KU KLUX KLAN AND THE JEWS
_"Drive them out of the United States" are the words that are
used to enlist Jew-haters into the ranks._
In spite of the fact that ever since the beginning of the American
colonies, in the war of the revolution and in other national crises,
great Jews have helped to make the United States what it is today, the
Ku Klux Klan recruits misguided members on the representation that it
has found a scheme to drive the Jews out of the country. Anti-Jewish
propaganda is used particularly in large cities and in smaller
communities where racial and religious flames may be fanned in order
to win members and money for the Ku Klux.
_The Searchlight_, the official paper of the Klan, teems with
anti-Jewish literature. Secret documents and stories are passed around
privately among the organizers and used in gaining recruits.
"Chaplain" Ridley is one of the most rabid of the campaigners against
the Jews. He never lets an opportunity go by to ridicule Jews and stir
up prejudice.
In the first place, Jews are barred from the Ku Klux Klan. In a
questionnaire that must be filled in by those who are initiated these
questions are asked:
"Are you a gentile or a jew? What is your religious faith? Of what
church are you a member (if any)? Of what religious faith are your
parents?"
CHAPLAIN ATTACKS JEWS
"Chaplain" Ridley in _The Searchlight_, writes:
"I cannot help being what I am racially. I am not a Jew, nor a negro
nor a foreigner. I am an Anglo-Saxon white man, so ordained by the
hand and will of God, and so constituted and trained that I cannot
conscientiously take either my politics or my religion from some
secluded ass on the other side of the world.
"Now, if somebody else happens to be a Jew, I can't help it any more
than he can. Or if he happens to be black, I can't help that, either.
If he were born under a foreign flag, I couldn't help it--but there is
one thing I can do. I can object to his un-American propaganda being
preached in my home or practiced in the solemn assembly of real
Americans."
_The Searchlight_ constantly mixes Jews and negroes in ridiculous
"movements." For instance, one writer in the issue of July 30, 1921,
declares that his investigations have demonstrated that Jewish
plotters are stirring up the negroes to make a race war so that the
government will be destroyed.
The writer goes on:
"For the same reason, the Jew is interested in overthrowing Christian
Russia. But remember, he does not intend to stop at Russia. Through
his Third Internationale of Moscow he is working to overthrow all the
Gentile Governments of the world. I am enclosing an editorial clipped
from The New York _World_ of Saturday, July 23. You will keep in mind
that _The World_ is Jew-owned, as is every other newspaper in New York
City except the Tribune. * * * In all my twenty-five years traveling
about over this continent I have never met a disloyal American who
failed to be either foreign-born or a Semite. With the best wishes for
the success of the Ku Klux Klan."
HOW TO THROW JEWS OUT
In the instructions to kleagles, who sell memberships in the Klan, the
anti-Jewish feeling in some communities is appealed to in this manner:
"The Jew patronizes only the Jew unless it is impossible to do so.
Therefore, we klansmen, the only real Americans, must, by the same
methods, protect ourselves, and practice by actual application the
teachings of klannishness. With this policy faithfully adhered to, it
will not be long before the Jew will be forced out of business by our
practice of his own business methods, for when the time comes when
klansmen trade only with klansmen then the days of the Jews' success
in business will be numbered and the Invisible Empire can drive them
from the shores of our own America."
Another favorite way to create interest in the anti-Jewish movement is
to represent that Imperial Kleagle Clarke has in hand the organization
of a nation-wide Jewish society to oppose the Sons of Israel. This
society is to be created by Jews who are in the pay of Kleagle Clarke
and who are really traitors to their own co-religionists. Spies
working in the ranks of the Sons of Israel will keep the Ku Klux Klan
informed of what the Sons of Israel are doing and finally a clash
between the two organizations is to be engineered, to the destruction
of both. Of course this is the wildest sort of propaganda, but it
demonstrates how the agents play with fire in order to get members.
"SEARCHLIGHT" AND THE JEWS
Among the articles in _The Searchlight_ there are those headed, "A
Message from Jerusalem--Esau the Wanderer must Pay for His
Pottage--the Mightiest Weapons for the Jews are Pounds and Pence."
"Doesn't Think Much of the Jews."
"Jewish Rabbi Gets Rabid."
A paragraph from "Doesn't Think Much of the Jews," published Feb. 12,
1921, contains this passage:
"Their religion is to control wealth and thereby control all nations.
And you cannot deny but they are doing so under false names. Jews are
entering into every Government, every nation on earth except China and
Japan, where their heavenly God received little recognition. They
spread their ingenious religion that strangled the ignorant and
credulous by causing dissension to their advantage."