An excellent expose of this is referenced recently in D’
Souza’s “Death of a Nation”.
D’Souza exposes that President Wilson proudly played the second klan’s favourite movie “The Birth of a Nation” (from the book of the same name) produced and made by DW Griffith— Wilson, big D democrat white supremacist (for real) that he was— proudly played this movie in the White House. To support the northern and southern (and western) klan democrat machine. It is an eye-opening segment of the movie. The ruse the democrats maintained for all these years right through LBJ— to keep up the gubmint plantation and keep stranglehold on power. Danged interesting.
Except that there was no "klan machine" before the movie. The original klan began with guerilla war resistance to Union occupation during Reconstruction and had been defunct for years. The 2nd Klan arose because of the movie, which people today don't realize was the first major motion picture. It was the first instance of a movie reproducing itself in real life.
The 2nd Klan was national and it had as many members in the Midwest and Far West as the South. Typical members were middle class white men. The vast majority regarded it as fraternal organization promoting a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant America at a time of mass immigration from Eastern Europe.
At its peak as they waved American flags while parading through the streets of Washington DC in 1925 the Klan had around a million members and wielded political clout.
Students of American history may remember the first Catholic candidate for President. Al Smith, Democratic nominee in 1928. I wonder how Dinesh manages to explain that in his KKK = Democrats game.
1924 Democratic National Convention
"The Ku Klux Klan had surged in popularity after World War I, due to connections of its public relations leadership to those who had promoted the successful Prohibition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, becoming a political power throughout many regions of the United States. It reached the apex of its power in the mid-1920s, when it exerted deep cultural and political influence on both Republicans and Democrats. Its supporters had successfully quashed an anti-Klan resolution before it ever went to a floor vote at the 1924 Republican National Convention earlier in June, and proponents expected to exert the same influence at the Democratic convention.
Instead, tension between pro- and anti-Klan delegates produced an intense and sometimes violent showdown between convention attendees from the states of Colorado and Missouri. Klan delegates opposed the nomination of New York Governor Al Smith because Smith was a Roman Catholic. Most Klan delegates instead supported William Gibbs McAdoo. Non-Klan delegates, led by Sen. Oscar Underwood of Alabama, attempted to add condemnation of the organization for its violence to the Democratic Party's platform. The measure was narrowly defeated, and the anti-KKK plank was not included in the platform.