KKK plans post-election parade: Can Trump and the GOP disown the Klan?

A Trump spokeswoman disavowed the parade, but the white supremacist group continues to associate itself with the president-elect.

|
Bebeto Matthews/AP
Using part of the flag as a screen, a Ku Klux Klansman tries to conceal his identity at a rally outside the Criminal Court Building in New York in Oct. 1999. The group plans to hold a parade in North Carolina to celebrate President-elect Donald Trump's victory.

The Trump campaign and the North Carolina Republican Party are trying to distance themselves from a Ku Klux Klan parade planned in the Tar Heel State to celebrate the president-elect’s win.

“Mr. Trump and his campaign team continue to disavow these groups and individuals and strongly condemn their message of hate,” Hope Hicks, a Trump spokeswoman, said in a statement to CNN.

As Trump has been accused of racist, misogynistic, and hateful rhetoric on the campaign trail, white supremacist groups including the KKK have linked themselves to the candidate. The Trump campaign has repeatedly rejected these endorsements. But the parade and other continuing support from the so-called alt-right brings into question whether Trump can effectively shun these followers, or if he will remain plagued, as some of his supporters say, by guilt by association. 

One of the largest KKK groups in the country announced the parade on its website last week. The Loyal White Knights of Pelham, N.C., near the Virginia border, scheduled the parade for Dec. 3, but listed no time or place. The announcement appeared above an image of the president-elect and the words, “Trump=Trump’s Race United My People,” according to the Washington Times. By Saturday afternoon, the announcement was removed from the group’s website.

The Loyal White Knights is “perhaps the most active Klan group in the United States today,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. It has between 150 to 200 members spread across the country, and is deemed a hate group by the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In addition to the Trump campaign condemning the parade, the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party denounced the group.  

“We are disgusted and condemn this extremist ideology and associated actions in the strongest possible terms,” said Robin Hayes in a statement to CNN. “These acts and thought processes are no reflection of the heartbeat of this great country and are counter to the efforts to make America great again. We stand with the Democratic Party in calling these out-of-state troublemakers to go home.”

Trump wouldn’t be the first president to receive unwanted attention from the KKK. Former President Truman was accused by newspapers of being a Klan member. According to the US Senate, however, the truth was Mr. Truman vigorously fought the Klan in Jackson County, Miss.

But alt-right groups and individuals have attached themselves to Trump’s ideas and policies. Trump has advocated for strict border control, a ban on Muslims, and vocal support of Vladimir Putin, all tenets that appear to appeal to some of these groups and individuals.

When a white supremacist newspaper endorsed Trump for his “nationalist views”, his campaign quickly disavowed the endorsement. It called the endorsement “repulsive” and said “their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign.”

But some commentators, including self-identified members of the alt-right, credit Trump's candidacy with giving their movement national prominence. The president-elect has "managed to push white nationalism into a very mainstream position," one alt-right Twitter user, who asked to be identified only by his handle, @JaredTSwift, told The Daily Beast. "People have adopted our rhetoric, sometimes without even realizing it. We’re setting up for a massive cultural shift."

David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klan and a US Senate candidate for Louisiana, has also associated himself with Trump throughout the election. While Trump at first wavered on Mr. Duke’s endorsement of him, Trump eventually denounced it after coming under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to KKK plans post-election parade: Can Trump and the GOP disown the Klan?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/1113/KKK-plans-post-election-parade-Can-Trump-and-the-GOP-disown-the-Klan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe