Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

With a sinister hierarchy of "grand wizards" and "dragons," hooded Klansmen concealed their identities as they unleashed a reign of terror on Black Americans and other minorities across America for almost a century.Dan is joined by Professor Kristofer Allerfeldt from the University of Exeter to map out the rise and fall of the KKK founded in 1866 by Confederate veterans in Tennessee, as a vehicle for white Southerners to resist Reconstruction and the enfranchisement of Black Americans right through to the 21st century.Produced by Mariana Des Forges, James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. The story goes that it wasn't even nine months after the end of major hostilities in the US Civil War that a small group of about six ex-Confederate soldiers gathered together in December 1865 and formed a secret club. They called it the Ku Klux Klan. They met in secret, they rode the countryside with their faces hidden, they had elaborate rituals and initiation ceremonies. Some claim it was about fraternity, it was a social club, but right from the beginning there was a fairly clear political objective.

These former confederates who joined, these young men, strongly objected to the course of events that had followed the end of the Civil War. The so-called Reconstruction, the occupation of the southern former Confederate states by the US Army, and the reordering of society in order to bring black Americans into the political and economic process, to bring about the end of the plantation economy, and build a new world in which formerly enslaved people were placed on a par, had equality with their white neighbours. At first, clansmen wearing ghoulish masks, white sheets, would ride up to a black family's home at night. They'd demand water. Apparently this was a very common trick. They'd be offered a bucket of water

and the clansmen would gulp it down and demand another. And in fact, he'd have poured the water away through a hose that flowed into a bottle concealed beneath his robe. But after draining several buckets, the rider would roar that he hadn't had a drink since the night he died on the battlefield at Shiloh or Antietam or Gettysburg. And then he'd gallop off into the night,

giving the impression that the countryside was awash with the undead veterans of Confederate armies. All this was obviously designed to intimidate, to create an atmosphere of fear, to use superstition and these slightly more orthodox ways to impose white economic and political control on these communities. And over time, those tactics became more and more robust. There were beatings, there was rape, there were lynchings, not just against the black populations,

not just against black communities, but against Republicans, white and black, so often northerners who would come down to play their part in the reconstruction process. They were killed or run out of town. Such was the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. And a century later, Klansmen were still using many of those tactics, carrying out those attacks, all with an aim to preventing black political participation. In 1963, there was an infamous bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four men who claimed to be members of the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite beneath the steps of the church. Four young black girls were killed and around 20 people injured. Martin Luther King described it as one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever

perpetrated against humanity. So I thought in this episode we'd take a look at the long history of the Ku Klux Klan, the history of violence against not only the black community but their political allies, also Jews, Asians, immigrants of all stripes. I asked Dr Christopher Allerfelt, he teaches history at the University of Exeter, he's written a history of the Ku Klux Klan. I asked him to come on, talk to me about their origins, their rise and fall and rise again, and what it all means today. Enjoy. unity till there is first and blank unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Christopher, thanks so much for coming on. What is the, what's the origin story? Where does the Klan come from? Well, Klan members would claim that it's just a fraternity founded by

six very bored Confederate veterans in a place called Pulaski, Tennessee. That's probably true. The date of that is in question. I mean, some people say it was around Christmas. Some people say it was later into the spring of 1866. I think that's probably the case. But what's interesting about it is that if we look at some of the names that the original clan took for themselves, they took these peculiar names, and we get the name Nighthawk popping up,

which is actually a term that was used for slave hunters in the enslaved era. So it's not as innocent as it first appears, but the idea is that it's just bored ex-veterans, or veterans of the Civil War, who just wanted to do something really and founded this peculiar organisation. Interesting. What was almost like a sort of veterans group? Yeah, in a way, in a way.

I mean, I think at that point in time, you know, small town Tennessee was probably not the most exciting place to be. And Pulaski, I've been there, is a real one-horse town. And there was absolutely nothing to do. And you think, you know, I mean, you've come out of this incredibly brutal war and if nothing else that was exciting so I think that they just they just tried to do something it was it was less veteran group than

and more just a gathering of friends really I think then it expands beyond that. I mean how quickly does it turn from a sort of group of friends into something with quite obviously political or strategic targets? Really, that's debatable. But I would say we're looking at 1867, 1868. So about a year after it's founded, it starts to collect members all over the place. And you have to

think of the background to this. You have to think of what's happening in the South at this point, particularly in the Confederate South. You've got to think about how the destruction of the war is unspeakable, really. No one's ever experienced anything like this in the States. I mean, ever experienced anything like this in the States. I mean, the figures run at about 18% of all Confederate young men between the age of 15 and 30 have been killed. If you take those that are wounded, it goes up to 50%. So you're looking at a terrific casualty rate. Every family had something like that. So they have this deeply rooted dislike of their previous enemies. And those previous enemies are now in charge, right? I mean, what's going on in these places like Tennessee?

