The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

The Ku Klux Klan was originally focused on maintaining the old racial order in the postwar South, chiefly through the violent suppression of African-Americans. But, in the nineteen-twenties, the Klan was reborn as a nationwide movement, targeting not only African-Americans but Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Mexican-Americans, and Asian immigrants. In the jingoistic years following the First World War, the Klan made discrimination the new patriotism. The Bancroft Prize-winning historian Linda Gordon charts this rebirth in “The Second Coming of the KKK.” She writes that millions of people joined the Klan in the span of just a few years, among them mayors, congressmen, senators, and governors; three Presidents were members of the Klan at some point before taking the office. Gordon tells David Remnick that the lessons for our current political moment are sobering. The writer Andrew Marantz, who covers media and politics for The New Yorker, explains how today’s alt-right manipulates something called the Overton Window to bring fringe ideas into the mainstream. Plus, the staff writer Troy Patterson shares three recent picks with David Remnick. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy. And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there. This really subversive, strange thing, in rap, especially, and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

I just read a terrific book about the history of the Ku Klux Klan called the second coming of the KKK and the author, Linda Gordon, shows how the clan, which was originally focused on violently suppressing blacks in the South, was reborn in the 1920s as a nationwide movement. And in this second iteration, the clan targeted not only African Americans, but Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Mexican Americans, and Asian immigrants. Discrimination was the new patriotism. Linda Gordon writes how millions of people joined the clan in the 1920. in the span of just a few years, and among them were mayors, congressmen, senators, and governors. It's a period with very sobering lessons for our current moment.

One of the things your book makes so startlingly clear is that the clan was not something that was to the side of American political life. How can you illustrate how deeply the clan penetrated into political office and political life? How high did it rise? Didn't go to the presidency of the United States? Well, almost because several presidents. were, in fact, members such as Harry Truman. But most of them, I think there were three presidents who were probably members.

Harry Truman was a member of the clan. But as soon as he decided to move into the national political arena, he resigned. How was that not disqualifying to his entire political career? There's no reason at all why it should have disqualified him. This was an entirely reputable, supposedly legitimate organization. It was not the least bit secret. They advertised in newspapers. They identified themselves when they ran for office as Klansmen.

But lacking polls, we can also point to the legislative and electoral achievements of the Klan. The northern 1920s Klan elected 11 governors, 45 congressmen, and I'm not counting what were almost certainly hundreds of state, local, municipal officials. What were there big issues? What was the legislation that Klan pushed for in the 20s? One piece of Klan legislation had already passed, and in many ways it was the Klan's biggest victory, and that was the 1924 immigration law, the first time the federal government restricted immigration. And that law installed into our immigration policy the exact hierarchy that the Klan

land had of who were superior and desirable and who were inferior and undesirable and set quotas accordingly. So there were very large quotas for the so-called Nordics, very small quotas for groups that were not white Protestants in their view. I also think it's extremely important to remember the consequences of that act. That act remained the law of the land until 1965. It was certainly, for example, a factor that contributed to the failure of the United States to take in Jewish refugees from Nazism. Because to do so, they had to work around these quotas.

But beyond that, one of the clans' main – after the March, one of the clan's main struggles at the state level was to ban Catholic schools. They had both positive and negative arguments. The negative arguments are part of the Klan's masterful use of completely outrageously fake news, such that the Pope set the curriculum and was trying to undermine Americans that these young people in Catholic schools were being trained to serve as what we might call molds to be underground. And literally, the Klan claimed that the Pope was prepared. carrying a coup to take over the government of the United States. These are prejudices that persisted right up until the presidential run of John F. Kennedy in 1960. Absolutely.

