Ku Klux Klan Research Papers (original) (raw)

- by Rebecca Barrett-Fox
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- Political Extremism/Radicalism/Populism, Populism, Hate Crimes, Hate Studies
- by Andrew Kettler
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- Film Studies, Race and Racism, Race and Ethnicity, Ku Klux Klan

This article addresses the influence of race on Ku Klux Klan theology in the 1920s in order to highlight possible relations between Protestant theology and white radical nationalism. Through the analytical concept of 'racial exegesis' - meaning a biblically based view on the supposed origin of human races - the main argument is that the Klan did not invent anything in the racial and theological domains. The Klan's self-proclaimed mission to uphold white Protestant hegemony in America resulted not only in the identification of imagined racial and cultural threats. As important were mythical interpretations of history, according to which the white race was believed to be destined by God to thrive on American soil. The synthesis of racial ideology and Protestant theology in the Klan resulted in a self-identified vanguard of white, native-born, Protestant Americans seeking to follow Christ as 'Criterion of Character' by which Klansmen hoped to enhance the resurgence of American nation in accordance with the Founding Fathers' alleged religious and racial ideals.

- by Agata Frymus
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- American Studies, Censorship, Race and Ethnicity, Silent Film

" If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor's cow, I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible. " Liberty and the Press, Walter Lippmann " Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination today , which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable. […] The shadowy idea becomes vivid; your hazy notion, let us say, of the Ku Klux Klan, thanks to Mr. Griffiths, takes vivid shape when you see the Birth of a Nation. […] I doubt whether anyone who has seen the film and does not know more about the Ku Klux Klan than Mr. Griffiths, will ever hear the name again without seeing those white horsemen. " Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann The three lectures cover three stages of the epistemological paradigm-change that the technical invention of the telecommunication of recorded movement ushered in at the turn of the twentieth century. The lectures present new evidence and arguments about the collaboration of Griffith and Wilson as well as about Hitchcock's authorship of the first Holocaust documentary and contain close-reading of cinematic examples from the films discussed.

- by Erika A . Kiss
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- Holocaust Studies, White Supremacy, Hollywood, Woodrow Wilson

There are some chapters in history which baffle, but one chapter from American history stupefies the reader, it bears the title, "Ku Klux Klan." A murky organization which came into existence and then went into oblivion leaving little... more

- by Irfan Iftekhar
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- Ku Klux Klan, Secret Organizations
- by Aaron Winter
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- American History, American Politics, Terrorism, Race and Racism

This case study of Denton, Texas, a burgeoning, two-university metropolis birthed from a small-town history of theological white supremacy serves as analytic proof of J. Kameron Carter’s claims in 𝘙𝘢𝘤𝘦: 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵, that the origins and sustaining theo-mythical structures of race and racism are best exposed when localized through the multifaceted lens of interdisciplinary scholarship that employs historical, genealogical, philosophical, and theological analysis over an “arc of time.”
By employing these localized interdisciplinary methodological approaches aimed at unveiling the theo-myth which underscores the modern American racial ontology, this study examines how theological white supremacy was homogenized into popular culture in Denton County Texas following the Civil War via a neo-Confederate Ku Klux Klan movement, (a distinct American phenomena beholden to the theo-mythology coined by Luther Rummel as “Ku Klux Konfederatism”), that continues its influence today through localized theo-political institutions, sociocultural systems and cultural ‘norms.’ Further, this study reveals how the same ancient theo-myth unveiled in Carter’s account of race underscores a popular Klanish culture which thrived in Denton County from the late-nineteenth century Reconstruction Era and well into the twentieth century with the rise of the Second-Generation Klan, just as it did throughout North Texas and the United States of America at large.

- by Jessica R Luther Rummel
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- Gnosticism, History of Religion, Texas History, Immanuel Kant
- by Alexander Herda
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- Propaganda, Neoliberalism, Hillary Clinton, Brainwashing
- by Julia Gordon-Bramer
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- Poetry, Mysticism, Civil Rights, Apartheid

Examine the significant role played by the new social groups in the rise of the New South

- by Ramita Udayashankar
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- History, American History, Sharecropping, Ku Klux Klan
- by Al Carroll
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- Film Studies, Terrorism, Race and Racism, Film Analysis

El principio del siglo XX fue una época favorable para la lucha por el acceso a los derechos políticos de las mujeres en Estados Unidos. Paralelamente, se produjo el nacimiento y auge del segundo Ku Klux Klan. Siendo una de las organizaciones más reaccionarias y abiertamente misóginas del país, la característica más llamativa y contradictoria que este trabajo se propone analizar es el grado de adaptación que tuvo el Klan a las demandas feministas incipientes. El resultado fue que numerosas organizaciones femeninas orientadas al Klan se nuclearon en una nueva organización: las Mujeres del Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Los estudios tradicionales a los que este escrito pretende enfrentarse, invisibilizan el rol de las mujeres. No obstante, la historia de las WKKK demuestra lo contrario: la participación femenina en el racismo organizado no fue accidental, ni mucho menos pasiva.

