The Insane Clown Posse takes on the FBI in this trailer for The United States Of Insanity

There are funny news stories and there are serious news stories, but rarely is there a news story that feels as much like both as the FBI deciding that Juggalos—a.k.a. fans of Insane Clown Posse—are a violent criminal gang. The funny part is that pretending to be scary is part of the whole ICP gimmick (if not the whole gimmick), so the FBI falling for it hard enough to put Juggalos on some kind of “these people are scary” list is theoretically all part of the plan (to quote another famous scary clown). The serious part, though, is that Juggalos by and large are not violent criminals, and classifying them as such is unfair. That’s kind of the big twist of the ICP gimmick: They pretend to be scary because it’s fun and it lets them embody a persona on top of whoever they are in real life, and putting it all under the “Juggalo” umbrella lets them bond with like-minded people and enjoy a sense of community. However, some Juggalos miss that bit and are violent criminals, which (combined with the scary imagery) is how we get to the federal government declaring that all of them are probably criminals.

An upcoming documentary called The United States Of Insanity is going to chronicle the Juggalos’ fight against the FBI and this criminal gang designation, featuring interviews with ICP members Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope as well as ACLU attorneys and a whole array of not-as-scary-as-they-seem Juggalos. Pop culture fans may recall that this fight culminated in a full-on march in Washington D.C. in 2017, and pop culture fans may also recall… how the fight ended a few months later. We won’t spoil it since this trailer doesn’t spoil it, but we will say that, in between some of the cutesy “people hate us!” ICP stuff, they do hit on some important details about why this matters. The United States Of Insanity will be released on October 26.