Tennessee was a good example because what happens with Tennessee is that we've had both sides, a lot of the fighting takes place in Tennessee. A lot of people are on either side. There's casualties on both sides. So the friction is already there. The trouble is that at the end of a civil war, you don't have a treaty. You don't have a peace treaty. You can't just say, right, that's the end of that.

Let's draw the line. You take that territory. I'll take that territory. You know, the rebels have been defeated and the victors have won. And the victors start to impose what they feel should be the reconstruction on the previous rebels. And the rebels see this as unduly harsh and start to kick back against it. And that's where the clan really kicks in as an insurgency, really. And this reconstruction that you've talked to, I mean, it's given its name to the era, the Reconstruction, roughly covering the late 60s and 1870s. What was the character of Reconstruction that the Klansmen objected to? Well, it starts off relatively innocently from

the Klan's perspective. We have Lincoln assassinated his vice president, Andrew Johnson takes over. And Johnson, I feel, is continuing with what Lincoln probably would have done. But the trouble is that Johnson is not Lincoln. Johnson is a very angry man. He's quite a heavy drinker. He's not good in public at all. But what he's trying to do is he's really trying to integrate the South back into the North with a minimum amount of fuss. He sets up a policy where essentially the leadership of the old South can come along and apologise and swear an oath to be loyal to the new South. And that way, they'll be just allowed to reintegrate into society. And once a certain

amount of people have reintegrated, then the states will be integrated into the Union. The trouble is that the victors, the Republicans really, don't like this idea. They don't like the idea that the South should get off so lightly. They really want to sort out the problem of four million slaves. What are you going to do with them? These people have got to be integrated into American society, according to them. And of course, the South don't want them integrated into society. And we see with the 13th Amendment banning slavery, the 14th Amendment giving slaves rights, then so on through the Reconstruction era, civil rights amendments, until really what's happening is that we've got a position where the lines are so closely drawn that you have one side is never going to agree with the other.

That's the way that it's just panning out. And so does the Klan, perhaps we'll get to this, the historiography of it, the way we look at them is of a kind of terrorist organisation, I suppose, carrying out individual acts. But I've never really thought of them in this, in a much sort of regional strategic picture. They're actually an insurgency, in some ways a continuation of the Civil War.

Yes, yes. The thing is that it's difficult to see the Klan really at any time in its history as one sole organisation. During Reconstruction, any time in its history as one sole organisation. During reconstruction, we can find clans operating within a state, ostensibly, but really the organisation level is down to county level. And when clans try to take on large-scale projects, it normally falls over. They don't really get on that well, but they're very, very effective at a local level and very violent, very violent indeed. What form is that violence taking? Is it attacks against prominent citizens of colour or is it

attacking the infrastructure, the buildings of federal agencies? infrastructure, the buildings of federal agencies? It doesn't tend to target buildings, but it targets black and white Republicans, really. I mean, that's probably the best way of putting it. Anyone who's supporting the Republican agenda, anyone who's supporting the idea that blacks should be given full rights, anyone that is actually actively campaigning for that, anyone who really stands up against the ideas of what the old South would have stood for. And they're very effective. I mean, they use really pretty horrific methods.

I came across one story where they're hanging a Republican activist. They string him to a tree and he starts to climb up the tree. And as he's climbing up the tree, he's still got the noose around his neck. And rather than just shooting him or doing anything like that, they climb up the tree next to him, and he's gripping hold of the tree. And they cut his fingers off one by one to actually release him from the tree. So what we're looking at is extraordinary violence. And it is terrorism. It really is terrorism. It's terrorism, pure and simple. The idea is to terrorise the black population into not supporting these Republican activists who've come into the South. But they also target white

