Today’s Ku Klux Klan is a mere specter of the group whose legacy includes terrorizing six generations of African-Americans. The Klan, once boasting of as many as six million members — and the power to influence presidencies, Congress, national legislation, and public opinion — is now down to as few as five thousand members, scattered over 179 chapters across the country. Despite exaggerated media reports that the Klan is patrolling the Mexican border, or protesting gay marriage somewhere, and claims from Democrats like Representatives Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas that the Klan has discarded their white robes and century and a half association with the Democratic Party to don Ben Franklin costumes and join the Tea Party, today’s Klan is a pale shadow of its former “glory,” hardly visible in any significant way. Even Robert Byrd is dead.
This decline of the Klan has left a void in the important role the group has played in our politics, as recounted by Angela McGlowan in her book, Bamboozled: “Democratic obeisance was mandatory for blacks. Given the large number of blacks in the South, Democrats needed blacks to vote Democrat or not at all if they were to have any chance of winning elections – not unlike today. That’s where the KKK came in. Their role in the Democratic Iron Triangle was that of electoral enforcer. Any Black who dared to consider voting for the Republican Party represented a direct threat to the Democrat’s chances and therefore must be subjected to public ridicule, rape, castration, and in many instances death.“
As McGlowan states, securing 90% of the Black vote is as important to the Democratic chances of winning elections in 2010 as it was in 1910. For example, in the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama defeated John McCain by 8,538,559 popular votes. Among African-American voters, who went to Obama by 95% to 4%, the President won by 15.1 million votes (assuming as some observers have that 67% of the approximately 25 million African-American voters voted). If Barack Obama had won a mere 75% of the African-American vote and McCain 25%, Obama would have lost the popular vote by over 200,000.
So, while the need for Democrats to win over 90% of the Black vote has not abated with the decline of the KKK, what is now unclear is how the Democrats can continue to maintain that level of support. They clearly cannot do it with mere political arguments. The liberal Democratic platform is not representative of African-American views on social policies (the majority of Blacks are pro-life, support school vouchers, and are opposed to gay marriage), nor can they convincingly claim that they have successfully represented the best economic interest of African-Americans. Today, 60% of African-Americans live in urban centers, and too many do so in poverty. As an illustration, my hometown of Newark, NJ, is about 55% Black and has a poverty rate of 28.4%. It is a bit of a challenge to blame this state of affairs on Republicans, when Newark has not had a Republican leader since 1928.
The Democrats’ best strategy for keeping 90% of African-Americans as loyal voters then becomes to prejudice Blacks against Republicans by demonizing Republicans as racist, which works well in dissuading all but a handful of Black voters from showing support to, or identifying themselves with, the Republican Party. However, they must also be careful to prevent even the occasional African-American from espousing conservatism, and especially from being a candidate. With even a dip to 75% among African-Americans spelling certain defeat to Democratic candidates, someone like Star Parker or Allen West – Black, intelligent, charismatic – is a real threat to their agenda.
In eras past, the Democrats could trust the KKK to eliminate this threat, by any means they felt necessary. Given that the KKK has long ago declined into irrelevance, the Democrats needed a new “electoral enforcer,” a New KKK that would serve the role of the old in ensuring that “blacks to vote Democrat or not at all.”
The New KKK’s primary role is to punish Blacks who dare wander away from the Democratic Party. Their tactics involve ridicule, challenges to ethnic pride, and, occasionally, even violence. These attacks are not delivered with burning crosses and nooses, but rather with a constant haranguing from the politicians, the media, bloggers, and political operatives posing as common citizens.
Like the old KKK, the New KKK is welcome in all quarters of our government and our media. Their viewpoint is voiced to receptive audiences in the Obama White House just as surely as Birth of a Nation was aired to praise in the Wilson White House. Just as the Southern media at the time either praised the KKK, or denied their existence, our modern media is overwhelming supportive of the New KKK. In fact, the New KKK are often members of the media – reporting, commentating, or blogging for very high profile news outlets and websites. Unlike the old KKK, members of the New KKK are often Black themselves. But like the old KKK, members of the New KKK are rewarded in direct proportion to how much hate they can deliver.
According to Jesse Jackson, “You can’t vote against (Obama’s reform of) healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Michael Steele is greeted after a debate by protestors throwing Oreo cookies. Palin’s endorsement of Allen West is reported by the website, Nat Turner’s Revenge, with the post “Sarah Palin Finds an Uncle Tom in Florida: Allen West …and true to all Toms, he not only didn’t know she’d endorsed him, but shined a hearty hidy-ho in thanks. As my grandfather used to say: “Christopher, even the Confederacy had its coons.” African-American Kenneth Gladney is beaten and called ‘n****r’ by a mostly White group of SEIU thugs and the NAACP responds by calling him an Uncle Tom, undeserving of their help or sympathy, simply because he was selling flags to Tea Partiers. Ted Rall is celebrated for his cartoon calling Condi Rice a “house n***a.” Juan Williams, during a debate on the O’Reilly Factor with another African-American, was told he can “go back on the porch.” Star Parker, Niger Innis, Herman Cain and others are referred to as “Uncle Tom types who live off wingnut-welfare” by the Left’s beloved blog, The Daily Kos.
And so on, ad infinitum, ad naseum. Examples of The New KKK “lynching” African-American Conservatives are too numerous to list.
Not that the New KKK reserves its vitriol solely for African-Americans. It seems to be willing to share its vile assessments for any woman or minority who do not march in lockstep with the Progressive Movement. Much of it would be said to, or about, any Conservative. This is not to suggest Progressives are hesitant to wish death upon Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, but there is a special venom displayed when one feels compelled to tweet to Michelle Malkin that she’s a “a slanty-eyed g**k, domestic terrorist, and an anchor baby” simply because Malkin is a conservative. The same party that would not allow anyone to use Barack Obama’s middle name during the presidential campaign without calling him or her a racist (although the use of the name ‘Hussein’ became quite acceptable after he won) spent much of Bobby Jindal’s campaign to be Louisiana governor calling him by his given name: “Piyush.” And let’s not forget Harry Reid, who when not praising President Obama for his ability to speak with a Negro dialect, or disparaging the intelligence of Clarence Thomas, is opining “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage can be a Republican.”
The New KKK’s role in attacking, ridiculing, and attempting to intimidate African-American Conservatives may not be enough to allow Democrats to hold on to 90% of Black voters forever. But with Obama’s poll numbers slipping so dramatically in most other groups – he’s polling at 38% among Whites (down from 62%) and at 54% (down from 74%) among Hispanics, for example – expect the New KKK to redouble their effort to hold on to the last ethnic group they can count on.