Is the KKK making a comeback?

[struggle4progress]

BY RON JACKSON
Published: November 16, 2008

... "The KKK is making a comeback in Oklahoma,” said <former Ku Klux Klan leader Johnny Lee Clary>, 49, who now travels the world preaching against hate. "I’ve seen this coming for some time now, and my message to fellow Oklahomans is: Don’t buy their messages of hate. There are a number of things they will try to use to their advantage to spread their hate propaganda — the poor economy, illegal immigration, the election of a black president. Just remember, this is the kind of violence they are capable of” ...

"In the 1980s, we had the recession and the farm crisis when we saw a spike in KKK membership,” said Mark Pitcavage, an Anti-Defamation League historian and analyst on extremist groups. "Then in the 1990s, despite relatively prosperous economic times, we saw another spike with the election of Bill Clinton, which didn’t sit well with a number of right-wing, militant groups. Now, in a sense, we have both — an economic crisis and the first black president” ...

Clary .... quit the Klan in 1989 ... He attended a multi-racial church in Tulsa ... His journey inspired him to speak out against the Klan, which marked him as a "race traitor.”

He still receives several death threats a week.

http://newsok.com/is-the-kkk-making-a-comeback/article/3322452

[murielm99]

1. My father has told me stories about the Klan

being active in Minnesota during the Depression. And Minnesota has always been a rather liberal state.

The poor economic times made the Klan attractive to people who needed simple answers and someone to blame. It is no different now.

[bliss_eternal]

3. True.

They sometimes change their focus a bit, too. Now illegal immigrants are seen as easy prey by such groups, as they can't (or won't) report attacks for fear of deportation. :(

[skooooo]

5. Back in the 20s and 30s..

..they posed as a sort of social club to a lot of unsuspecting people to increase their membership. Everyone today knows who they are, but back then people sometimes joined without knowing what they were getting into. That happened to someone in my family. When they saw what was really up with it, they quit.

[Recursion]

13. The 1920's Klan was a very different animal...

...from the Klan before it and after it. First off, the 1920's Klan was not southern, it was midwestern with its strength in Indiana (the Klan basically ran the state until its chief organizer and governor of IN raped a woman and nearly bit her face off). Their primary platform, oddly enough, was "health" issues like anti-smoking campaigns and enforcing the newly-enacted alcohol prohibition. They worked in racist "eugenic" ideas as a subset of that -- there's some controversial evidence that Hitler may have studied their success.

Their primary enemies were blacks, Jews, persons from the First Nations, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and Catholics. This should not be confused with a similarly racist and anti-immigrant Populist movement in the South: the two were quite distinct and Huey P. Long never forgave the Klan for costing him the 1924 election (oddly enough in the 1920's, the Klan was perceived in the South as the carpetbaggers since they were organized by people coming down from OH and IN).

Anyways, my point is, there have been roughly 4 stages of Klan history. All are different, done by different people in different parts of the country, but the 1920's incarnation is very much unlike the other 3. The post-civil war Klan was a bunch of Confederate irredentists, and it really did disappear when Reconstruction ended, rather than going underground as the later Klan members pretended it had. The second phase was the one I'm talking about here: post-WWI middle-class midwestern white Protestants. The third phase is the most publicly familiar one: poor white Southerners committing terrorism against blacks and civil rights activists. The fourth phase (which we're in) is more separatist than supremacist (ie, they realize that ship has sailed) and is violently anticommunist, antisemitic, and more recently anti-Islamic (though in the 1980's the Klan did work some with Islamic fighters and terrorists because of their anti-Israel and anti-Soviet struggles). Its base of power is almost split between the Old South and big sky country in the Northwest.

It will be interesting to see if the newer anti-Islamic bent represents an actual shift into a fifth Klan system, or whether it's simply an opportunistic recruiting measure adopted after 9/11.

[skooooo]

15. interesting!

You really seem to know your history!

[Recursion]

16. I interned for the SPLC once

It was a real eye-opener.

[skooooo]

17. What you wrote..

..sounded like some analysis I had read by Morris Dees. I need to start donating to the SPLC. I really support what they do.

[Recursion]

19. Oh, yeah, what I said was verbatim Dees research

That's all him. And please please donate.

[bliss_eternal]

2. LOL!

A comeback? Like a reunion tour or something? :rofl:

Sorry, that struck me as funny.

