Ku Klux Klan opening new groups, still a threat in America – ADL

New report says racist, anti-Semitic movement has 42 active groups, more than half formed or restarted over past 3 years

By JTA and ToI Staff 22 June 2017, 7:55 pm

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Illustrative: In this Friday, December 2, 2016, photo, two masked Ku Klux Klansmen stand on a muddy dirt road during an interview near Pelham, North Carolina. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)

The Ku Klux Klan still “poses a threat to society,” though it is relatively unstable and unorganized, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The findings of an ADL report released this week found that 42 KKK groups are active in 33 states, with an estimate of some 3,000 members. More than half the groups were either formed or restarted in the past three years.

But the movement is beset by infighting, rumors and frequent leadership changes, “causing alliances and groups to lose members and splinter” with even “the largest Klans [not having] many more than 50 to 100 active members, and most Klans have fewer than 25 members,” according to the report.

Most of the groups are concentrated in the South and the East, with a slight increase since early 2016.

An ADL graphic showing KKK presence across the US, June 2017. (ADL)

About half of the groups subsribe to “traditional” white supremacist ideology with “predominantly anti-black, anti-immigration and homophobic” sentiment, but “a growing number of Klans, approximately forty percent, promote a Klan ideology infused with neo-Nazi beliefs.”

“The remaining ten percent are adherents of Christian Identity, a longstanding racist and anti-Semitic religious sect,” the ADL said.

The report showed that some groups not only are still involved in criminal activity and violence, but have formed alliances with other white supremacist groups in hopes of restoring their continuity while also facing “competition from the “surging ‘Alternative right’ and a rising number of white supremacist prison gangs.”

Their main activity is the “distribution of racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and Islamophobic fliers,” the report said.

“These hardened racists and bigots are looking to spread fear,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO said, “and if they grow dissatisfied with the Klan, they move on to other groups on the extreme far-right.”

Oren Segal, the director of ADL’s Center on Extremism, said that despite the hate group’s decline from its heyday, “we are still seeing the same extremist ideology manifesting itself into violence from some of its purported membership.”

“The somewhat new collaboration with some of the most vehement white supremacists out there is a concerning trend we will continue to monitor and expose.”