Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
THE KLAN IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The Ku Klux Klan is America’s oldest domestic terrorist organization, and despite several cycles of growth and decline, it still exists and still commits violent acts in the early twenty-first century. With eight major groups and around forty minor ones, comprising roughly 110 chapters or “Klaverns,” Klan groups are the most common type of hate group in the United States. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Klan members, with greater numbers of associates, sympathizers, and hangers-on, perpetuate its history.
Despite its age, the Klan has demonstrated amazing resiliency. This has allowed it to appeal to poor and working-class whites, addressing their economic and social frustrations, regardless of what those frustrations may be at any given point in history. Klan ideology and conspiracy theories provide members with scapegoats to blame for their failures and misfortunes, an enemy to absorb their attention, and activities on which to focus their energies. It also provides self-respect, pride, and empowerment.
The Klan’s enemies are often minority groups in direct economic competition with the lower- and working-class whites who form the Klan’s core constituency. Other perceived enemies are groups that threaten white control of society in some other way. At various times, Klan enemies have included African Americans, Jews, immigrants, Catholics, anti-prohibitionists, drug dealers, homosexuals, and others.
Klansmen (and Klanswomen) also have a strong sense of victimization. Many Klan members are motivated to commit acts of intimidation, murder, torture, and terrorism—and to rationalize these acts as “self defense” because of a twisted perception that they are under attack and have to protect their “way of life.” In the minds of most Klan members, the Klan never attacks innocent victims—it simply responds with vigor and righteousness to encroachments on the God-given rights of whites.
THE KLAN IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
In the early 2000s, the Ku Klux Klan is no longer a single entity. Instead, fragmentation and decentralization are the rule. Many of the approximately 110 Klan groups or chapters remain at least nominally independent, although some are attached to national organizations—Klan groups that claim a national or multiregional reach.
Various Imperial Wizards, who set the tone for their subordinate chapters, lead these national organizations. The larger Klans sometimes have an intermediate level of organization, called the “Realm,” usually based within a state or a regional collection of states. Both independent local Klaverns and nationwide Klans tend to revolve around a central leader with a strong, charismatic personality, and the fortunes of the organizations typically rise and fall with those of their leaders.
Early twenty-first century Klans generally adopt one of two public stances. Some take a cue from David Duke. Duke was the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan during the late 1970s. He changed his title to “national director,” stopped “burning crosses” and instead held “cross lightings,” and encouraged his followers to run for political office at the local level. Like Duke, some Klansmen use euphemisms instead of racial epithets and proclaim pride in their “heritage” rather than hatred of other groups. Others, however, consider themselves “old school” and take pride in the Klan’s heritage as a terrorist organization. They take a confrontational approach to law enforcement and make no effort to disguise or tone down their beliefs.
KLAN IDEOLOGY
Today’s splintered Klan encompasses a wide range of beliefs. For the sake of clarity, the ideology is categorized into religious, political, racial, and anti-Semitic beliefs, but Klan members do not necessarily make the same categorical distinctions.
Klan ideology, at its core, is centered on the idea that white Americans are threatened by nonwhite minorities and that most of these threats are arranged or encouraged by a sinister Jewish conspiracy. The Klan promotes itself as a way for white Americans to right these perceived wrongs, protect themselves, and to strike back at their enemies. At the heart of Klan beliefs is the notion that violence is justified in order to protect white America.
POLITICAL BELIEFS
One basic assumption behind the Klan’s political ideology is that nonwhites and immigrants threaten whites. Klan members therefore seek to remove these threats, either by themselves or through government action. Another assumption is that, because Klan members believe that the government sides with minorities and immigrants instead of with whites, the government itself has become an enemy. Specific political issues that concern Klan members include immigration, free trade agreements, “racial purity,” affirmative action programs, foreign aid, gun control laws, gay rights, and what they perceive as an unconstitutional separation of church and state. Because of its emphasis on an America “by, for and of” whites, the Klan is also extremely opposed to immigration and often calls for military forces to be deployed along U.S. borders.
“Taking back” America is an important theme in Klan ideology. The Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’s Web site makes this clear: “Enemies from within are destroying the United States of America. An unholy coalition of anti-White, anti-Christian liberals, socialists, feminists, homosexuals, and militant minorities have managed to seize control of our government and mass media … We shall liberate our nation from these savage criminals and restore law and order to America.”