They never went away, to my knowledge. They may take on other forms, but they're still out and about taking out jews, brown people and communists to make the world better for good, pure white people. :eyes::sarcasm:

[thunder rising]

4. In hard times people cling to God, Guns and select a scape goat.

[anniebelle]

6. Living here in the butt-hole of the bible belt, I can tell you, they never left.

It's sad, but the mentality of these 'folks' is downright pathetic. They herd 'em up every Sunday morning and lead them into their temples of hate mongering and fill their pea brains with 'the spirit' and send them out amongst the evil doers. There's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday mornin'.

[madrchsod]

7. .the kkk and other racist groups are in every area of the country

there are racist`s who may not be organized but are sympathetic to these groups in every city,town,and village in the usa. racism is never going away as long as people have the need to hate others. all that matters is the skin color or ethnic background are different than the perceived pure aryan blood of their "white race"

[KatyaR]

8. It doesn't help when the Jokelahoman prints a list

of the Oklahoma cities where they're found and the names of the groups. I think they're just trying to stir up the hate, they've been doing it in a backhanded way ever since the election.

[RedLetterRev]

9. They've BEEN making a comeback

ever since * got in office. I've been watching the SPLC web site every little bit and membership in all hate-groups has exploded since the GOP started courting and encouraging them as "their base". Rove knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it. To me, this is the biggest reason the GOP must die. It will take generations to undo the damage, to "un-teach" the hate that money, pseudo-religion, and power unleashed on a peaceful and law-abiding citizenry. Between having an African-American POTUS, a Democratic Congress, a backlash against hate-based, wackogelical pseudo-religion, they're feeling suddenly squeezed.

Their heads are exploding and I wonder how long it'll be before the explode anything else. Spirit help us be strong.

[shrike]

10. I sure hope not

Historically, they've also been anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew. Their latest incarnation would probably put gays and transgenders on the list. Just what we need at this juncture of our history.

[tom_paine]

11. With Obama's election, I'm sure (sadly) there has been renewed interest in the KKK.

Plus economic hard times, too.

Awful, but what can you do in a Free Country, other than keep an eye on them as you would any other group with a propensity for serial lawbreaking (in keeping with Constitutional protections like warrants and such), and rely on the education and decency of the American People to never let these people closer than the fringes of any real political power.

[azlatina]

12. You need to look a little bit further...

During the Reagan/Bush years, the closet racists started to
come out in force & the openly racists became emboldened.
During the Clinton years, they toned down or disguised their
rhetoric & activities. And then * happened...now we are
living among people who spew hate & vitriol
indiscriminately & cloak themselves as "god fearing
Christians" to justify their actions & beliefs. The
most dangerous form of the KKK is organized religion. 

[Life Long Dem]

14. We'll look back on this in history and say through hope

and change, we overcome the hurdles facing the first black president in history. Hope and change.

[skooooo]

18. I saw some Klan..

...come to our little town (southern Indiana) in the 1980s on the premise of doing away with STOP SIGNS. Stop signs and other traffic signs were government intrusion, and they wanted to be RID of them! Can you believe it? Of course that was just a cover to draw people in who weren't thinking straight anyway.

[The Wizard]

20. The McCain/Palin rallies

were Klan meetings without hoods, sheets and burning crosses.
The underlying message of the Republican Party since Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been: You're a bigot, so are we, vote Republican for "Law and Order" code language for keeping minorities in their place. They also pushed for "traditional values," code for keeping minorities in their place. States Rights is code for slavery and segregation as official policy.
Shoot them, shoot them all. They're domestic terrorists and should be hunted down under the provisions of the Patriot Act.
The Bush Doctrine calls for preemptive actions against possible terrorists. Ahhh, the irony.

[bliss_eternal]

21. great post.

:thumbsup:

[Fearless]

22. It happened in the 60's, no doubt it will happen again.

:shrug:

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

23. Apt description of Klan members

"Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which investigates and collects information on hate groups, wasn't familiar with the group, although he said a KKK band known as the Dixie Rangers is believed to operate in Walker.

Walker is in Livingston Parish, west of Washington and St. Tammany and another one-time Klan hotbed. Seven Klan chapters of "various stripes" are in Louisiana, Potok said.

Potok said while hate groups have grown over the past several years — coinciding with discontent over illegal immigration — Klan factions are not solidly organized in Louisiana or nationwide. He said 34 different named Klan organizations with 155 chapters operate across the country with as many as 6,000 members — small numbers in his estimation.

"Really, it's a pathetic collection of losers and thugs," Potok said. "Even across the radical right most people look down their nose at the Klan these days."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081112/ap_on_re_us/klan_slaying