KKK Leaders Overjoyed US Politics Are Going Their Way
It’s hard to fully comprehend, but in this day and age, America’s most notorious white supremacy group, the Ku Klux Klan, is having a renaissance. A new report by the Associated Press details how one of the blackest stains on American history is still alive and thriving. Adapting and rebranding themselves for the modern era, the omnipresent terrorists are resurging with the rise of Donald Trump to the Republican presidential nominee, focusing on a more publicly palatable anti-immigration message rather than the fringe calls for genocide. “You know, we began 40 years ago saying we need to build a wall,” said Thomas Robb, leader of the Arkansas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Robb’s chapter is one of the many Klan groups seeking to reclaim the influence they once wielded, renaming themselves the Knights Party USA. One hundred and fifty years later, Southern nights are still illuminated by burning crosses and swastikas, but this time on private property, away from the public eye. Membership flourishes as anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment grows and Klan leaders are emboldened by a growing conviction “that U.S. politics are going their way, as a nationalist, us-against-them mentality deepens across the nation.”
Their new approach includes embracing the internet and the operational reach it offers, allowing members to join and purchase their trademark hoods online. They are reportedly turning to a new emphasis on toning down the horrific violence of the Civil Rights era to try to appear to the mainstream public instead of just the social dregs of disaffected racists, and in response to new federal hate crime laws that put perpetrators in jail years after their crimes were committed.
MORE
= new reply since forum marked as read
