RORY MCVEIGH AND KEVIN ESTEP
Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment
 |
| The Politics of Losing Trump, the Klan, and the Mainstreaming of Resentment |
Columbia University Press New York
Ignorant, superstitious, and filthy Mexicans are scattering far
and wide throughout the country, taking the place of American
laborers. They are reported as far north as the sugar beet fields
of Michigan, where they are ousting white families, and thousands
are settling in the southwest. Our immigration laws are
still far too lax. Something should be done, and speedily, to curb this evil.
— Imperial Night- Hawk, the newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan,
May 30, 1923
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In the 1920s, the Klan capitalized on the anger and frustration
of the middle- class when significant changes in American
society undermined their economic power, political influence,
and social status. Millions embraced the Klan, which used cultural
weapons to fight back against these losses.
Immigration was the thorn in their side. In the early 1900s,
millions of immigrants arrived on American shores, mostly Catholics
and Jews from central and southern Europe. They provided
the labor that fed the factories, and they fueled rising political
constituencies and carried with them cultures and practices and
beliefs that set them apart from the native- born white Protestants
who were predominant in America. To recruit members,
the Klan used race, religion, and nativity to cobble together a
new constituency of those seeking redress for their lost power,
and scapegoated immigrants for their losses.
Almost a century later, Trump appealed to the resentments
of a new segment of mostly white Americans, primarily those in
towns bypassed by the global economy. While this changing
economy offered new and lucrative opportunities to the better
educated, jobs that paid well had disappeared from the towns
that didn’t have the highly educated workforces to retain them.
Some of these jobs moved overseas where labor was cheaper.
Mechanization eliminated others. Service- sector and retail jobs
filled the vacuum, but they were a poor substitute for the jobs
that once provided respectable wages and full- time hours. Immigration,
which generated new Democratic constituencies and
seemed to be slowly changing American culture, once again
became a political whipping post.
Only by looking closely at the changes taking place in American
society can we make sense of Trump’s rise to the presidency.
His campaign was almost impossibly resilient. He survived accusations
and missteps that would have crippled anyone else. He
had, after all, been at the forefront of the birther movement, generating
and spreading rumors that Barack Obama, the nation’s
first black president, was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible
for the presidency. During his campaign, he stumbled when
asked about the endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader
David Duke. Later, the Klan formally endorsed him. Other of
his supporters and surrogates said things that were blatantly racist,
which he declined to renounce.19 When his poll numbers
slipped in the aftermath of the Republican and Democratic
conventions, he appointed Steve Bannon as the CEO of his campaign.
Bannon had formerly been the executive chair of Breitbart
News— a conservative news outlet known to traffic in right- wing
conspiracy theories. In ordinary times, any of these actions would
have been enough to destroy a candidacy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has come a long way since we completed an
initial draft in 2017. Our first instinct, given the volatility
of the Trump presidency (“breaking news” regularly
blaring across our TV screens), was to complete the book
as quickly as possible. We felt we needed to get it into print before
it became “old news.” We are extraordinarily grateful to Columbia
University Press, and especially our editor Stephen Wesley,
for slowing us down. Rather than trying to beat the news cycle,
Stephen encouraged us to develop a book that will stand the test
of time and, we hope, interest readers for decades to come. He
spent countless hours helping us with revisions— chiseling away
at the academic jargon to reveal the important story that needs to be told.
We are especially thankful for the love and support of our
families. The project also benefited from the reactions of our
colleagues and students at the University of Notre Dame and
Creighton University, who weighed in formally and informally
every step of the way.
We have tried to approach the topic of the book as objectively
as possible. Parts of our analysis, we are sure, will displease
readers on the left as well as on the right. We only ask that it be
read with an open mind. We fully recognize that good people
come in all political stripes. For that reason, we approached our
subject not by focusing on individual voters but instead by trying
to understand and explain how the organization of our society
creates fundamental divisions that we must work to resolve.
Introduction
On a hot July day in central Indiana— the kind of day
when the heat shimmers off the tall green corn and
even the bobwhites seek shade in the brush— a great
crowd of people clustered around an open meadow. They were
waiting for something. Their faces were expectant, and their eyes
searched the bright blue sky.
Suddenly, they began to cheer. They had seen it: a speck that
came from the south and soon grew into an airplane. As it came
closer, it glistened in the sunlight, and they could see that it was
gilded all over. It circled the field slowly and seesawed in for a
bumpy landing. Soon a man emerged, to a new surge of applause,
and a small delegation of dignitaries filed out to the airplane to
meet him. With the newcomer in the lead, the column recrossed
the field, proceeded along a lane carved through the multitude,
and reached a platform decked with flags and bunting. He
mounted the steps, walked forward to the rostrum, and held up
his hand to hush the excited crowd.