The notion that if you were a Catholic and therefore honored the Pope, you could not be a loyal American. You know, one of the things that makes your book so riveting, and it really is, is how absurd and self-important the clan rituals and their terms where you assemble a glossary of clan titles, you know, the various officers in the clan. the end of the book, and it includes terms like King Cleigel, and I'm going to get the pronunciation wrong, Clarigo and Claver and Clacktokin and Clon Clave and, you know, everything but Covefe. And what's with these terms? I mean, you look at these guys and they're absurd hats and you think they're laughable and they're anything but laughable. Well, first of all, let me say that when I wrote this book, I realized right away I didn't want to waste my time just telling people how horrible the clan was and condemning it. I wanted people to

understand it. And you also, you don't describe them just doing horrible things. They're at picnics and barbecues and kind of family-friendly social events and so on. There's a certain kind of Sunday in the backyard quality to some of this absurd activity. Yes, I wanted people to understand what could be attractive about the clan. But as to these arcane names and rituals, I think that many people, at first anyway, enjoyed being a part of the clan because it was like being a part of a theatrical group. You were enacting a certain kind of rituals, and I might point out, many fraternal orders at the time. The Elks, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus, all had their rituals. So they were not that far out of the mainstream.

dream. But I do think, you know, when the clan declined largely from internal causes, and one of them was, I think that members of the clan got a little bored with this. But more chilling, you say that the clan declined precisely because it had succeeded. It had triumphed in some ways. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, I think about the Immigration Act, eugenics, the anti-misagination laws, the laws passed in all the states that forbade what was then called intermedenters. marriage. But I also think that its biggest achievement is the hardest to measure, and that is their tremendous impact for a long time on public opinion. And that is that they were legitimating a discourse that was not only racially bigoted, but also religiously bigoted. And that was very, very damaging. I'm not saying that those prejudices weren't there previously, but I think it makes a big change when they come out in the open, when they're stated broadly and when they are associated with patriotic Americanism.

Now, I don't think I'm imagining this, but as I read your book, almost from the very start, almost from the very first pages, the book is imbued with a sense of we've been here before and a kind of foreborder. boating about the present and the near future. When you think about your research on the Klan and you think about the present moment in the era of Trump, how do you relate them? I see a number of important themes here. One of the most important is fear. I think that that kind of anger and bigotry is best revved up by making people afraid. You find that a Klan, for example, claiming that these immigrants were stealing the jobs that belong to true Americans. But what's interesting about that is that that claim took on great strength in states where there hardly were any Catholics or Jews, for example, Oregon, which happens to be my home state.

So this notion of fear and these allegations of just outrageous notions. I mean, just one example. The Pope had already landed in disguise in Washington, D.C., and was building a palace of gold, which was going to be the future capital of the United States. So fear is extremely important. Another aspect of that that does concern me a lot is gullibility. Why do people believe such outrageous things? I'm not an expert at this.

I'm no psychologist, but I suspect that a lot of what you believe derives from who tells it to you, where you hear it from. We know that thousands of ministers were lauding the clan in their sermons, and some of them were reproducing these outrageous claims. You know, another aspect of the clan that is often of this clan that is often forgotten and one that is extremely relevant today is that while many people, people have labeled it a populist movement, and that label has become very popular today. Being a historian, I think that's very misleading because the clan not only had zero proposals or policies that would have helped, what we might call the 99%, the sort of ordinary working class, lower middle class people who joined the clan, but it actually lauded and honored the very, very rich. How so? You find statements like in some of the directions to local groups that be sure that you elect a, quote, big man to be the head of your local chapter, by which they clearly meant a man of economic and social success. When you think right now about the base, the so-called base of Trump support, how much of that in your mind is.

is related to anything that can be tied to what we're describing in the 20s? Or is it completely other? Is it completely divorced from that? It's certainly not completely other. And I do have to point out that we don't have perfect knowledge about who joined, but we do have some good estimates. One of the things I'd like to point out as a way of getting into that is that the opponents of the clan like to label them. just a bunch of uneducated Hicks, Claude Harper's,

people who were just dumb. And unfortunately, I see that repeated today in the way some people talk about Trump supporters. There are two things wrong with it. One is it's not true. The Klan had many

educated people, people of standing in their communities, teachers, lawyers, engineers. And presumably people who did not think of themselves as haters or hateful. Exactly.