- by Aaron Winter
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- American History, Criminology, American Studies, Terrorism
- by Aaron Winter
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- American History, American Studies, Race and Racism, Cold War

Las llamadas Piedras Guías de Georgia son un monumento de 5.87 metros de alto construido en granito en 1979 en lo más alto del Condado de Elbert, en Georgia. Están envueltas en un misterio que las hacen perfectas para la proliferación de teorías de la conspiración. Su autoría se le imputa a los masones, a los rosacruces, a las élites mundiales y hasta a los extraterrestres. Los conspiracionistas aprovecharon el secretismo de su construcción y sus inscripciones para crear historias que serían consumidas ávidamente por los amantes de lo oculto.

- by Juan Lucius Flórez
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- Racismo, Racismo y discriminación, Xenophobia, Ku Klux Klan

This paper examines William Luther Pierce’s premier novel, The Turner Diaries, regarding the white supremacist nation building project of the United States. Comparing the United States’ short, yet violent history to the themes in Pierce’s work, among them interracial warfare and genocide, it argues that the author’s dystopian vision is far from an anomaly, but rather mirrors the violence of the US nation building project. As such, it expresses the primal desires of white American identity, whose conceptualisation of white supremacy has a long and embedded history in the western intellectual cannon, metamorphosing throughout the centuries but yet to disappear. The election of America’s latest populist president Donald J Trump as well as contemporary manifestations of violent white supremacy show that the ethos behind Pierce’s violent dystopian novel is ever present, and continues to manipulate American culture.

- by Dominique Fulcher
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- American History, American Studies, Political Science, Critical Race Theory

Winter, Aaron. 2018. ‘The Klan is History: a historical perspective on the revival of the far-right in ‘post-racial’ America’. Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism. eds. J. Windle, J. Morrison, A. Winter and A. Silke.... more

- by Aaron Winter
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- American History, Criminology, American Studies, Criminal Justice

This article theorizes the use of rhetorical versatility as a language tool for white supremacists in the age of Donald Trump, specifically referring to the ways Trump and the KKK speak to their various audiences through textual winks and polysemy. After demonstrating the recent rise of white supremacist groups in this country, rhetorical versatility is explored as way for rhetors to camouflage and signal their ideological viewpoints, which ultimately leads to an analysis of key terms and ideas that both the KKK and Trump utilize in the public sphere: " patriotism, " " heritage, " and " security. " Diving into the specific uses of these terms, this article pinpoints the textual winks that have constructed a civic version of white supremacy over the last few years. Ultimately, this analysis not only builds a theory of rhetorical versatility but also argues that we need more scholarship on the tacit forms of white supremacy.

- by James Sanchez
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- Rhetoric, Race and Racism, White Supremacy, Ku Klux Klan
- by Alan E . Johnson
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- Slavery, American Civil War, Labor History and Studies, Labor law
- by Barak Bullock
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- Rhetoric, Composition and Rhetoric, Race and Racism, Academic Writing

Most histories of American policing ignore the institutional problems posed by administrative and police discretion, especially as a result of the American federalist system. Such problems were strikingly apparent in the Freedom Rides of May 1961, which prompted numerous institutional conflicts between local, state, and federal entities, who appealed to divergent conceptions of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called “the whole problem of federalism, the location of the police power.” During the Freedom Rides, the United States government—the STATE—failed to behave as a unitary actor due to competing conceptions of the police power. Examining the Freedom Rides through the lens of the police power shatters the reified "state" in the history of American policing. This kaleidoscopic view of "state" power problematizes the classic Weberian formulation of the state monopoly on violence. Such a view exposes the "state's" intrinsic nature and internal anxieties, which impact its responses to external stimuli. To shatter the reified "state" is to restore the faces and identities of its constituents, and to reintroduce contingency to its history. Only then can we hope to understand the nature of the "state"—and policing—in all its irreducible complexity, messiness, and humanity.

For the last 30 years, gang scholars have explicitly disregarded white youth who are active in groups with overt or implicit ties to neo-Nazi/skinhead or white power ideologies from street gang research. This article argues that this decision to keep these two groups separate stems from a misinterpretation of the realities of these groups and this decision has had a long-standing impact on how researchers, law enforcement and policymakers understand and interact with youth active in these groups. The coining of the term ‘Alt-Right,’ and the re-emergence of white power youth in the international dialogue, underscores how the lack of systematic research severely limits our knowledge about youth involved in gangs with white power leanings. Based on these concerns, this article challenges the current understanding of both skinheads and their troublesome youth groups/gangs. By orienting the limited research on skinhead gangs within key street gang domains, this article draws attention to disconnects in the literature that have influenced how researchers approach the study of skinhead youth. This study’s conclusions support the purposeful inclusion of skinhead youth in future street gang research.