This is the account, almost word for word, of a journalist
named Robert Coughlan on the Fourth of July, 1923.1 This was
a Klan rally— arguably the largest in history— a tristate Konklave
that brought members from Ohio and Illinois to gather together
in Kokomo, Indiana. Some reports place the attendance at one
hundred thousand. For Coughlan, who had been born and raised
Catholic in Kokomo, “there was special reason to remember the Ku Klux Klan.”
The man at the rostrum was David C. Stephenson, though
he went by “D. C.” Once a lowly Indiana coal dealer, on that
day he was installed to the “exalted” position of Grand Dragon,
granting him control over the thriving northern realm of the
Klan. With millions of faithful members, he had gained tremendous
political power.2 With his ambition, knack for salesmanship,
and the Klan behind him, even a future run for the presidency
seemed to be in the cards.3 But before that day would come, he
would first build a political machine headquartered in Indiana.
Coughlan continues: “The Grand Dragon paused, inviting the
cheers that thundered around him. Then he launched into a
speech. He urged his audience to fight for ‘one- hundred- percent
Americanism’ and to thwart ‘foreign elements’ that he said were
trying to control the country.” He spoke about how our once
great nation had veered from the course charted by her founders,
and he railed against political corruption, a rigged electoral
system, and the undemocratic power of the Supreme Court to
nullify the will of the people. “Every official who violates his oath
to support the constitution by betrayal of the common welfare
through any selfish service to himself or to others spits in the
soup and in the face of democracy. He is as guilty of treason as
though he were a martial enemy.”
As he finished, and stepped back, “a coin came spinning
through the air. Someone threw another. Soon people were
throwing rings, money, watch charms, anything bright and
valuable. At last, when the tribute slackened, he motioned his
retainers to sweep up the treasure. Then he strode off to a nearby
pavilion to consult with his attendant Kleagles, Cyclopses, and Titans.”
This rally was in the midst of the phenomenal rise of the Klan
during the early 1920s. By 1925, Klan membership was anywhere
from 2 to 5 million members, not counting the millions
who supported the Klan without ever joining up.6 The total
population in 1925 stood at approximately 115 million, which
means that as many as 1 in every 23 Americans was a member.
In Kokomo, “literally half ” the town had joined at its height.
Like the original Klan, which was created during Reconstruction
in the late 1870s, and like the Klan that mobilized to thwart
the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Klan of the 1920s
existed to advance and maintain white supremacy. But it also had
a broader agenda, and it stunned contemporary observers as it
attracted millions of followers and grew particularly strong outside
of the former Confederacy, in states like Michigan, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
The Klan’s national leader, Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley
Evans, was also there the day of Stephenson’s speech, introducing
him with “a ringing message of optimism and good cheer.”
A week later, Evans gave a speech at Buckeye Lake in Ohio,
musing on the origins of this second coming of the Klan.
“Among the students of the old Reconstruction,” he said,
“there was an itinerant Methodist preacher who, living in the
atmosphere and under the shade of the former greatness of the
Klan, dreamed by day and night of a reincarnation of the organization
which had saved white civilization to a large portion of
our country.” This preacher was Colonel William Joseph Simmons,
who had refounded the Klan outside Atlanta, Georgia,
in 1915. “Slowly, under the dreamings of a wondering mind, the
Klan took some hazy kind of form. As this man wandered in
the streets of the Southern city in which he lived, preaching the
doctrine of a new Klan in his emotional manner, there slowly
came to the standard men of dependable character and sterling
worth, who were able to lend some kind of concrete form
to the God- given idea destined to again save a white man’s civilization.”
Evans’s tribute to Simmons winked at the Klan’s slow growth
and aimlessness in the years following its rebirth. By the early
1920s, however, a new leadership had hit upon a formula for rapid
expansion. Simmons had hired two publicists, Edward Young
Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, who enlisted a team of recruiters
they called “Kleagles.” The Kleagles traveled the country, forging
close ties with fraternal lodges and Protestant congregations
to attract members and money. As they ventured beyond the
South, they discovered deep pockets of discontent among white
Americans. Clarke and Tyler decided that this discontent could
be harnessed into a fearsome political movement. They instructed
Kleagles to promise new members that only a powerful “onehundred-
percent American” organization such as theirs could save them.
The Klan spread quickly then, as much a social club as a political
operation. Local chapters staged public marches, rallies, and
speeches, but also baseball games, plays, and concerts. They put
on “Klan Days” at state fairs and even Klan circuses and rodeos.
