a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by johnnyFive

I'm not sure that's wholly right. I think your description is perhaps overstating their current power. Just look at what the KKK and the related groups were getting up to in the '40s, '50s, and '60s. They were better organized and a lot more violent, even without modern technology. Membership is definitely on the uptick thanks in large part to Trump. But there's not automatically a correlation between membership and violence, or membership and influence.

More to the point, though, this increase doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong. One of the things that seriously hurt the Klan back in the '80s was lawsuits over their use of violence. That becomes a lot harder if they're themselves the victims; this also is an easy way to engender sympathy or at least muddy the waters. Their recruitment at this point feeds on ignorance and being ostracized, so I'm not sure how shunning them is really going to help.