Photo: In this Dec. 2, 2016 photo, two masked Ku Klux Klansmen near Pelham, N.C. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
Used to be the Ku Klux Klan operated under white sheets and terrorized Black communities with violence and cross burnings. The KKK is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group. But is the modern KKK doing things differently?
There have been rumors that today’s Klan works to promote Black self-destruction by flooding Black neighborhoods with crack, alcohol, and guns. But are these rumors true?
According to Politico, this was a plan one chapter of the Klan had. In Philadelphia in 2016, neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin and other white nationalists told the publication that they planned to set up hidden cameras at Philadelphia polling places and give out liquor and marijuana “in the city’s ‘ghetto’” on Election Day.
The local Klan said they were following then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s call for his supporters to watch polling stations in fear of voter fraud.
Trump was running against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential elections.
The editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, Anglin, revealed to Politico in an email that he was working with alt-right website TheRightStuff.Biz to send “an army of Alt-Right nationalists to watch the polls.”
A representative for TheRightStuff.Biz confirmed the site was planning to organize poll watchers “in urban areas” and cameras in Philadelphia polling places to watch for instances of voter fraud.
“If we see people voting in multiple locations, the footage will be submitted to the (Federal Election Commission) as well as put out on social media to undermine the legitimacy of (Hillary) Clinton should she steal the election,” the representative said.
The group said their teams would go into “the ghettos in Philly with 40s and weed to give out to the local residents, which we think will lead to more of them staying home,” the representative told Politico. The 40s referred to 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor.
There haven’t been reports if the Klan carried out its plan in Philadelphia or if other Klan chapters around the country considered doing the same thing. But the plan was indeed made.
Donald Trump went on to defeat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States.
The modern Klan was reorganized in 1975 by David Duke, who formed the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan with the goal to put a “kinder, gentler” face on the Klan, courting media attention and attempting to portray itself as a modern “white civil rights” organization. But beneath that veneer lurks the same bigoted rhetoric, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Photo: In this Dec. 2, 2016 photo, two masked Ku Klux Klansmen stand on a muddy dirt road during an interview near Pelham, N.C. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