Exactly. But the other thing wrong with that kind of thing is that it backfires. Politically. The disdainful put-downs of the Klan just made the Klan, it made the Klan literally grow and build its resentment against these, quote, liberal, cosmopolitan, urban elites. In a terrific review of your book in the New York Times, Clay Risen writes the following. There are two ways to think about this, meaning the clan in the 20s. One could say, great, we've met the enemy before and defeated him. We'll do it again.

Or we could realize that we've met the enemy, and he is us, that the plague of xenophobia, racism, and nationalism is always present. Is this a snake? Is this a, an enemy, as Clay Rosen puts it, that can never entirely be stomped out of American life? It's probably true that it can never be. be entirely stumped out, although I would like to point out that it is not, by any means, exclusively American.

In Europe, we see that rise of tremendously xenophobic people in the Muslim world, this kind of of religious intolerance of any deviation. So one might be inclined to say, well, it's never likely to be possible to simply get rid of bigotry. But on the other hand, I do believe that it can be resisted and controlled and that it can be contained. And one of the things we see both is, you know, the rise of not only Trump, but Trumpism, but also the rise of a resistance to that. And we see in the United States today many, many thousands of people who have never been politically active, who have never gone to a demonstration who now feel, all right, I have to see. step up. I have to say something about this. So I am somewhat hopeful, but it's not going to be

easy. Linda, thank you so much. Thank you. Linda Gordon is the author of the second coming of the KKK and other books. She's a professor of humanities at New York University. Now, the president of the United States is by no means a Klansman, but when the former clan head, David Duke came out in support of his campaign, Trump at first pointedly declined to disavow him. As president, he equivocated about the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville with torches. And he recently referred to countries in Africa and Haiti, majority black nations, as shithole countries. The White House later denied the remark, but racists like Richard Spencer were thrilled that the president thought this way, and that he came out and said it in a meeting in the Oval Office. It's impossible to deny that

white supremacy is closer to the seat of power than it has been for generations. Andrew Morance has been reporting for the New Yorker on the movement known as the alt-right, which includes white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, misogynists, the whole works. Some factions in that movement even model themselves directly on the clan. And Andrew was studying how these groups hope to change political discourse, not just on the fringe, but for everyone in the United States. Andrew, Linda Gordon described what seemed to be the sudden reappearance of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20s and the way it, I wouldn't say infiltrated, it just assumed its place in American government. You had presidents who supported it, governors who were members, many members of Congress who were members,

millions of people who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Now we live in an age where the president of the United States has made it very clear what has views on races, at least I think so. Many others do. What are we seeing here? How is this related to the phenomenon of the 20s, the rise of the alt-right in white nationalism? I think what it shows is nothing is static when it comes to public opinion and therefore public policy. You know, we have this kind of inchoate sense that politics, you know, are based, yes, on money and lobbying and all that stuff, but they're also based on public opinion. But what is public opinion?

How does it get formed? Well, if you have millions of people running around in robes and hoods, that's a sign of public opinion. Right. So, you know, you bring that to the present day. The fact that you can see torches being carried in the city of Charlottesville and the statue of Thomas Jefferson being surrounded with people chanting about Jews will not replace us, that changes the discourse, right? So even if those people are fringe and even if it's a few hundred people only, people are seeing that on their TV sets and they're aware that it's a real thing. And it enters the discourse. People have to respond to it.

People have to react to it. So there's a phenomenon that has talked about a lot lately. It's even the title of a 2010 Glenn Beck novel, Thriller. And it's called The Overton Window. What is that and how is it relevant to the discussion? So the Overton window is kind of a public policy sort of dry way of talking about these ideas. So there's this public policy think tank called the Mackinac Center. A guy who worked there named Joe Overton had this concept that what is possible to push

in terms of public policy. If you're a representative, you can only submit bills that fall within the Overton window. So stuff that's too libertarian is too far outside to the one side and stuff that's too statist is too far to the other side.

