address the crowd from the stage.
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In fact, this is how it goes every year at the Gathering of the Juggalos, a four-day festival that hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse (ICP) organizes for its fans. The nearly-two-decade old event — held this year in Oklahoma City in late July — combines the communal spirit of Burning Man, the debauchery of a NASCAR infield and the edgy theater of a freak show. Often derided as “white trash,” ICP and its fan base have a penchant for garbage throwing and chronically soaking one another with cheap Faygo soda (their drink of choice). “Saturday Night Live” has repeatedly ribbed them, and they are arguably in strong contention for the title of America’s most hated subculture.
But — amid all the trash-throwing, which served as a prelude to the “seminar,” a key event at the annual gathering, where ICP offers its fans a sort of state of the Juggalo union — a question was running through my mind: Are these people gang members? If the FBI is to be believed, every one of the hundreds of Juggalos under this tent were potentially part of a criminal syndicate. That’s because in 2011, the FBI took the extraordinary and unprecedented step of labeling the entire fan base of ICP a gang, placing them alongside the Bloods, Crips and MS-13, after a string of crimes carried out by people identified as Juggalos.
The move touched off one of the strangest controversies at the crossroads of pop culture, criminal justice and the First Amendment in contemporary America. ICP and the Juggalos were outraged, saying the FBI effectively criminalized being a fan of a musical group. It had far-reaching and severe consequences. Juggalos not associated with gangs have reported being repeatedly stopped by police, added to gang databases, blocked from the military, placed on stricter forms of probation, suspended from school and fired from jobs. Those problems sparked a campaign by ICP and the Juggalos to get the FBI to publicly repudiate the gang label. They say their right to free speech, right to assemble and the good ol’ American right to rawk are being violated.
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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2017/08/31/the-fbi-labeled-insane-clown-posse-fans-a-gang-now-theyre-marching-on-washington/