Republican activists as well. They're not discriminatory in that way. And if they have a platform, as you say, it's difficult. The Klan are many different things in many different places, but we can characterize them as being nostalgic, deeply admiring of a kind of imagined view of the antebellum South, attached to slavery, kind of the plantation economy. Anything wider than that? attached to slavery, kind of the plantation economy, anything wider than that? Yes, I mean, I think that they see themselves as the saviours of the South. And it's interesting when we look at the people that actually join the clan, and particularly the people that run the clans. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the man who's meant to be in charge of the clan, or has always claimed is in charge of the Klan as an institution

at this period, is typical of how the Klansmen would see themselves. This dashing, heroic, chivalrous man who's trying to protect the South from the depredations of the Republicans, and also of these black former slaves who the Republicans are empowering, who it's argued are marauding across the countryside and raping white women. But yeah, I mean, that's the way that they see themselves. But really, they're the saviors of the South, I think, is the way that we can best put it, really. And some of the symbols that we've come to associate with them,

the hooded robes and the burning crosses, are those the products of Hollywood or are they based in historical fact? During Reconstruction, the costumes were just whatever they could find. Quite often they would consist of just perhaps the man's wife's clothes. I mean, there's an instance of a black former slave woman being raped by her former master. And the reason why she recognizes him is, even though he has a mask on his, or a hood over his head, the reason why she recognizes him is because he's wearing a dress that she had made for his wife. So it was any costume that just disguised them. That was really it. But also there was the idea that these costumes should be frightening.

They should terrify particularly the black population who it was said were extraordinarily superstitious. I'm not quite sure how true that is, but it's argued that that was one of the reasons why you have these really peculiar costumes during the reconstruction period with horns and devil faces and very like carnival, really. Was there a political wing of this terrorist organisation? No, not really. It had political objectives and it was allied with politicians, but there's no real political wing. They definitely have a political programme, but I don't think you could actually at this point say, well, this politician is actually a part of the Klan in terms of,

he may have been a member of the Klan, but he wouldn't have dictated anything more than, you know, perhaps how a raid was carried out, how a night ride was carried out as they would have seen it. But they did have clear political objectives. The objective was to regain what they referred to as home rule. So it was essentially recreating the status quo ante, so putting the former elites back in charge.

Before we come on to the extent to which that strategic aim was realised, what did the federal government do about it? Well, this is interesting because if you read many of the accounts, it's argued that the federal government eventually steps in and is very effective. I would argue that really isn't the case. It focuses on activity in South Carolina in 1870, after the 1870 election, 1870-1871. South Carolina has been rather peculiar in terms of clan activity because up until that point it's relatively quiet uh 1868 to 1870 there's not that much violence in south carolina but then it suddenly kicks off and it kicks off with a vengeance so much so that

republicans in in congress start to badger grant to say that he must do something about this. He's got to step in. He's got to really do something dramatic about it. They pass the Third Force Act, Third Enforcement Act in 1871, commonly known as the Klan Act. And they send down the 7th Cavalry Custer's regiment into a place called Yorkville where they examine all the evidence of Klan crimes and they come up with about from Yorkville and other other parts of South Carolina they come up with about 3,000 people involved so it gives you some idea of the scale and they arrest them them. They imprison them. It's the first time they've really acted in this way. And this is regarded as this great victory for the

North, for the Republicans. But the reality is, if those 3,000, 2,000 are acquitted straight away, and of all the people that are actually charged with anything, they get very, very minor charges. And the last group, about 65 of the really hardcore, are sent out to Albany in New York, and they are imprisoned in there. But they're sentenced to up to five years each. I don't think any of them served a full sentence. So really what happens is that the federal government says that it's doing a lot, but in terms of its ability to actually check this, it's not very effective at all. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors, I think. So as you said there, the president is now Grant.

He's taken over from Andrew Johnson in 1869. As the man who defeated the Confederacy, as a military man, what are his views on Reconstruction? Does he realise the Klan is a kind of almost a military threat that he's defeating? Or is he still, does he realize the clan is a kind of almost a military threat that he's defeating or is he still does he share his predecessor's slight ambivalence yes his his views did change i think like most northerners his views of the of the clan changed

without a doubt but i think the whole idea of grant having been the supreme commander, well, the supreme field commander of the Union forces, really made him reluctant to get involved in what he thought could be a second civil war. He was very reluctant to be involved in fighting. He was reluctant to send federal troops. And on several occasions, he refused to send federal troops. So it's only really this Yorkville time that he really steps up to the mark and does that. But I think that the real reason why the Klan is successful is partly because of its terrorism and its hit-and-run tactics and the fact that it had a lot of local support amongst the white populations that it was operating in. But I think more important than that is probably the fact that

