Better to think of the post-war guerrilla resistance as a completely different group than the unconnected organization which is glamorized in “Birth of a Nation.”
Absolutely! There were 3 different incarnations of the KKK and they were not at all the same thing. The first was essentially a practical joke society between a handful of friends. The second was guerilla resistance to extremely corrupt tyrannical occupation governments imposed on the Southern states after the vast majority of the voters had been disenfranchised. Its hands were not totally clean. It certainly did some things that were clearly racist. It could be quite violent - but we cannot ignore what caused it to come about - namely the carpetbagger governments that were robbing the region blind, stealing people's land and homes etc etc...taking advantage of the misfortune of others to line their own pockets...MASSIVE taxation without representation and then stealing all the tax money on top of that. This incarnation died away when the Occupation ended and people's voting rights were restored in 1878. The third incarnation was the rotten organization that exists today that is devoted to racism. This came about right after and as a result of Birth of a Nation.