- by Matthew Valasik
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- Criminology, Criminal Justice, Race and Racism, White Supremacy
- by Andrew Silke and +2
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- Terrorism, Political Violence and Terrorism, History of Political Violence, Organized Crime

In this unfinished rough powerpoint for a series of lectures I explore why the United States is markedly different from other representative democracies and welfare states. I trace the tradition of using a combination of bribery and corruption of the Congress and Judiciary, and violence and racist terror as a means of marginalizing organized labour and frustrating democratic control. I explore how the contemporary crisis of social inequality, political corruption and racist authoritarian government long predates Trump, first emerging after Reconstruction in the Kleptocracy of the Gilded Age, receding somewhat under Roosevelt's leadership and with the Bretton Woods consensus, only to re-emerge with the Reagan revolution and the political triumph of the racist reaction to the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, and the radicalism of the 1960s. On the foreign policy side, the resurgent power of the oligarchy within the country and the brutal repression of the poor and marginalization of labour and the voices of the black radical tradition, symbolized by the ruins of Detroit and the South Bronx, would be matched by the consolidation of the policies of the so-called Washington Consensus. This policy approach, enforced by the IMF, World Bank, and American military force and paramilitary violence, is often sold as Globalization, critiqued as Neo-liberalism, but might more accurately be described as a return to racist colonialism of the filibusters, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. The talk, which is intended to engage non-academic audiences and avoid jargon and theory, ought to be read in conjunction with Richard Iton's Solidarity Blues, and WIlkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level.

- by Aaron Winter
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- New Religious Movements, American History, Sociology of Religion, American Studies
- by Teresa Meadows
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- Ku Klux Klan

The subcontent of this poem is not what one would expect from Bob Dylan.

- by AJ Weberman
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- Jewish Studies, Race and Racism, Race and Ethnicity, African American Studies

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was probably no other American author more controversial than Thomas Dixon. His name is permanently associated with the first Ku Klux Klan and its principles. This article examines Dixon’s two novels, The Leopard Spots
and The Clansman, which celebrate the glorious past of the American South and praise white supremacy and the Klan. In these novels, Dixon tried to correct what he perceived as a misinterpretation of the South in fiction, particularly in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

- by Jozef Pecina
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- 19th-Century American Literature, Ku Klux Klan
- by Kirt Wilson
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- Public Address, American Civil War, Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan grew as a movement in Maine and New Brunswick during the 1920s and 1930s. Reflective of a larger wave of anti-Catholicism in the northeastern borderlands, the Klan presented itself as a bulwark against the impact of Catholic participation in civil society and as the defender of a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon culture under siege. Drawing upon Klan publications, public speeches and pronouncements, and private correspondence between Klansmen and sympathetic political figures, this article argues that the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the Interwar Northeast reflected the construction of a transnational, ethnoreligious identity, termed “Patriotic-Protestantism,” that challenges interpretations of the Klan movement as simply nationalistic and highlights the importance of the borderlands framework to understanding Maine and New Brunswick in the twentieth century.

- by Tyler Cline
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- Canada, United States, Borderlands, Ku Klux Klan

The following article was published as three episodes’ series for the German newspaper die Taz on 17-18-19 February 2017 (see attachment). It was also part of a lecture delivered at “die Börse Zentrum” in Wuppertal, Germany, on November... more

- by Riccardo Valsecchi
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- Journalism, Ethnography, Neo-Fascism, Hate Speech
- by Amy S Kaufman
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- Medievalism, American South, Nazi Germany, Ku Klux Klan

A finales de los 70's, un detective inicio una investigación hacia el grupo racista y supremacista blanco, el Ku Klux Klan. Ron Stallworth es un hombre de raza negra quien

- by Tris Lopez
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- Ku Klux Klan

Many long-term Dallas residents assert that the Jewish
community in the heart of the Bible Belt neither experienced antisemitism nor incidents that reflected hatred of
Jews by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. This statement is only
partially true. Although Jewish Dallasites never experienced much
in the way of overt antisemitic activities such as Jews endured in
other cities and towns, including some in Texas, a few events did
take place that color an otherwise benign picture

- by Southern Jewish History
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- Jewish History, American South, Antisemitism, Ku Klux Klan

This paper analyzes how masks and disguises have been used in American history, with most emphasis tracing the way disguised Sons of Liberty and the costumes of the American Party influenced the first Ku Klux Klan and later violent vigilante organizations, and concludes with how the use of masks and disguises affected the way the Klan operated in its first two incarnations.

- by Edmund La Clair
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- Comics Studies, Vigilantism, Masks, Nativism

When President Plutarco Elías Calles attempted to regulate religion in the public sphere, resistant Catholics plunged Mexico into a three-year war (1926-29) that cost 90,000 lives and forced thousands more to flee to the United States. Drawing on sociologist John Urry’s “tourist gaze,” I posit that socially conservative religious movements in the United States engaged in a “religious gaze” of Mexico and the Cristero War as found in letters to Calles. Like a tourist that departs from the confines of domestic behavior, U.S. Protestants looked to Mexico as a place where a fantasy of separation of church and state meant not an open respect for all but instead a persecuted Catholicism that resulted in violence against Catholics – an avenue no longer easily available in the United States by 1926. Drawing on the conservative Protestant celebration of the film For Greater Glory in 2012 which celebrates the Catholic resistance to the state, I argue that the conservative violence fantasy has not abated in the United States, but lingers in US Protestant society and bubbles all too close to the cultural and political surface.

- by Jason Dormady
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- Protestantism, Mexico, History of Mexico, Ku Klux Klan