the North starts to get fed up with the whole idea. You've got the transcontinental railway, it's completed in 1867. You've got the West being opened up, there's opportunity there. People just think, we don't want to get entangled in this one again. We don't want to kind of, let the South mess about with each other. They're,

you know, they're going to kill each other anyway. Let's just leave them at it. And if the black population is suppressed, well, so be it. They just lose interest, I think, is the sad fact of it, really. And then we tend to date the end of Reconstruction at 1877, when Rutherford Hayes becomes president. And as you say, it's not just him. I suppose the North is kind of turning away from the effort required to reconstruct the South. Can we say that the Ku Klux Klan was rather successful then in its political objectives? Very successful, very successful indeed. And that's really a part of the ongoing problem of the Ku Klux Klan, that it's regarded as a successful insurgency. And that's why it kind of re-emerges in the 1920s. But we'll get to that.

But I think the Klan achieved pretty well all of its objectives. And this idea that Grant defeated the Klan is a fallacy. I can't see where it comes from. But it's an interesting one, because apparently, according to legend, I'm not quite sure how true this is, but Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was meant to have been in charge of the entire Klan as an organisation, in 1869, declared that he was going to disband the Klan. That's it. It's finished. It doesn't need to exist anymore. Well, sadly, the violence, as I've said, steps up from the 1870 onwards. But really what's happening here is that the Klan as an organisation may well have gone. It may well have disappeared. But the media have become used to referring to any white on black violence, terrorist violence, as Ku Kluxing.

So it seems like the Klan is still active. The organizations may not be the Klan at all, but they're referred to as Klan activities. So we've got this idea that the clan continues. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. I really couldn't say. It's difficult to find any examples of clavins, as they were called in particular clan areas. There's not much evidence for that, but there is a lot of evidence

that their style of activity continues. It reminds me a little bit of, I remember people talking about al-Qaeda 15 years ago when the hierarchy such as it was had been dismantled, but lone wolves would sort of badge themselves as al-Qaeda and still carry out attacks. And it became a sort of a mutualised sort of terrorist operation.

Yeah, that's a very good way of looking at it it's almost a sort of franchised operation in a way i think that the the term had become so hackneyed in in in the south at this point and also in northern papers reporting it that it just continues and and we still suffer from that today, very much, actually. One of the purposes of my interpretation of the Klan is to try and say, well, until we actually stop seeing the Klan as this overarching organisation, we're never going to defeat it.

It just becomes a Hydra-headed monster then. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the Ku Klux Klan. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. The Reconstruction's come to an end. The Democrats have helped put Rutherford Hayes into the White House and there's been a bargain that he will then end Reconstruction, call off the troops, and as you say,

focus on the new possibilities of the West and Southwest. What happens? Does the clan, having therefore kind of achieved a lot of what they set out to do, does the clan fall into obscurity? And when does it re-emerge as a force? Well, the clan does fall into obscurity, but it becomes mythologized. The idea of reconstruction in terms of historical interpretation changes dramatically from being this this um northern objective

you know the idea to to include the south particularly the black south into into the union has has just been written off no one really talks about that side of it. And what's really stressed in the histories of this period, 1877 to 1915, what's really stressed there is this idea that the Klan was a heroic organisation. It called off the worst excesses of these radicals who wanted to reincorporate the South by giving political power to the black population, which many people in both the South and the North regard as way too far ahead. They see it as a disastrous policy. And the result is that the Klan becomes mythologized, the Klan becomes this organization of heroic Southerners who fought against terrific odds against a

misguided federal government we see that following through into a series of three novels by a chap called thomas dixon really eulogizing the clan and then we see the birth of a nation come out and that really cements this picture of the clan as as heroic. And if you can sit through, I think it's what, about three hours of The Birth of a Nation, it's actually quite instructive. Birth of a Nation, 1915, a hugely important Hollywood film. This is also accompanied by, you see those images of sort of Klansmen and families all marching

and it's almost kind of heritage industry, the heritage landscape of parts of the South. Oh, I'm not so sure about the South. Really, the peculiar thing is that the clan, when it re-emerges as a result of the birth of a nation, but we have to be careful because it's not just birth of a nation that kicks off the rebirth of the clan. You have a lot of other things that are in the mix, not least it's the 50-year anniversary of the end of the Civil War. So people are thinking of the Civil War, they're thinking about that. And that kind of makes the Klan hit the headlines as well. But really, yes, I mean, what we see is in areas of

the States, less in the South, more, I think, in the North and the Midwest. We see particularly Indiana, places like that that these huge great rallies where families go along to these rallies because when the clan reforms it it is not only uh clans men it's clans women it's also what they call clan kiddies and so it really is regarded as a family activity and it's it's sold as true blue american yeah You know, this is the real American. If you want to really be patriotic, then you join the Klan. And you say it's reformed. This time, is it reformed in a formal, modern, institutional way?

