Talk:Ku Klux Klan/Archive 4

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edit by 132.241.245.49

The first paragraph on the creation of the second Klan currently reads like this:

The founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 was a demonstration of the newfound power of the modern mass media. The year saw three closely related events:

• The film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan.
• Leo Frank, a Jewish man accused of the rape and murder of a young white girl named Mary Phagan, was lynched against a backdrop of media frenzy.
• The second Ku Klux Klan was founded with a new anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic agenda. The bulk of the founders were from an organization calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan, and the new organization emulated the fictionalized version of the original Klan presented in The Birth of a Nation.

User 132.241.245.49 had changed the third point so it reads like this:

• An explosion of anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic sentimet.

and split off the following text to a new paragraph:

The bulk of the founders were from an organization calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan, and the new organization emulated the fictionalized version of the original Klan presented in The Birth of a Nation.

I've reverted this edit twice. I feel the language is overly dramatic and POVish. I also don't think there's any evidence that the year 1915 saw "An explosion of anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic sentimet." In the second iteration of reverts, 132.241.245.49's comment read "these attitudes existed before the klan," which is true, and would seem to contradict what he says in his own version.--Bcrowell 02:15, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Mary Phagan was murdered in 1915 a Jew was blamed.

The knights of Mary Phagan was founded by a man who was anti-foreign, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic.

thus these aditudes that existed before the 2nd Klan and helped form it. --(unsigned comment)

Hi. I agree with what you're saying, but I don't understand how it relates to your edit to the article. Please sign your comments by clicking on the little button (second from the right) above the text window.--Bcrowell 03:53, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

alcohol

Interesting, although goofy, edit just now by David Justin, with a link to http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/1107362364.html, which I assume is his own web page. He inserted some material about the Klan's anti-alcohol activities at a ridiculously inappropriate point in the article. His web page includes such bizarre statements as:

1. Enforcement of Prohibition, in fact, was a central, and perhaps the strongest, goal of the Ku Klux Klan
2. The Klan was revived in Atlanta in 1915 to defend Prohibition.
3. The anti-alcohol tradition of the KKK is now carried forward by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the Alcohol Policies Project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CASA), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP),and other neo-temperance groups.

Though kooky, it's interesting. I assume there is at least some truth to the assertion that the Klan was heavily involved in the temperance movement, and I hadn't known that. Unfortunately I've just returned all my books to the library. If it checks out, this might merit a brief (and more appropriate) mention in the article. Anyone know anything about this? (I reverted his edit because there were so many problems with it.)--Bcrowell 03:37, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

homophobia?

An anon inserted a mention of homophobia in the lead of the article. I deleted it, for the following reasons: (1) I've never seen any mention of this as a major Klan issue in anything I've read about the Klan, so if this is going to go in the article, I'd like to see a verifiable source. (2) Even if the Klan did concern itself with issues like temperance and opposition to homosexuality, they're not the organization's core issues, and don't deserve such prominent mention. (3) The Klan's core agenda was set in 1915, and homophobia wasn't even a concept then. In 1915, gay sex was commonly considered a crime, not a lifestyle choice. It's conceivable that later Klans took up the issue, but that would make it misleading to state that it was a general issue for the 20th century Klan.--Bcrowell 03:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

true?

1924: April 26, Colorado is second state to ratify child labor

    amendment to federal Constitution. Celebration held in Greeley marking
    completion of concrete pavement between Denver and Greeley - first two
    major cities in State to be connected by paved highways. Ku Klux Klan
    secures domination of Republican party in Colorado and elects a pro-Klan
    Governor and U.S. Senator.

http://www.magicdragon.com/Wstates.html

facts and perspective on the Klan for the 20's

http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cowley/Oldnews/PAPERS/TRAV14.HTM

fascism category and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fascism

I guess this article has been in the fascism category for a while. Today someone added a template to the talk page referring to Wikipedia:WikiProject Fascism. I've deleted both, which may be controversial. I'll give my reasons here, but please speak up if you disagree -- maybe I'm wrong.

1. The goals and ideology of the first Klan were set in the 19th century, and the goals and ideology of the second Klan in 1915. This predates fascism, so it's anachronistic to imply that the Klan is somehow a fascist organization. The first Klan's defining characteristic was opposition to Reconstruction, which has nothing to do with fascism. Both Klans also defined themselves strongly in terms of racism, but racism isn't a defining characteristic of fascism (e.g., the Nazis focused on race, but the Italian fascists didn't).
2. Fascism is a form of government. The Klan is not a government.
3. Yes, there are people in modern white supremacist groups who call themselves neo-Nazis. In most cases, however, they seem to see being neo-Nazis as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Klan.
4. Yes, some leaders of the Klan in the 1930's did support the Nazis, but so did many naive and/or wrongheaded intellectuals in the U.S., and the Klan leaders' support for the Nazis was one of the main things that reduced the Klan from a powerful, mainstream national organization to a relatively inconsequential fringe group.
5. "Fascist" is a word people tend to throw around on Wikipedia as a generic way of indicating disapproval. Just because we disapprove of a person or an organization, that doesn't mean that it makes sense to call that person or organization fascist. See List of political epithets for examples, including a discussion of the use of "fascist" as a political bludgeon. Godwin's law is also relevant here.
6. These issues about templates tend to lead to horrible revert wars. For instance, an amazing amount of time was wasted over whether to include various schools of political thought in the anarchism template.

--Bcrowell 16:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree. While there is a certain amount of overlap between the ideologies and people of the KKK and fascism, they are separate and distinct. -Willmcw 17:22, September 8, 2005 (UTC)