Status Updates From The Second Coming of the KK...

The Klannish spirit—fearful, angry, gullible to sensationalist falsehoods, in thrall to demagogic leaders and abusive language, hostile to science and intellectuals, committed to the dream that everyone can be a success in business if they only try—lives on.

Illiberal in their suspicion of dissent and the rights of minority groups, clinging to fictive images of their nations as homogeneous and destined to be so, resentful of cultural elites yet accepting the dominance of economic elites, they direct anger at big-city cosmopolitans and at groups outside their imagined homogeneity.

Every such movement (right-wing populists) arises also from specific local and national contexts, and all are different. But they share characteristics, as a particular but recognizable type of conservatism.

When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”

The journalist Dorothy Thompson, who spent years covering Nazi Germany,& lived through the 1920s heyday of the Klan, pointed out that “no people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. . . .

Like most other right-wing populisms, the Klan could not survive a peace treaty or even an armistice with its enemies. It needed a sense of danger to thrive. Klanspeople had to visualize themselves as soldiers defending against threats, and in doing so created belief in those threats. Right-wing populisms often produce this doubled effect.

"To be manly was to fight; not to fight was to be weak. All this was fundamental to fascism, and the Nazis used it in violent, even sadistic attacks on and humiliations of its “aliens.” The northern Ku Klux Klan rarely did that. Klan leaders realized that they could gain more from electoral than from martial action."
RSS seems to be modelled more after KKK than other fascist parties.

Fascism is distinguished not only by its ideologies, which are often incoherent, but also through its visual symbolism and its aggressive mobilizations. The Klan similarly organized performances of masculinity and male bonding through uniforms, parades, rituals, secrecy, and hierarchical military ranks and titles.

In this respect the KKK was authoritarian, even as it denounced Catholics for their subservience to papal authority. Klan anti-intellectualism protected it from skeptics. In this respect it differed from European fascisms, which, partly because they were less religiously narrow, did not typically display hostility to science.

The emphasis on faith as opposed to evidence-driven inquiry both reflected and fed suspicion of science, especially evolutionary theory. That suspicion strengthened its hostility to intellectuals in general. Klan doctrine was impregnable to disproof. Its discursive mode—anecdotal, testimonial—resisted challenge.

Condemning Jews and Catholics while honoring “right” Americans for the same practices speaks to the Klan’s demand that supporters accept its allegations on faith. Because the Klan was a religious as well as a nationalist organization, the beliefs required of its members were all the more obligatory. Challenging its truths constituted treason or heresy or both.

In his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, the fictional fascist senator Berzelius Windrip promises ‘to make America a proud, rich land again.’ That concept of national destiny fueled hostilities even toward neighbors, even those who had long been part of Klanspeople’s communities

Similarly, like fascism and especially its Nazi version, the Klan promulgated a racialized nationalism: it conflated the “nation” with a master “race,” that is, “Nordics". Sinclair Lewis warned that should fascism come to the United States, it would appear as patriotic and entirely American.

These movements often co-opt grievances associated with the Left, notably economic inequality, but typically blame foreigners, racial minorities, and cosmopolitan, liberal elites. These movements also share patterns of thought and rhetoric, such as conspiracy-mongering, apocalyptic narratives, anti-intellectualism, and intense nationalism, often called “patriotism".

The 1920s Klan was not a uniquely American phenomenon. It was part of a group of movements around the globe that have come to be called right-wing populisms, fascism one of them. It was growing throughout central and eastern Europe just as the second Klan arose, and is reawakening today. Similar movements avoid the fascist label but share its modalities, especially hostility to immigrants.

from people of the wrong religion or race require the action of private citizens. Then, when courts acquit vigilantes, as they did so often in the 1920s—and virtually always in the South—the vigilantes’ self-justifications become yet more acceptable.

However reprehensible hidden bigotry might be, making its open expression acceptable has significant additional impact. Stigmatizing bigoted talk conveys the message that it is shameful. Moreover, silent bigotry exerts less influence on others.

True, the Klan did not invent bigotry. Sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing, white racism had appeared as soon as Europeans arrived on this continent. But the Klan spread, strengthened, and radicalized preexisting nativist and racist sentiments among the white population. In reactivating these older animosities it also relegitimated them.

In the last few decades, historians have compared Klan membership lists to census information about occupations and thereby estimated the class composition of the movement. The consensus among these scholars is that small businessmen, lower middle-class employees, and skilled workers constituted the majority of members in most locations.

The Ku Klux Klan practiced a two-sided strategy: working not only to attract members and followers but also to quiet others who might have objected to its goals.

The economic boycott thus supplemented the mass pageants, the cross-burnings, and the political campaigns in communicating the Klan’s strength and discouraging opposition. A message of this kind had the muscle to preclude resistance, particularly among those who preferred the safety of conformity.

The Klan’s economic warfare probably had mixed and limited results. But the boycott also had indirect consequences, because it sent the message that opposing the Klan was unsafe. So too threats against workers and employees who were not “right” must have created anxiety and caution.

Klanswomen were the foot soldiers of the boycott campaigns. WKKK leader Daisy Barr emphasized repeatedly that her members should shop only at “right” stores. Because this form of activism appeared to many women as housewifery and neighborliness, akin to telling a friend about a sale, many of those who boycotted did not recognize it as political activism.

unlike classic “dual power” situations, where a nonstate organization such as a labor union gains a legitimacy equivalent to that of the state, the Klan actually took over state and municipal governments. It did this entirely legally, through the ballot..

This is similar to what's happening in India nowadays. But unlike clan RSS has its own political party ruling at the center.

Stephenson boasted, “I am the law.” He planned to run for president in 1928.24 This kind of power led one legal historian to argue that the Klan constituted a “parallel government,” but this is misleading, because it worked within existing governmental lines:

A writer for the New Republic wrote in 1927 that a politician who went along was promised “sure election if he lined up and took orders.” If you wanted anything done in Indiana, “you went to Stephenson [Grand Dragon of Indiana] first, and afterward or not at all to those who had official power to grant it.”

Klan candidates ran mostly as Democrats but occasionally as Republicans.

in 1922, thirteen incumbent Republican congressmen lost their seats to Democrats, who were on average more sympathetic to the Klan.

Like Scouting, Klan youth groups emphasized sports competitions for boys and crafts for girls. Both sexes could serve as flag bearers and could play in drum and bugle corps. Girls specialized in singing and rhythmic chanting. One festival advertised “kute girls, katchy songs, and kunning costumes.”

The Klan’s obsession with konverting c words to k words is komic at best and katastrophic at worst!