The Ku Klux Klan - Terrorist Organization

The Ku Klux Klan Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation The Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan began as a secret society whose mission was to maintain the white supremacy in the America’s southwest after the Civil War. Therefore, one does not need to be a native in order to understand the renewed interest in this group. In the modern era, the Klan is just a small outfit among the whites, but for the last one and half centuries it was the primary voice of discrimination in the US. The Klan claims that it is a law abiding organization, but it is evident that it has hypocritical views. Wherever the Klan goes, violence is the result. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan claim that they follow the teachings of the Bible, but they have been torturing and killing people throughout their existence. There is no verse in the Bible that encourages killing and enslaving your neighbour. History The Ku Klux Klan was first formed in 186 after the Civil War whose mission was to maintain the white supremacy by ensuring that the newly freed African Americans never obtained political, civil or economic rights (Alexander, 2015). The federal government had guaranteed that the freed people will get their full rights, but by 1877 it had failed its responsibility which meant the Klan was not opposed in any way. This first Klan was a terrorist group which utilized various techniques such as torture, murder, and economic coercion not only to punish those who challenged the white power but also terrorise the black community. This first Klan remained active in the South until the 1920s when it expanded to the North giving birth to the second Klan. The rebirth of the second Klan was as a result of the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation that presented African American men as rapists and members of the Klan as heroes by saving white women who were about to be raped by black men (Pegram, 2011). This film helped the Klan to attract more than 4 million members. This second Klan was not different from its ancestors and its success was a result of a strategic move to align itself with the “nativist” anti-immigrant campaigns which focused on punishing and inserting fear on the immigrants, Jews and Catholics. To add the new immigrants as their subjects of detestation did not require major amendments to the Klan’s ideology since they were no considered as “white”. Only descendants of the earlier immigrants were considered white and the newcomers were not “white but over time they became white after implanting themselves in the labor market and political parties (Cunningham, 2013). Therefore, the ...