Is there a membership and you get a newsletter and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, very much so. Exactly that. It comes back and is a fraternity. It's a true fraternity. You know, there are all sorts of uh mystic things that they they mystic ceremonies and rituals and and and that sort of thing that they do but perhaps the most important aspect of it is is this money-making opportunity it's a pyramid selling organization really a pyramid selling of hate if you like but it's it's it's

very very much uh a business opportunity for for a lot of people in what way what's the business how do you how do you make cash presumably if you're at the top you harvest everybody's money at the place coming in at the bottom yeah exactly i mean it's the way the way that it's sold is you pay ten dollar cleck token which is your your. That's divided up between the recruiters, the headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and various other people along the way. So everyone makes money off it. And it's difficult to establish with an organization because it still retains secrecy. And also, we've never actually managed to find the holy grail of all the documentation in Atlanta, that seems to have disappeared. But it's estimated that there's probably somewhere between two and a half million and four or five million Klan members. So it's a big organisation. It is a huge organisation,

second fraternity only to the Freemasons. Is there still violence? Are they still enforcing their view of white-dominated politics through direct action? God, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, California, these are very violent clans. Oklahoma is terrifically violent. I mean, we see all sorts of whippings and murders. And their targets are not just black people.

They're less aimed at blacks. They're more targeting immigrants. They're targeting Catholics in particular. They're targeting maybe Japanese or Chinese, anyone that is not WASP, really. But yeah, I mean, the violence is terrific. There's one particular instance where a black hotel bellhop is seen as getting above his station and he's kidnapped in Texas. He's kidnapped and he's taken away. He's whipped. And then they use silver nitrate to burn the initials KKK onto his forehead. Then they dump him back outside the hotel. So it's, yeah, very violent, very violent indeed. But not everywhere. Some of the areas are quite peaceful,

but it does have a very violent element to it, which is one of the reasons why it actually does have a very violent element to it, which is one of the reasons why it actually falls apart eventually. So it's having its heyday as a sort of legal established organisation. What happens through the Great Depression, the Second World War? Well, in the middle of the 1920s, it collapses. A series of scandals, some financial, some sexual, more and more reports of its violence, and people just get fed up with it. It's a fad. They leave it. The membership drops to about 300,000 by the end of the 1920s. And in the 1930s, we really see them struggling to get that membership back again. So they're trying all sorts of different tacks to try and get people to support them. They're particularly

anti-Semitic. They start off being very pro-Roosevelt, thinking that he's the only way that they're going to get out of the mess of the Depression. And then they turn against him and say that his policies are too socialist, they're un-American, they're against the grain of what they do. They link up with the German Bund, definitely kind of taking on fascist tendencies at the end of the 1930s. In the Second World War, they're active, but not really particularly effective. And by 1944, we see Roosevelt thinking, I'm trying to sell a better world at the end of this. And I can't really do that, where in my backyard backyard these people are carrying out lynchings, are carrying out all sorts of racist attacks.

I can't do this in clear conscience. And also, I think Stalin is jabbing him with this idea of, you know, what about the Kukaskhan? And he uses the tried and tested American method of destroying someone you don't like, the IRS. He calls in the IRS and they find back taxes from the 1920s of about a little bit under $700,000. And of course, the Klan hasn't got any money. They can't pay that. So they declare themselves bankrupt, which means that should you decide that you want to set up the new Ku Klux Klan today, you would have to pay that $700,000 plus all the compound interest on that. I think one of my students once worked it out. It's high millions, that's for sure, if not billions. So Dan, don't try and set up the new Ku Klux Klan.

Noted, noted. But the Ku Klux Klan, again, came back in a way in the 1960s, but now as a more authentic representation of its original self, perhaps not as a sort of membership organisation, but as a kind of grassroots howl of violence and bigotry from community to community. Yeah, very, very violent, very bigoted, very extreme, even most southerners would have felt that it was, you know, pretty extreme organisation. And it carries out all sorts of hideous deeds until eventually it blows up a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades.

Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. The 16th Street Baptist Church and kills four teenage girls. And really popular opinion just turns straight against them. And also government opinion turns against them. I mean, you know, we have the Mississippi burning murders where three civil rights activists have been killed in 1964. And what happens with that is that we have the FBI suddenly taking an interest in them. Suddenly Hoover decides, right, okay, we've got to do something about this. We can't have this organization. So everyone is turning against them.

And also the Klan is really un-telegenic. And this is the television age. The Klansmen go on, they use the N-word. They're incredibly outspoken about what they're thinking. It's just, they make a complete dog's breakfast of their media representation. And the organisation really folds after that. We'll see small clans emerge, often very violent clans, but not in the way of the 1920s or even the 1960s. They really have declined since then.

1920s or or even the 1960s they really have you know declined since then but again is it's it's now less of a formal structure and more a sort of myth that you can attach yourself to right the danger now is people adopting clan insignia and ideas but without there being a network chapters and and some sort of hierarchical structure yeah there are there are slight blips where it will be quite organized i mean in the 1970s into the 90 early 1980s we see it as as quite a quite a strong organization because largely the activity of david duke but david duke is is essentially caught trying to sell the membership lists to someone to make money and is thrown out of the clan, even though he claims that he's still this clansman. The clansmen themselves would certainly want to have nothing at all to do with him.

But the interesting thing about the clan now is that it's not just a question of not having the same organizations or even structures, but it's also the beliefs are different. Nowadays, we see a lot of Christian identity movements muscling in on the Klan. We can see a lot of pagan organisations associating themselves with the Klan, neo-Nazis, all sorts of groups associate themselves with the Klan, because the Klan has got so few members, they can't afford to be that choosy so and also people will join several organizations they may be they may be members of a skinhead group and also of the clan so it's

still out there and it's still if you like the sort of granddaddy of of of the racist uh terrorist organization so it's going to be the go-to one. And it has the kind of standout iconography as well, doesn't it? The hood is instantly recognizable. The burning cross is a message that no one really wants to see. So it's still an effective organization in many ways. But a completely decentralised one. Yeah, yeah. When we hear people say, well, this is an organisation, the clan, the clan,

there is no such thing as the clan, technically. There are clans, and they're all, quite often they're bickering with each other. And when we have the Unite the Right gathering in 2017, particularly at Charlottesville, this idea of bringing together all the racist right organisations, the Klan musters 12 Klansmen from the entirety of the Klan. It's a very small organisation now. It may be a small organisation now, but lots of things that you've been talking about, and the things that you've mentioned, be they obviously bigotry, violence, racism, but also some of the financial and sexual scandals that rocked this organisation. I mean, there's a powerful legacy here, isn't there, for this and other organisations? Definitely. I think it's the iconography as much as anything else. But many of the racists right

now see the Klan as outdated. They see the fraternal structure as silly. They see the costumes as ridiculous. They don't have any interest in the ritual. There's just too much violent baggage attached to them, really. So most of the racist right would actually not want to be associated with the Klan at all. But that has not necessarily got good effect. The remaining Klansmen tend to be extremely violent because they don't care. They've got nothing to lose in terms of losing public opinion. They've got no support publicly

anyway. And they don't have any image to keep up. They can do whatever they want, really. Yeah, I mean, the Klan is really a fractured organisation, that's for sure. But it's also interesting that there have been other organisations in, well, all over the world, where people have fed on the conservatism, the fear, the anger of ordinary people in order to make vast amounts of money and exploit sexual opportunities. And this seems to me a kind of product of the, well, of these organisations like the Klan that we've seen over the last 150 years.

Definitely. I mean, there is a model there that has been imitated several times. I mean, really, the interesting thing is to go back to the 1920s and look at the 1920s, the Klan heyday, if you like, where you can see that sector of exploitation, financial exploitation,

really reaching such a fever pitch that it does definitely set a model. I mean, it's rather interesting that when the Klan is in its heyday in 1922-23, the nascent Nazi party approach it to actually get linkages with it. 24-25, we're looking at these linkages attempted to be made. And the Klan is so powerful, it just says, no, no, no, don't really want to be associated with you. And then the opposite happens in the 1930s, when the Klan is kind of here on its uppers. They approach the Nazi party in Germany, and they just say, no, don't want to be associated

with you, thank you. So it's quite interesting how that works. Amazing. Thank you very much. That's so eye-opening. Tell us the name of your book. It's The Ku Klux Klan, An American History. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast and talking all about it. you