You May Have Heard That the KKK Is Now Accepting Black Members. Here’s What Is Actually Happening.

Here is a
misleading headline
in the International Business
Times
:

Similar stories, with similar errors, have appeared in
The Daily Mail
,
The Daily Mirror
,
The Huffington Post
, and other outlets.

The IMDb's description: "After a black man's daughter is killed by the KKK, he seeks revenge by becoming a Klansman."What you need to understand
here is that there are bunch of different organizations out there
that call themselves the Ku Klux Klan. None of them is “the”
organization, and none of them is directly descended from the
original Klan, which died out over a century ago. Anyone can buy
some sheets and set up shop as a Klan, but he won’t be speaking for
anybody but himself and whoever he can convince to join him.

In this case John Abarr, a Montana Klansman who claims to have
given up the idea of white supremacy, has created yet another KKK
grouplet. It’s called the Rocky Mountain Knights, and he says he’s
opening its doors to minorities. There are no signs that any have
actually joined. (This is not, I should add, just a case of white
separatists trying to cooperate with black separatists. That’s a phenomenon with a long history, but it does not generally
entail inviting African Americans into the klavern.)

Needless to say, if Abarr really has given up on the Klan’s core
ideology, it would make more sense to throw away the brand name and
call his club something else. But I suppose he thinks this will get
the group publicity, and evidently he’s right.

The IBT report wavers back and forth between
recognizing that this is one oddball’s effort and not a general
move toward a tolerant, cuddly Klan. It mentions that the Rocky
Mountain Knights are a “new KKK group,” and it quotes another
Klansman dismissing Abarr’s project. But it describes that critic
as coming from “the more traditional elements of the organisation,”
as though they were all paying dues to the same coffers.

If nothing else, this is an interesting inversion of a dynamic
that the far right saw in the
’90s
, when the militia movement came to prominence. The
militias tended to focus on issues such as gun control and
paramilitary policing, not on policing racial boundaries, and many
militiamen were overtly hostile to white supremacists. While some
racists returned the disdain, others tried to enter the movement by
forming militia groups of their own. If Abarr is sincere about his
ideological conversion—and that’s a big if—then this is
basically the same process happening in reverse.

I don’t expect it to go far, though, because I can’t imagine
many anti-racists would be interested in adopting the Klan brand
name.

Bonus link: For an interesting case in the ’30s of some
people who did use the Klan’s brand name for rather
different purposes, even inviting some nonwhites into the fold,
check out this story from Studs
Terkel’s
Hard Times
, in which a West Virginia Klan with two
black members staked out a militant position in labor’s battles
with the coal companies.

Another bonus link: I explored the Klan’s history in
this
piece
from 2005.

[Via
Corey Robin
.]

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