“Spectacle was a device for establishing the Klan as a mysterious
presence and for winning converts to the Invisible Empire,”
historian Thomas Pegram writes, “but it was also a tool for
community- building among white Protestants.”12 Local chapters
were on hand to celebrate the birth of Klansmen’s children, and
they staged elaborate funerals for those who passed on.13 In
Terrell, Texas, the Klan’s national newspaper, the Imperial
Night- Hawk, reported on the funeral of one C. T. Cochran,
who died from a run- in with a wood saw. “The Kaufman and
Terrell Order of the Ku Klux Klan had charge of the burial, full
honors being given. The Terrell drum corps attended, together
with about two hundred robed Klansmen. The ceremony was a
most impressive one, and was said to have been attended by the
largest number of people ever present at a burial in the Kaufman cemetery.”
When sociologist Kathleen Blee interviewed former members
of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan for her 1991 book, they spoke of
it fondly, and recalled the excitement of watching Klansmen
march solemnly through their towns: “A hush fell on the crowd.
They seemed to sense a force of something unknown.”15
But the Klan relied on more than spectacle to attract members.
Together, Evans and Stephenson developed a message that
struck a chord with middle- class white Americans who lived in
towns depressed by the economic transformations of the time.
While many Americans were prospering in the new economy of
the 1920s, others suffered. An agricultural depression had settled
on America after the European export boom of World War I
fell off, and transformations in manufacturing production
accelerated the use of unskilled factory labor, making skilled
manufactures and artisans uncompetitive if not nearly obsolete.
Like the first Klan of the Reconstruction Era, the 1920s Klan
proudly waved the banner of white supremacy. But the target of
their animosity this time was more Catholics and immigrants
than black Americans. Klan leaders linked these ethnic and religious
enmities to economic nationalism in a way that was particularly
appealing to the Klan faithful. “I am rather disgusted
today that the masterminds of politics and many of the really
....................
when the heat shimmers off the tall green corn and
even the bobwhites seek shade in the brush— a great
crowd of people clustered around an open meadow. They were
waiting for something. Their faces were expectant, and their eyes
searched the bright blue sky.
Suddenly, they began to cheer. They had seen it: a speck that
came from the south and soon grew into an airplane. As it came
closer, it glistened in the sunlight, and they could see that it was
gilded all over. It circled the field slowly and seesawed in for a
bumpy landing. Soon a man emerged, to a new surge of applause,
and a small delegation of dignitaries filed out to the airplane to
meet him. With the newcomer in the lead, the column recrossed
the field, proceeded along a lane carved through the multitude,
and reached a platform decked with flags and bunting. He
mounted the steps, walked forward to the rostrum, and held up
his hand to hush the excited crowd.
This is the account, almost word for word, of a journalist
named Robert Coughlan on the Fourth of July, 1923.1 This was
a Klan rally— arguably the largest in history— a tristate Konklave
that brought members from Ohio and Illinois to gather together
in Kokomo, Indiana. Some reports place the attendance at one
hundred thousand. For Coughlan, who had been born and raised
Catholic in Kokomo, “there was special reason to remember the Ku Klux Klan.”
The man at the rostrum was David C. Stephenson, though
he went by “D. C.” Once a lowly Indiana coal dealer, on that
day he was installed to the “exalted” position of Grand Dragon,
granting him control over the thriving northern realm of the
Klan. With millions of faithful members, he had gained tremendous
political power.2 With his ambition, knack for salesmanship,
and the Klan behind him, even a future run for the presidency
seemed to be in the cards.3 But before that day would come, he
would first build a political machine headquartered in Indiana.
Coughlan continues: “The Grand Dragon paused, inviting the
cheers that thundered around him. Then he launched into a
speech. He urged his audience to fight for ‘one- hundred- percent
Americanism’ and to thwart ‘foreign elements’ that he said were
trying to control the country.” He spoke about how our once
great nation had veered from the course charted by her founders,
and he railed against political corruption, a rigged electoral
system, and the undemocratic power of the Supreme Court to
nullify the will of the people. “Every official who violates his oath
to support the constitution by betrayal of the common welfare
through any selfish service to himself or to others spits in the
soup and in the face of democracy. He is as guilty of treason as
though he were a martial enemy.”
As he finished, and stepped back, “a coin came spinning
through the air. Someone threw another. Soon people were
throwing rings, money, watch charms, anything bright and
valuable. At last, when the tribute slackened, he motioned his
retainers to sweep up the treasure. Then he strode off to a nearby
pavilion to consult with his attendant Kleagles, Cyclopses, and Titans.”
This rally was in the midst of the phenomenal rise of the Klan
during the early 1920s. By 1925, Klan membership was anywhere
from 2 to 5 million members, not counting the millions
who supported the Klan without ever joining up.6 The total
population in 1925 stood at approximately 115 million, which
means that as many as 1 in every 23 Americans was a member.
