IT IS hard to imagine the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan. But to the chagrin of most Americans, the Anti-Defamation League has released reports highlighting a major spike in Klan activity across the nation.
This time, the KKK is exploiting America's growing anti-immigrant sentiment amidst an influx of illegal immigration. The goal, however, is the same -- to terrorize.
In years past, it has been difficult to quell KKK activity. Klansmen defend their activities by invoking the protection of their right to free speech and maintaining that no physical harm was involved. But since the tumultuous era of the Civil Rights Movement, there have been major changes in the socio-political climate. It has shifted from a fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union to a fear of terrorism.
This changing focus needs to encourage our government to reevaluate the KKK's place in the public forum. Klansmen of the KKK should no longer be considered as a group whose interests are to spread merely words of hate. Rather, they must be treated as terrorists and destroyed.
Between 2000 and 2005, Klan chapters increased by an astonishing 63 percent, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. With the growth of the KKK and their cooperation with other hate groups, their potential for inciting hate and, more importantly, hate crimes, has skyrocketed.
Despite claims from a KKK Web site that they are a "law abiding organization," it is exceedingly difficult to imagine that a group which engenders such hostility toward non-white races, among other groups, is intent on being peaceful. Among their most ludicrous claims is that the organization boasts diligent racists of "good character" guided by their "honorable" and "intelligent" sensibilities.
Just how "law-abiding" are Klansmen?
Daniel James Shertz, a Georgia Klansman, pleaded guilty in August 2005 to building pipe bombs with which he intended to attack buses filled with Mexican and Haitian migrant workers.
Around that same time, terrorists in London detonated bombs on a double-decker bus. There are obviously striking similarities between both incidents excluding the fact that the American attack was foiled. Other than the obvious similarity of being attacks on buses, the attacks were both meant to terrorize innocent civilians. They differ with respect to their affiliation. But that is hardly a reason to consider the Georgia Klansman just a homicidal maniac and the London bomber a terrorist.
Interestingly enough, precedent exists for treating Klansmen as terrorists.
The Ku Klux Klan Act passed in 1871, with the goal of remedying abuses of law against Southern blacks. Under this law, the federal government could legally intervene in areas plagued by violence against black citizens and suspend the right of habeus corpus. At the time, President Ulysses S. Grant supported the Act claiming that the "insurgents," meaning Klansmen, "were in rebellion against the authority of the United States." A huge decline in KKK activity and the near decimation of the organization in the South followed during the Reconstruction era.
So, given the common goal of terrorizing specific groups of people between the KKK and extremist Muslim terror organizations and the existence of historical precedence, the arguments for fighting domestic and foreign terrorists using similar strategies becomeconvincing.
One strategy is to identify terrorist cells and to choke their financial lifelines. Utilizing a similar strategy against the KKK would certainly eliminate breeding grounds for racist hatred and reduce collaboration between potential terrorists.
Applying the strategy against the KKK is relatively simple compared to doing the same against Al-Qaeda. Identification of KKK hotspots should be simple enough given the public release of their locations. In fact, I can provide numerous locations of KKK chapters by a simple Google search. Again, their transparency renders severing the flow of financial assets relatively simple.
Adopting these broad strategies might help to reduce the prevalence of hate crimes by eliminating a significant catalyst for hate. Luckily enough, there already exists an avenue for considering Klansmen terrorists in American law.
The USA Patriot Act defines the term "domestic terrorism" as "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State," and those acts which "intimidate or coerce a civilian population." The new law provideslegal justification to authorities in prosecuting Klansmen as terrorists. Klansmen, moreover, have a history of systematically intimidating civilians with planned marches in minority neighborhoods. Yet, they have escaped punishment due to the protection entitled to them by the First Amendment. But now, the Patriot Act might justify a government-led closure of KKK chapters. After all, the KKK's marches and fiery rhetoric, while expressing heinous opinions, inspire terror amongst innocent minorities. According to the Patriot Act, this sufficiently fulfills the legal definition of domestic terrorism.
While the Patriot Act itself is the subject of scrutiny from legal theorists and advocates of free speech, I doubt that it will be disappearing from American law any time soon considering the constant threat of terrorism. Our government might as well use this legislative tool to finally wipe out the Klan's repugnant existence.
Charles Lee's column usually appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at clee@cavalierdaily.com.
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