So, you know, if you think about, you can pick any issue. If you pick gay marriage, for example, you know, very recently in public policy terms, it was literally unthinkable that marriage could be defined as including same-sex couples. And now it's pretty much unthinkable

that a mainstream politician would oppose it. I mean, Donald Trump is for it. So that Overton window shifted dramatically over time. Some things shift less dramatically or even, you know, move in a reactionary direction. So how does that relate to what we're talking about in terms of race and racism? So the alt-right, the hardcore white nationalist alt-right, they see their project as pushing the window in the direction they wanted to go. So they don't see themselves as a mainstream political movement where they're trying to get out a ground game and knock on doors.

They're trying to be the quote-unquote intellectual vanguard. They're trying to take the unsayable and make it sayable. So they keep saying it and saying it. So there's this idea that originates with a bunch of far-right French intellectuals that Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote about for the New Yorker. And these French intellectuals say white people in France are being replaced. There's this demographic replacement that's happening and we are the victims of it. That idea then migrates over to the U.S.

Richard Spencer and a bunch of alt-right guys pick it up. And they use this idea to kind of flip the understanding that white people have privilege and power in this country to actually say, no, white people are the victims. We're the ones being oppressed. And in fact, we are being replaced by minorities. And they even use the word white genocide. That idea is unsayable, unthinkable, totally fringe. But they keep saying it and repeating it. And over time, the people who are closer to the center of the Overton window, the more mainstream conservatives, they start picking up on it.

So right after this special election in Virginia, you have Tucker Carlson, who has been in the conservative movement for years, has a mainstream prime time show on Fox News. He gives a pretty clear nod toward this idea. In 1970, one percent of that state was born outside the United States. Today, that number is 12 percent. That has made all the difference. So if you're wondering why the idea of national borders suddenly so unpopular among Democratic office holders, if you're wondering why the deadly plague of opiate addiction in Middle America causes barely a stir in Washington, now you know the answer. They're not their base anymore. They've replaced you.

And after he does that, I get a text message from a white nationalist guy I've written about who says, hey, look, our strategy is working. You know, we stretch the Overton window and Tucker Carlson and others are filling their role. Well, then how is the Overton window shifting in a real way? What's its effect on policy? In other words, how deeply is Trump and Trumpism going in changing American political consciousness? Yeah, well, the core example would be immigration, right? There was a consensus understanding essentially since the 60s that the way we talk about immigration is we are a nation of immigrants, we are the great melting pot, diversity is our strength. those truisms were uttered equally by both parties.

You have George W. Bush saying it. You have Reagan saying it. Now, they might, in practice, implement different policies, but they don't question that fundamental premise. Then you have Trump coming along, and literally within two minutes of his presidential campaign, he has said the word rapists with regard to Mexican immigrants, right? So that is an attempt to shatter the Overton window

with respect to what is sayable. There is this notion that we've had for a long time of this kind of great American consensus was the term that Kennedy used. You know, there are certain things that are outside of the boundaries of acceptable American discourse. And those things are really being put to the test. Andrew, thank you very much. Thank you. Andrew Moran's is a contributing writer, and you can find all his reporting on the alt-right at New Yorker.com. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

More to come. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. We're going to close up today with a visit to my colleague, Troy Patterson. My new colleague, I might say, he joined the New Yorker as a staff writer just a few months ago. He's writing for us mainly about TV, but he's also been a book critic, film critic, journalism professor, and also a style editor. So I could use his help. I'd love to know what you've been listening to, watching, wearing, drinking, eating these past freezing weeks. My pleasure. I've mostly been eating stew.

You haven't been sick, have you? Well, there are these children who just bring germs into my house. My own children bring germs into my house, and they escape unscathes while their parents ride in agony. Before we get to the high-minded cultural aspect of this, I think you have a sartorial recommendation that you want to give that's right at the end of your feet here. What I've been wearing is Adidas fraud-liver sneakers, as usual. I have an occasion to praise the shoe because it is January. which means that the Australian Open is being played at the Rod Laver Arena. I think that people are generally familiar with the Adidas Stan Smith sneaker.

