Michael Richards: Freemason, Shriner, Racist

by Terry Melanson ©, Nov. 22nd, 2006

As everyone has learned by now, Michael Richards (aka “Cosmo Kramer”) went into an insane racial tirade on November 17th at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, California after being heckled. In a failed attempt at gaining control of his act Richards shouted, “Shut up! Fifty years ago we’d have you upside-down with a fucking fork up your ass!” After this blatant reference to the “good ‘ole days” of lynching, he escalated the situation by screaming, “Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger! Look, there’s a nigger!” The video has to be seen to be believed. Multiple copies have been posted on YouTube, resulting in thousands of comments from viewers.

Monday night, Jerry Seinfeld appeared on Late Night with David Letterman to support his friend. Richards apologized for his behaviour via satellite.

…You know, I’m really busted up over this and I’m very, very sorry to those people in the audience, the blacks, the Hispanics, whites – everyone that was there that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through, and I’m concerned about more hate and more rage and more anger coming through, not just towards me but towards a black/white conflict. There’s a great deal of disturbance in this country and how blacks feel about what happened in Katrina, and, you know, many of the comics, many of performers are in Las Vegas and New Orleans trying to raise money for what happened there, and for this to happen, for me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, you know, I’m deeply, deeply sorry.

Yes, of course he’s “very, very sorry.” I don’t buy it though, the video speaks for itself. It is a display of hate and rage – vicious, elitist, childish – and thoroughly rancid in nature. One can picture him at a KKK rally, in exactly the same frenzied state, instigating a lynching.

Bro. Michael A. Richards, 33°

Richards’ conduct might ultimately stem from his association with Freemasonry. There’s a controversy going on right now in the South, whether to officially recognize Prince Hall Masonry. In his convoluted apology on Letterman, Richards inserted a reference to the racial tension (“black/white conflict”) in the wake of Katrina. Perhaps it’s a Freudian slip, alluding to the Dixie Lodges’ struggle to come to terms with its own racial divide. As a very active and high-ranking Mason, Richards is most likely privy to the ongoing discussions taking place behind the scenes.

The argument surrounds the fact that blacks wishing to join Freemasonry – having been rebuked because of race – have had to form their own Lodges. This situation has been going on for a long time. Adding insult to injury, the Prince Hall masons are looked upon as “clandestine” – meaning, they aren’t officially recognized. Prince Hall Masonry represents a separate body of Lodges segregated from mainstream masonry. There are some whites in Prince Hall, and vice versa in the main Lodges, but the southern jurisdictions still refuse to officially recognize the black masonic organization.

Michael Richards was initiated into Freemasonry on December 17, 1998, at the Riviera Lodge No. 780 in Pacific Palisades, California. In an interview (“Michael A. Richards, 33° Beyond the Symbols”) reprinted in The Scottish Rite Journal of Freemasonry (Sept. 2003), Richards said his fascination with the Craft began in the early 60s. His mother had “had a friend who was a Mason … I didn’t have a father, but he was like a father to me. He was very charitable with his time. On Friday nights he would take me to the American Legion Hall where some of the best vaudeville acts in the country were performed.” After finding out his comedic idol Red Skelton was a mason, Richards decided to become one himself.

In a previous article (Renaissance Man, Not “Kramer”) from the September 2000 issue of the same official magazine for Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Richards said he had already been somewhat of an armchair Masonic philosopher before being initiated. He became “interested in the Craft from reading Manly Palmer Hall’s The Secret [Teachings] of All Ages, Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma, and Albert Mackey’s Symbolism of Freemasonry. So, when I met Red and found out about his strong ties to Freemasonry, I was very impressed. Morals and Dogma certainly introduced me to Scottish Rite philosophy, but it was through Red’s lovable nature, Masonic and all, that I really wanted to be a Mason.”