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
Traditionally, the Ku Klux Klan has held extremely conservative Protestant Christian beliefs. Since the early 1970s, many Klaverns have converted to strongly fundamentalist Protestant beliefs, Christian Identity beliefs, or an amalgam of the two.
Christian Identity. Christian Identity, which has become popular among many Klan groups, is a relatively obscure sect known primarily for its racism and anti-Semitism. Its core belief is that whites are actually descendants of the Biblical lost tribes of Israel, and are therefore God’s “Chosen People.” Most Identity adherents believe that Jews, in contrast, are descended from Satan and that other nonwhite peoples are “mud people” on the same spiritual level as animals.
One of the main teachings of Identity Christianity is that all other Christians are “false” Christians, followers of corrupt “Churchianity” and duped by a Jewish conspiracy. This is clearly explained on the White Camelia Knights Internet site: “I understand that most people have been educated to believe that the jewish [sic] people are God’s chosen people. Christians have even gone as far
as to call themselves judeo-christians [sic], they become extremely hostile at the Klan whenever this subject is mentioned. But, we are followers of Christ and even if our beliefs are unpopular, they are still correct. I am constantly told that Christ was a jew [sic]. That Moses and Abraham were jews [sic], but, this belief is incorrect” (Lee 2005, White Camilia Kights Internet site).
In effect, this belief system teaches that, because they are animals, blacks are subhuman, do not have souls, and therefore do not deserve equality before the law, much less American citizenship. Jews, as the descendants and representatives of Satan, are considered the root of all evil in the world.
Fundamentalism. While many Klan members have converted to Christian Identity, others have merely adopted some of its tenets or practice one of several extreme variations of Christian fundamentalism. There are three primary facets of extreme fundamentalism that are important in understanding Klan ideology.
First, fundamentalists, in general, are millennialists and believe that the world is fast approaching its end. They believe that a final, major event of apocalyptic proportions will “purify” the Earth and leave only true believers behind in a perfect world. Klan members inter-mesh these beliefs with their racism and anti-Semitism; thus, the final battles may be against racial minorities or Jews.
Second, extreme fundamentalism is an essentially dualist belief system that offers black-and-white answers to all questions. Anyone who does not share the fundamentalist view is wrong; compromises would be capitulations to evil.
Finally, and most importantly, fundamentalists are conspiracists. Their interpretations of history and society hold that there are secretive, manipulative, all-powerful entities operating behind the scenes.
Anti-Semitism. The Klan sees Jews as the source of virtually all evil in American society—as secretive, hidden manipulators operating behind the scenes to control government, education, banking, and the mass media. Most Klansmen refer to this supposed secret Jewish cabal as ZOG, or Zionist Occupied Government. Many Klansmen believe that Jews are behind the federal government’s efforts to combat organizations such as the Klan. According to the White Camelia Knights” leader, Charles Lee, “the jews [sic] tried to entrap Jesus in a conspiracy against the government, just as they do to Christian Klansmen today” (Lee 2005, White Camelia Knights Internet site).
The ultimate goal of this alleged Jewish conspiracy, the Klan believes, is to first control and then destroy the white “race,” primarily by encouraging miscegenation. Jews also serve another function by reconciling a glaring inconsistency in Klan ideology. Klan members believe that blacks are unintelligent, lazy, and inferior. But if whites are so superior to blacks, how can blacks be such a monumental threat? The Klan answer is that Jews control the blacks. Jews manipulate African Americans, encouraging them to commit crimes against whites, and they also manipulate the government to give blacks preference over whites. Therefore, if the “Jewish problem” could be solved, all of America’s other minority “problems” would become easier to deal with. Klan leaders also insist that Jews are attempting to outlaw Christianity, and they often point to the Supreme Court’s ban on mandatory prayer in public schools as proof.
RACE
Race has always been the central issue in Klan ideology. Klan activists believe that all nonwhite races are a threat to whites; most of the organization’s history has revolved around its attempts to exert or retain white control over minorities. In the early twenty-first century, many Klan leaders offer a perverse variation on this theme: Not only have whites lost control of their country, but the future of the white race itself is now threatened. Only the Klan can save it.
African Americans. The typical Klan activist believes that African Americans are the cause of most crime in America. They also believe that blacks are intellectually inferior and have no moral sense, that they rely on welfare to survive, that they are drug users, and that black men are pathological rapists of white women.
