That’s a good point I had not thought of
The original klan was a resistance movement of demobilized rebel soldiers against military occupation governments during Reconstruction. When Reconstruction ended in 1877 so did the first klan.
The klan probably would have remained only a memory if it weren’t for the world’s first blockbuster feature length film: DW Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, which cast the original klan as heroic.
That movie set records that wouldn’t be broken until 1939. People paid the equivalent of $50 to see it in New York. People wanted to dress up like the movie and entrepreneurs started selling klan gear.
In the wake of all of this and inspired by the movie, a big fan of fraternal societies decided to re-found the Klan. Or at least the klan as seen in the movie. William Simmons had been a member of twelve different fraternal brotherhoods and his Klan was going to be yet another one. He borrowed imagery from the movie, including cross burning, which was a DW Griffith invention.
The second Klan took off, especially in the industrial Midwest. It got involved in political hot button issues of the day, supporting Prohibition and opposing the mass immigration coming from Eastern and Southern Europe. The Second Klan was hostile to Catholics and Jews, two Democrat voting blocs. The Second Klan had a run of about a decade, and then corruption and crimes its leaders were involved in soured the public and it mostly died out. The Third Klan would arise in the 1960s.
Imagine if Star Wars had been the world’s first blockbuster movie back in 1915. The second klan could have been dressed like wookies.