A grim ghost of the most fearsome organizations of the past appears to be resurfacing as remnants of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) appear to be reorganizing vigorously in the faltering United States, finding fertile ground under the presidency of Donald Trump.
Newer and recently revitalized chapters have led efforts to gain a stronger foothold in mainstream American society, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an American organization that has been promoting social justice issues since the 1970s.
“The United Klan Nation co-organized events with the Aryan Freedom Network, while anti-Semitic Christian Identity and Klan-affiliated networks, including the Church of the Keystone Knights and Kingdom Identity Ministries, overlapped through shared leadership,” the SPLC said.
In the synopsis he adds that “The Maryland White Knights appear to have been formed from the remnants of the Old Glory Knights, while the Sacred White Knights appear to have emerged from the disbandment of the Loyal White Knights. Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Knights have re-emerged, and the Silent Knights are actively recruiting. Another key connection has been between the United Klan Nation and the Aryan Freedom Network, evident through joint events and mutual promotion.”
After the Kirk assassination
American author David Rosen attributes these developments to President Donald Trump’s imposition of a right-wing political ideology and practice that increasingly resembles what Chris Hedges has called “Christian fascism.”
After the murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump posted the following rant on the Truth Social platform:
“For years, radical leftists have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the worst mass murderers and criminals in the world. This type of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we see in this country today.”
Trump and Kirk had embraced the “great replacement” theory, the right-wing idea that non-white immigrants would soon displace white Americans. In March 2024, Kirk declared, “The great replacement strategy, which is proceeding normally every day at our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
“Until Kirk’s assassination,” Rosen tells Counterpunch, “this [version of the KKK] was not as vicious or as vindictive as the previous two, more of a patchwork of the “alt-right” that gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and emerged in other political epicenters.”
The two earlier movements were relatively short-lived but did great harm. The first generation emerged between 1866 and 1879, after the South’s defeat in the Civil War and the efforts at Reconstruction.
The second version emerged in the pre-World War I period, from 1915 to 1927, and flourished in the turbulent “Roaring ’20s.” Each generation of the Klan targeted native, Protestant white Americans in different ways, but both caused immense pain and suffering.
The early Klan movement was small, selective, and secretive, with elaborate rituals and uniforms. Its main purpose was to terrorize the newly freed African-American population of the South with attacks by masked night riders who burned crosses and with numerous lynchings.
Using professional public relations
Two events sparked the rise of the “second” wave of the Klan—on March 3, 1915, when N. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation premiered in Times Square. It was further reinforced on August 17, 1915, when Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager in Atlanta, was lynched for the alleged murder of his 13-year-old employee, Mary Fagan.
The second movement took a much broader target at those who threatened the “true American way,” including African Americans and Jews, non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants (e.g. Irish, Italians, Mexicans), non-Protestant Christians (e.g. Catholics, Mormons), as well as those who promoted “loose” morals, whether it was alcoholic beverages, prostitution, gambling, or popular entertainment (e.g. live shows, cinema, records, and books deemed obscene).
It employed “modern” public relations professionals who exploited clever advertising, press releases, trained recruiters, free memberships for clergy, dues collection, and the sale of paraphernalia to build a powerful—and profitable!—national organization.
The factors that remain the same
At its peak in the mid-1920s, it claimed 2 to 5 million members and elected hundreds of its members to public office, including governors and congressmen. It played a critical role in securing the passage of eugenics laws in 30 states and harsh anti-immigration laws, as well as supporting Prohibition and granting the vote to white women.
The factors that fueled the second coming of the Klan:
- deep-rooted nativism,
- particularly opposition to immigration,
- strong adherence to conservative evangelical Christian beliefs,
- affiliation with conservative “fraternal” organizations (e.g., the Freemasons),
- ardent advocacy of abstinence and suspicion of supposedly “loose morals” urbanites,
- especially recent immigrants and those considered more educated,
- secular and liberal, and a fiery reactionary “populism” founded on hatred of those “different.”
The underlying forces that fueled the second coming – e.g. racism, fear of immigrants, evangelical Christianity, and economic uncertainty – remain defining issues of 21st-century American social and political life.