Klan literature also blames the failure of whites to succeed or advance in their careers on “reverse discrimination.” According to the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, “anti-White discrimination is official government policy through “affirmative action” schemes such as minority scholarships, minority business grants, contract “set-asides,” and the hiring and force fed promotion of less qualified employees” (Ku Klux Klan Internet site). This is a key part of the Klan sense of victimization, especially its belief that white males are the “real” victims.
C. Edward Foster wrote in the November/December 1997 issue of The Pennsylvania Klansman that “the Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan recognizes the simple fact that all African niggers are all savage, bloodthirsty Satanic beasts … In the last thirty years these cannibalistic apes have fiendishly murdered over 50,000 White Christians. A nigger cannot be a Christian. Voodoo is the only appropriate religion for these depraved, demonic, vile, ape-like creatures of jungle darkness” (p. 2). This sort of rhetoric attempts to dehumanize African Americans, to make them easier and more acceptable targets for violence and intimidation.
Hispanics. The fear of a foreign “invasion” is a source of great anxiety among Klansmen. This fear demonstrates the Klan tendency to hate those who might compete with lower-class whites in the job market, as well as the tendency to seek scapegoats to blame for economic and educational failures. Klan websites and newsletters are replete with calls for the military to “seal the border.” Hispanics, of whatever background, are simultaneously and paradoxically seen as direct economic competition (stealing the jobs of white men) and as lazy welfare recipients.
KLAN CRIMINAL ACTIVITY
The hallmark activity of the Ku Klux Klan is the perpetration of violence. From the early days of the original Klan when “night riders” terrorized former slaves, through the firebombing and murders during the civil rights era, to the present day, the Klan has been America’s most notorious and well-known domestic terrorist movement. The Klan is known for terrorism, murder, and assault.
Klan violence largely stems from a combination of Klan ideology combined with the lack of political power on the part of Klan members. Typical Klan members are poor, with low education levels and little or no access to political leaders. Thus, Klan groups rarely experience success using normal political and social means of achieving their goals. This makes violence a more attractive option for some Klan members.
Rather than being ashamed of the Klan’s sordid past, many modern Klan members are quite proud of this history. As Grand Dragon C. Edward Foster once said of the Klan, “I’ll tell you this, the Klan’s here because we’ve been here for 131 years. The legacy is that, uh, we’ve had a lot of hangings, a lot of bombings, a lot of shootings. That don’t bother me at all. If somebody wants to go out here and kill a nigger or something, I don’t know … They’re [African Americans] not our equal, they have got no right to breathe free air in America. This is not the Boy Scouts, this is the Ku Klux Klan … You know who we are and you know what our history is” (Brummel 1998).
THE FUTURE OF THE KLAN
Despite its age and fragmentation, the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in the United States is still strong. Though smaller than in the Klan’s heyday in the 1920s, or its resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s, the Klan continues to be the most common type of hate group in America.
The Klan is likely to become even more decentralized. Large, hierarchical Klan structures are more vulnerable to collapse than are smaller Klan groups. The future may also see more “hybrid” Klan groups, such as the Aryan Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, that combine Klan traditions and goals with those of newer neo-Nazi groups. The level of Klan criminal activity is likely to remain high. In addition to their rallies and publicity-gaining stunts, Klan groups routinely engage in more sordid forms of activity, from harassment and intimidation to hate crimes and acts of terrorism.
SEE ALSO Anti-Semitism; Christian Identity; Duke, David; Hate Crimes; Intelligence Project; Second Klan; White Racial Identity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brummel, Bill. 1998. The Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History. Written and produced by Bill Brummel for A&E Home Video.
Chalmers, David. 1987. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 3rd ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press.
Lee, C. 2005. “Christian Identity.” White Camilia Kights Internet site. Available from http://www.wckkkk.com/identity.html.
Ku Klux Klan Internet site. Available from http://nationalknights.org. Sims, Patsy. 1996. The Klan, 2nd ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Telease, Allen W. 1971. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. New York: Harper & Row.
Wade, Wyn Craig. 1987. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Weller, Worth H., and Brad Thompson. 1998. Under the Hood: Unmasking the Modern Ku Klux Klan. North Manchester, IN: DeWitt Books.
J. Keith Akins