It's sort of this minimalist white leather one. I am a minor member of a smaller cult that prefers the Rod Laver. As a performance item, they do not rate. They have had a following among hacky sack players. I like them because they look good to dirty. But I think it's a better shoe as well. This is what you're wearing with a foot of snow outside and it's melting and all that goop. That's what you're going to wear.

I like the way that the dirt and grime on this worn in pair of shoes kind of rhymes with the sooty banks of snow lining the sidewalk. They go well with the multicolored socks, so I got to tell you. Thank you. Thank you. So what have you been listening to and watching and all the rest? I got sucked into this Netflix show called The Easy. Have you seen this? I have not. I have not.

It's in its second season now. It's directed and written by Joe Swanberg. It is important to note that it is like an anthology series. We're not spending our time with the same sets of people in each episode. What would be a great episode of Easy to start with? I am going to recommend the first episode of the new season. It is titled Package Thief. It is set in Southside Chicago in a...

a fancy neighborhood called Beverly. The characters, these sort of like affluent white liberals in their integrated neighborhood, are having to sort of negotiate that self-conception while also finding out this criminal, stealing people's Amazon packages. You wouldn't feel like that? Like, if you were going to steal a package

and you went up to the door and you saw a picture of yourself? I mean, I'm here during the day a lot, so if I see him sketchy, I'll call him one of them. Or we could maybe just try supporting our local businesses more and stop ordering packages online. Are you kidding? No. Yes, maybe. Half, half. I mean, she's definitely. I'm just saying they're packages and they're from Amazon or wherever that from. I know, but some of these packages are like expensive, like the pesticides that I get. I totally get it. But the guy's not that and does something with it. I'm on the hood. It's not about the package itself or the contents of the package. It's we're a community. There are children here. I mean, it's starting. with packages, I just feel insane. It's wonderfully closely observed.

I think that because of Swanberg's trust in his actors to improvise and create a character, it helps certain kind of like anthropological texture or something. It's got a keen ear for subcultures and social niches. Great. I'm looking forward to it. I've always liked his films. You have more for us? You're aware that there's a Jay-Z album that came out a few months back.

After a number of albums that were kind of not his best. I tend to agree with you, and I like the new album. And so there appeared in December a video for a song called Family Feud. It is directed by Eva DuVernay. It is eight minutes long. Eight minutes long is kind of crazy long for what we're accustomed to in the world of music videos over time, isn't it? It is, but the whole thing is... So it's extending long past the song?

The song is the payoff. You sit through a short film to get to the song. And the first half of the video gives us sort of a futuristic saga in a matriarchal society that is a vision of what ours involves into. Now, ladies, it's time to discuss the Second Amendment. If you make it illegal, you'll drive it underground. Not want to protect themselves. Not want to protect their families. So this is the new constitutional convention.

Yes. Some people should have the right to bear arms. You have distance from the person you're killing. I understand your point in a perfect world. It would be lovely. If we could all just put down our weapons and get along, but that's not the world that we live in. Ladies, this is just like the 13th Amendment.

It is fantastical and bonkers. I'm not even sure that it's good, but I... Fantasticical and bonkers was not really her style before, right? I mean, you know, we know her best for Selma and films like that, which sort of straight narrative. Yes, yes. Historical dramas. but she's introducing us to a new wheelhouse.

I have hope that we can shine again. We just have to remember from which we came. Family first and always. Super Bowl goals. My wife and the crib being the kids liquid gold. We're in a whole different mode. The kid that used to pitch bricks can't be pigeonhole. I've cooked up more chicken when the kitchen closed.

We're going to reach a Billy first. I told my wife to spill your shit really work. Thanks for your job. dragging yourself down in the freezing cold. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having. My pleasure. Thanks for having. Troy Patterson is a staff writer of the New Yorker, and that's Family Feud from Jay-Z's new record,

with a video directed by Ava DuVernay. But my stash can't fit into Steve Harvey suit. I'm clear why I'm here, how about you? Ain't no such thing as an ugly billionaire. I'm cute. Pretty much. I'm David Remnick. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

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