The same article states that Michael Richards is also a member of the “Culver City-Foshay No. 467, the Southern California Research Lodge, and a Life Member of the Los Angeles Scottish Rite Valley as well as a Life Member of the Scottish Rite Research Society.” In short, he knows his Masonic history, and is intimately involved with its research and preservation.

Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (A.A.O.N.M.S.)

Michael Richards is also a Shriner [PDF]. Exoterically, merry old men putting on a circus once in a while to help out burn victims; esoterically, a band of thugs and thieves from all the Lodges, who indulge in feasts of vulgarity, racism and debauchery:

• See Shriners, the Krafty Clowns, for a selection of mainstream articles on Shriner corruption and depravity. Such as: “World’s worst charities,” KOB TV – Albuquerque, New Mexico; “Sex show may harm Shriners’ charities,” Winnipeg Free Press, Sun, Jan 28, 2001; “Shrine Records Shocking,” South Haven Daily Tribune – South Haven Michigan, Fri, April 24, 1987; “Would-Be Shriner Says He Was Subjected to Painful Initiation Rites,” The Associated Press, November 20, 1991.
• Above the law? Shriner Treasurers’ Minutes, Part 10
• Defamation? Shriners: Part 8
• Follow the Money: Shriners Part 5
• “Promoter” Accuses Shriners of Racism in Concert Fraud

Ku Klux Klan

Albert Pike, as Richards is well-aware, was an avowed racist. Pike, a Confederate general, was a giant in his day and the most important Mason in America. He personally rewrote the Scottish Rite Rituals and in 1859, was elected as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council for Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. As the owner and publisher of the Memphis, Tennessee Daily Appeal, Pike would often voice his opinions. In an editorial dated April 16, 1868, he wrote:

With negroes for witnesses and jurors, the administration of justice becomes a blasphemous mockery. A Loyal League of negroes can cause any white man to be arrested, and can prove any charges it chooses to have made against him. …The disenfranchised people of the South … can find no protection for property, liberty or life, except in secret association…. We would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage, into one great Order of Southern Brotherhood, with an organization complete, active, vigorous, in which a few should execute the concentrated will of all, and whose very existence should be concealed from all but its members.

There’s much controversy as to Pike’s role in the founding of the Ku Klux Klan, however this “secret association” he referred to – the “great Order of Southern Brotherhood” – was indeed the KKK. A year earlier in Nashville, his friend – fellow-Confederate general and Freemason – Nathan Bedford Forrest, had united the fledgling “association”. Forrest was elected the first Grand Wizard of all the Klan:

A “fiery summons” went out to the five thousand Klan dens then said to be in operation, to attend an “Imperial Klonvokation,” which was held in Nashville’s Maxwell House hotel in April.

Presiding as imperial wizard was the former Confederate calvary general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy slavetrader before the war, whose troops had been accused of the massacre of three hundred black men, woman, and children at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864.

Any doubt that the Ku Klux Klan constituted a veritable Confederate underground was dispelled at this meeting, where ex-Confederate General Albert Pike assumed command as grand dragon of the Arkansas Realm of the Klan’s Invisible Empire; General John B. Gordon the Georgia Realm; General W. J. Hardee, Alabama; and General Wade Hampton, South Carolina. These men brought the Southwide terrorist campaign of the Klan under professional, centralized military command and discipline.

– Stetson Kennedy, After Appomattox: How the South Won the War, University Press of Florida, 1995, p. 69.

As an official researcher for Masonry, Michael Richards is well aware of this history; and perhaps – as evidenced by his antics at the comedy club – even sympathetic to the cause.

