[jeffh]

In the 50s there was US agent repression and intimidation of beliefs around communism (see McCarthyism). The KKK was also still rampant and had members that were police or other "state officials". So ... maybe US isn't so different after all?

[zepto]

The KKK wasn’t a part of the state.

And yes, there was state sponsored anti-communism in the 50s, but it is not even close to comparable. Nobody was being intimidated for mentioning communism, or even advocating for it.

People were targeted for group membership. This is still wrong, but please stop trying to make it seem equivalent to what is happening today in China. The fact that you have to go back 50 years to find an example shows how different the two countries are today.

[lazide]

[flagged]

[zepto]

The KKK was not a paramilitary arm of the state.

To claim it was is a lie.

The KKK was a terrorist organization bent on violently oppressing Black Americans. It was never part of the state.

[lazide]

as I said, it was a defacto paramilitary arm - [https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/exhibits/show/rebelgoverno...] (one of many, many examples)

Or do you think the gov’t of Alamance and Caswell counties just somehow lost the paperwork?

Why do you think the Federal government sent in federal Marshalls (and more) so James Meredith could attend Ole’ Miss? Could it have something to do with the Governor himself taking over as registrar to block it, and numerous threats of violence, including from the KKK? [https://aas.olemiss.edu/documenting-the-african-american-exp...]

If you want to talk First, Second, or Third Klan, then sure. But if you want to spin the Klan in the south as a bunch of radicals running around in the woods? That’s just false.

It was who would come for you if you didn’t do what you were ‘supposed to’ - and were aided, abetted, and in many cases actively led by members of various state and local governments. When Lincoln was assassinated, reconciliation or follow through post civil war mostly stopped, and for a long time the hardliners and ‘secret Baathists’ (or not so secret) used it as their enforcement arm. And it was very effective. Ask any black man or woman living in the Deep South.

Now they’re mostly a bunch of loser types (Third Klan or post Third Klan depending on where you draw the line), but they’re still somewhat dangerous. And to not remember the history is even more dangerous.

[zepto]

> it was a defacto paramilitary arm

Which means it wasn’t ever a paramilitary arm of the state. You just want to pretend it was because that way you can act as if the KKK and the state were part of the same thing, which they never were.

> It was who would come for you if you didn’t do what you were ‘supposed to’

Yes, because there were a bunch of racists who were operating a secret paramilitary organization…

> and for a long time the hardliners and ‘secret Baathists’ (or not so secret) used it as their enforcement arm

As you admit here.

Nobody is denying how bad the KKK was. It simply not true to say that it was ever part of the state.

Try this quote from Wikipedia:

“Organized in the Southern United States, it was suppressed through federal intervention in the early 1870s. It sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secret as to membership and plans. Its numerous chapters across the South were suppressed around 1871, through federal law enforcement.”

It was a terrorist organization which attempted to overthrow state governments and which the state suppressed.

That is about as far away from being an arm of the state as you can get, ‘defacto’ or not.