The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.
0:09.0	And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there.
0:13.0	This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially, and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border.
0:19.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:24.5	of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:28.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I just read a terrific book about the
0:33.9	history of the Ku Klux Klan called The Second Coming of the KKK and the author
0:38.8	Linda Gordon shows how the clan, which was originally focused on violently suppressing blacks in the
0:44.4	South, was reborn in the 1920s as a nationwide movement. And in this second iteration, the clan
0:51.5	targeted not only African Americans, but Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Mexican
0:56.4	Americans, and Asian immigrants. Discrimination was the new patriotism. Linda Gordon writes how
1:03.7	millions of people joined the clan in the 1920s in the span of just a few years, and among them
1:08.8	were mayors, congressmen, senators, and governors.
1:12.3	It's a period with very sobering lessons for our current moment.
1:17.3	One of the things your book makes so startlingly clear is that the clan was not something
1:22.2	that was to the side of American political life.
1:25.2	How can you illustrate how deeply the clan penetrated into political
1:28.9	office and political life? How high did it rise? Didn't go to the presidency of the United States?
1:34.2	Well, almost because several presidents were, in fact, members such as Harry Truman, but most of them,
1:41.1	I think there were three presidents who were probably members. Harry Truman was a member of the clan.
1:46.0	Yes, he was.
1:47.0	But as soon as he decided to move into the national political arena, he resigned.
	...

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