The Pike/Masonic/Klan controversy made headlines in 1992 during Lyndon H. LaRouche’s bid for the presidency. LaRouche and his running mate, Reverend James Bevel, “launched a mobilization to remove the statue of General Albert Pike from its place of honor in Washington, D.C.’s Judiciary Square.” Sovereign Grand Commander C. Fred Kleinknecht (1985-2003) attacked the campaign to dismantle the Pike statue, defending the good name of his illustrious predecessor. What is of interest here is the fact that C. Fred Kleinknecht has had a close association with Richards since his early days in the Craft. It is safe to assume Kleinknecht is at least a mentor to Richards. Kleinknecht was “the Founding Member of the Scottish Rite Research Society.” And Richards, as disclosed in the September 2000 issue of The Scottish Rite Journal of Freemasonry, was elected as a Life Member of the same research society. Both Kleinknecht and Richards are defenders and devotees of Albert Pike: the first grand dragon of the Arkansas Realm of the Klan’s Invisible Empire.

The Great White Brotherhood

Michael Richards is within the top echelon of Scottish Rite Masonry – a 33rd degree Sovereign Grand Inspector-General. At this level, he practices what has been described as White Masonry. What occultist and mystic Bro. C. W. Leadbeater, 33°, identified as the “highest and last of the great sacramental powers of the Mysteries” (Freemasonry and Its Ancient Mystic Rites, p. 42). Thirty-third degree Masons, according to Leadbeater, channel the “Hidden Light from the White Lodge behind” (Leadbeater, 43). As an avid investigator, being a mystic and a voracious reader with an insatiable appetite, Richards is thoroughly familiar with this concept. Leadbeater, besides being a high-level Mason, was involved with Theosophy. Albert Pike had insinuated the teachings of occultist Eliphas Levi* into official Scottish Rite doctrine, while Leadbeater’s corrupting influence had been Mme. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Hitler and the Nazi party were influenced by Blavatsky’s teachings, especially her “Secret Doctrine” of evolving races (from inferiority to apotheosis). Blavatsky taught her disciples that the highest race was that of the Aryans, who were mystically directed from the Great White Lodge – or the Great White Brotherhood – into a state of perfection.

* Pike was a disciple of Eliphas Levi; the former accepted without question the teachings of the latter. Moreover, as Masonic historian, occultist and high-degree Mason Arthur E. Waite has shown – Morals and Dogma is “really a translation in part and a commentary at large … upon the works of Eliphas Levi” (John H. Cowles, ed., Supreme Council 33rd Degree, Part 1, or Mother Council of the World of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, United States of America, p. 342)

The superiority of the white race has been the predominant mystical undercurrent of “Nordic” occultists for over a century; the Scottish Rite included. This can be easily underscored by quoting from The New Age Magazine – the official organ of the Scottish Rite before its name had been changed to The Scottish Rite Journal of Freemasonry (which, as you’ll recall, Richards has been featured in). Five years after the fall of Nazism, Bro. C. William Smith’s “God’s Plan in America,” in the September 1950 issue of The New Age Magazine, had this to say:

God’s plan is dedicated to the unification of all races, religions and creeds. This plan, dedicated to the new order of things, is to make all things new – a new nation, a new race, a new civilization and a new religion, a nonsectarian religion that has already been recognized and called the religion of ‘The Great Light.’ Looking back into history, we can easily see that the Guiding Hand of Providence has chosen the Nordic people to bring in and unfold the new order of the world. Records clearly show that 95 per cent of the colonists were Nordics-Anglo-Saxons. Providence has chosen the Nordics because the Nordics have prepared themselves and have chosen God….Just as Providence has chosen Children of Israel – to bring into the world righteousness by carrying the ‘Ten Commandments’ which emphasize ‘Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy,’ so also Providence has chosen the Nordic Race to unfold the ‘New Age’ of the world – a ‘ Novus Ordo Seclorum‘.

I’m sure Richards possesses the complete set of the magazine (1904-present), and has devoted much study to the doctrines contained therein. Rather than making a good man a better man (as the selling point goes), Freemasonry’s elitist dogma has corrupted Richards’ morals.

“That was uncalled for,” the black man said while leaving the comedy club. Richards replied, “That’s what happens when you interrupt the white man, don’t you know?”

Yes, we do now.