| > 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. |