These are fundamentalist Christians. The Klan use this language that is almost identical to some of what you see today about people who are percent American, true American. And they believe that they represent the true essence of what is good about the United States. You mentioned that the second Klan in particular was mostly middle and upper working class.
Do we see class parallels today, when it comes to the Capitol rioters and white supremacist groups more generally? In other words, really insulting their intelligence. And we now know that they were wrong. The members of the s Klan were as educated as average Americans. They included not only many white-collar people but even professionals, middle-class businessmen. But the other thing is that kind of talk — that this was just a bunch of stupid, uneducated oafs — that just merely confirmed their view that the people who were the elites had nothing but disdain for the people who were the real salt of the earth in America.
I experience that today. But I do suspect very strongly that if we ever got a real systematic tallying of who were members of these white supremacist groups, we would probably be surprised to find that they are just as well-educated as the average American.
Why is there this wrong assumption that people involved in white supremacist movements are stupid or uneducated or low-class in some way? But I do think that one of the things that is behind this — when you look at what just happened, what we see is people who are almost hysterical with rage and willing to do things even at risk to themselves and others.
A lot of people would say, well, that rage comes through the fact that they are suffering economically. But for the s Klan, that was not the case.
There was no indication that the people drawn to the Klan were people who were losing economic status. One of the bizarre things is that the Klan, with its attacks on Catholics and Jews, was strongest in places in which there were hardly any Catholics or Jews.
And furthermore, there was no evidence that these guys in the Klan were economically suffering. You almost need a kind of psychological understanding.
I think people in the Klan, and people in these groups today, just like people in the Nazi movement, they really get something from their involvement in these groups. They get a sense of community, they get a sense of affirmation. I think that is what you hear a lot in white nationalist groups, that someone is stealing the country, stealing the election, taking it away from the people it rightfully belongs to. And evidence is simply not relevant.
The Klan went all out on this notion of the threat to white Protestant domination at a time when white Protestants completely dominated the economy, the government, the culture. My last question is: What can the history of the Klan and the history of the second Klan in particular tell us about the Capitol riots, the white supremacist movements that are ongoing today, and where we go from here as a country?
But when you look at one of the differences between, say, right-wing groups and liberal groups, a lot of liberal groups are really committed to proceeding in ways that are objective, that are looking at both sides of an issue. And the right wing has no particular interest in that.
And so you have a huge imbalance there. But on the other hand, I think we may be reaching a point where people who want to stop this white supremacy, we cannot rely on simply the law to find them and try them and convict them. People really need to become louder and more active in defending values of democracy and freedom and civil liberties and anti-racism.
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Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Explainers The big questions about Covid booster shots. Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for The Weeds Get our essential policy newsletter delivered Fridays. Why was the new Klan formed? Without that high incentive, certainly no clannish brotherhood would have been attempted. But it may be that the professed ideals of the founder were sincere, and undoubtedly many good men have joined because of them.
Therefore, a brief examination of those ideals is necessary. The Klan excludes from membership negroes, Jews, Catholics, and foreign-born, whether citizens or not. It is secret. Its membership is secret, in that respect differing probably from every other secret society in America, though like enough to many in Russia. When asked if he is a member, the custom is for a good Klansman to evade, more rarely to reply in the negative, but in any event not to avow his membership.
Section 1. I will yield prompt response to all summonses, I having knowledge of same, Providence alone preventing. This oath makes obedience to the orders of the Invisible Empire obligatory, with no guaranty that those orders will not be unwise or un-American or even criminal.
I swear that I will keep secure to myself a secret of a ——sman when same is committed to me in the sacred bond of ——smanship, the crime of violating this solemn oath, treason against the United States of America, rape, and malicious murder alone excepted. And its viciousness becomes glaring on considering the fact that this Klan makes a special effort to enroll in its membership county and city officials, and even the members of the judiciary.
But not from its ritual will the true purposes and methods of the organization be learned. That information is given by its itinerant paid speakers, who are now touring the South and West, soliciting membership. The individual assigned to Mississippi for this work is Joseph G. The Jews, the Catholics, the negroes, the alien-born are organized; they are a menace to American institutions; it is necessary to combat their pernicious influences; the sole weapon to hand is the Ku Klux Klan; therefore, if you are a true American, join the Klan.
The morals of the country are in a parlous condition; sexual vice, bootlegging, gambling flourish; the Klan loveth righteousness; if you are on the side of the angels, join the Klan. The first part of the programme is effected by moulding public sentiment, by watching wayward politicians, by combating the sinister propaganda of the press, which is under the control of Jews or Catholics or negroes or foreigners.
The second part of the programme is the real work of the separate local Klans. The Klan speakers seem always to stress that part of their address outlining the regulation of private morals, and that part is very much the same wherever delivered.
But the remainder of the address appears to vary widely from one section of the country to the other, to suit the outstanding prejudice or antipathy of the particular audience being exhorted. It is said that in California the anti-Japanese feeling is the basis of appeal; in some localities the Jew is referred to in a manner to rejoice the heart of Henry Ford; less frequently, white supremacy as an anti-negro appeal is eloquently defended.
But it appears the Church of Rome is never scanted. Always she is represented as the deadly enemy of American institutions, to be crushed not so much for her religious tenets as for her dark and unexplained political machinations. What then is its effect? Granting that its every principle is high, and the every object of its hate deserving of that hate, what happens for better or for worse in the town or countryside where the Klan has gained a following?
That, after all, is the only question of importance. Jewry and Rome need no defense, at least from this writer. The struggle in these sections is to retain the negro population The industrial system of the South is built upon this population. The loss of it means that the lumber-mills will lie idle and the cotton fields, cornfields, and sugar fields will revert to the wilderness. The steady trend of the negro population is away from the South to the industrial centres, because of better wages and better economic conditions than agriculture can compete with.
This trend cannot be arrested. It can easily, however, be so expedited as to afford no opportunity for readjustment to changed conditions, resulting in industrial paralysis and ruin. It would be as easy to go through a sedge field populated with rabbits with a bunch of hounds, and to satisfy the rabbits that they were in no danger, but that you were intent upon fox-hunting alone. You look like you are fixed for hunting rabbits.
What you say may be so; but even if it is, I see seven or eight young hounds in that bunch that might break away and start to running now. This grave menace to industrial conditions is without compensating advantages of any kind. There is another respect in which the Klan has, perhaps unwittingly, inflicted a wrong upon the negro. The negro, especially in the rural sections of the South, derives great pleasure from an extravagant nomenclature. The more meaningless, the better.
White supremacists have a new strategy to camouflage their rhetoric and enter the mainstream. KKK members joined with neo-Nazis, white nationalists and members of the "alt-right" for a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, KKK members, neo-Nazis and white nationalists went on the attack during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, August 12, After clashes with anti-fascist protesters and police the rally was declared an unlawful gathering and disbanded.
Counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed and several others were injured when authorities said one of the white nationalist supporters rammed his car into the crowd. Here, a member of the Ku Klux Klan shouts at counter-protesters during the Charlottesville rally in July The July rally in Charlottesville was authorized by officials in Virginia and more than state and local police officers patrolled the scene.
The city said 23 people were arrested. Shouts of "racists go home" drowned out the handful of Klansmen chanting "white power," local reports said.
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