In Kokomo, “literally half ” the town had joined at its height.
Like the original Klan, which was created during Reconstruction
in the late 1870s, and like the Klan that mobilized to thwart
the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Klan of the 1920s
existed to advance and maintain white supremacy. But it also had
a broader agenda, and it stunned contemporary observers as it
attracted millions of followers and grew particularly strong outside
of the former Confederacy, in states like Michigan, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Indiana.
The Klan’s national leader, Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley
Evans, was also there the day of Stephenson’s speech, introducing
him with “a ringing message of optimism and good cheer.”
A week later, Evans gave a speech at Buckeye Lake in Ohio,
musing on the origins of this second coming of the Klan.
“Among the students of the old Reconstruction,” he said,
“there was an itinerant Methodist preacher who, living in the
atmosphere and under the shade of the former greatness of the
Klan, dreamed by day and night of a reincarnation of the organization
which had saved white civilization to a large portion of
our country.” This preacher was Colonel William Joseph Simmons,
who had refounded the Klan outside Atlanta, Georgia,
in 1915. “Slowly, under the dreamings of a wondering mind, the
Klan took some hazy kind of form. As this man wandered in
the streets of the Southern city in which he lived, preaching the
doctrine of a new Klan in his emotional manner, there slowly
came to the standard men of dependable character and sterling
worth, who were able to lend some kind of concrete form
to the God- given idea destined to again save a white man’s civilization.”
Evans’s tribute to Simmons winked at the Klan’s slow growth
and aimlessness in the years following its rebirth. By the early
1920s, however, a new leadership had hit upon a formula for rapid
expansion. Simmons had hired two publicists, Edward Young
Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, who enlisted a team of recruiters
they called “Kleagles.” The Kleagles traveled the country, forging
close ties with fraternal lodges and Protestant congregations
to attract members and money. As they ventured beyond the
South, they discovered deep pockets of discontent among white
Americans. Clarke and Tyler decided that this discontent could
be harnessed into a fearsome political movement. They instructed
Kleagles to promise new members that only a powerful “onehundred-
percent American” organization such as theirs could save them.
The Klan spread quickly then, as much a social club as a political
operation. Local chapters staged public marches, rallies, and
speeches, but also baseball games, plays, and concerts. They put
on “Klan Days” at state fairs and even Klan circuses and rodeos.
“Spectacle was a device for establishing the Klan as a mysterious
presence and for winning converts to the Invisible Empire,”
historian Thomas Pegram writes, “but it was also a tool for
community- building among white Protestants.”12 Local chapters
were on hand to celebrate the birth of Klansmen’s children, and
they staged elaborate funerals for those who passed on.13 In
Terrell, Texas, the Klan’s national newspaper, the Imperial
Night- Hawk, reported on the funeral of one C. T. Cochran,
who died from a run- in with a wood saw. “The Kaufman and
Terrell Order of the Ku Klux Klan had charge of the burial, full
honors being given. The Terrell drum corps attended, together
with about two hundred robed Klansmen. The ceremony was a
most impressive one, and was said to have been attended by the
largest number of people ever present at a burial in the Kaufman cemetery.”
When sociologist Kathleen Blee interviewed former members
of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan for her 1991 book, they spoke of
it fondly, and recalled the excitement of watching Klansmen
march solemnly through their towns: “A hush fell on the crowd.
They seemed to sense a force of something unknown.”15
But the Klan relied on more than spectacle to attract members.
Together, Evans and Stephenson developed a message that
struck a chord with middle- class white Americans who lived in
towns depressed by the economic transformations of the time.
While many Americans were prospering in the new economy of
the 1920s, others suffered. An agricultural depression had settled
on America after the European export boom of World War I
fell off, and transformations in manufacturing production
accelerated the use of unskilled factory labor, making skilled
manufactures and artisans uncompetitive if not nearly obsolete.
Like the first Klan of the Reconstruction Era, the 1920s Klan
proudly waved the banner of white supremacy. But the target of
their animosity this time was more Catholics and immigrants
than black Americans. Klan leaders linked these ethnic and religious
enmities to economic nationalism in a way that was particularly
appealing to the Klan faithful. “I am rather disgusted
today that the masterminds of politics and many of the really
....................
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Ku Klux Klan in American History 19
3 Power and Political Alignments 55
4 Economics and White Nationalism 67
5 Where Trump Found His Base 97
6 Politics and White Nationalism 125
7 Status and White Nationalism 143
8 White Nationalism Versus the Press 173
9 The Future of White Nationalism and American Politics 201
Conclusion: Making America White Again 221
Appendix: Methods of Statistical Analysis 229
Acknowledgments 243
Notes 245
Index 297
