Over the years, The Ku Klux Klan has been portrayed as a terrorist organization based on Christian principles operating with the intent to preserve and enhance their preferred culture. In order to carry on their activities this “secret” organization wore hoods to protect their identities particularly when they were executing people that they targeted for being different or helping people who were different. It seems to me that everything I’ve read on this dark period of southern US history suggests very little resistance to the KKK from the southern Christian population as a whole, and indeed to the contrary, the dominant impression leads one to believe that the southern population passively supported them.
Do you see the comparison to modern day terrorism in Iraq? Hooded perpetrators executing with the purpose of display ? A general population that appears to hate the invader of good intentions more than the terrorist?
It took about a hundred years to slowly strangle the KKK. Can we draw any lessons from this period of history to help us deal with the terrorists in Iraq?
hehe… from the title I thought you meant southern KKK members in the US forces in Iraq !!
Was the KKK deemed a terrorist organization ever ? KKK is about racial “unity” and the beheaders in Iraq are about nationalism more than racial. Similarities might be the cruel treatment and dehumanization of victims. Still even if there are comparisons… its a bit stretching things. IMHO.
The original Klan lasted from 1866 to the mid 1870s, when, between increased legal pressure and the end of Reconstruction, it folded. The second Klan lasted from 1915 to 1944, and really was only powerful during the twenties. The current Klan has lasted from the 1950s to the present, but they pretty much have been a joke since the 60’s. How do you figure a hundred years?
I see a missing element in the parallel you are drawing: the blacks. The (Reconstruction-era) KKK originally was formed to hold down the blacks – to keep them from getting uppity ideas that their new freedom meant anything close to social equality with whites. Blacks who tried to vote or engage in any political activity risked getting lynched by the Klan. The blacks, in fact, were the Klan’s primary target – not the occupying Federal troops or the white Republican carpetbaggers (though some carpetbaggers did also get lynched). The revived Klan that was founded in 1915 had essentially the same agenda, though it was broadened to encompass fear and hatred of Jews, Catholics, Communists, and non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants generally.
In Iraq, the only ethnic or religious groups that have been systematically oppressed in the recent past are the Kurds and the Shi’ites. The Kurds are rather grateful Hussein is gone and are pretty much steering clear of anti-occupation activities. The Shi’ites, on the other hand, are providing numberless recruits for the insurgency. It is as if the Federal troops occupying the former Confederate states had to face a terrorist insurgency of blacks.