Making the Klan Boring

[Chris_]

Making the Klan Boring

Kevin Boyle, who teaches history at Ohio State University, reviewed a couple books on the Klan in the New York Times yesterday. The KKK of the 1920s is a fascinating story. But it is a difficult one to tell in an interesting or accurate way without ever using the words “Democrat,” “Wilson,” or “Progressive,” which is why Boyle’s review is so lame.

The average reader with no specialized knowledge and an unhealthy faith in the wisdom and accuracy of the New York Times might find in all of this reinforcement of the conventional liberal tale of the KKK as a quirky and extremist conservative organization. 

But that’s simply not the story of the second Klan. I don’t expect Kevin Boyle to hammer home the Klan’s progressive and Democratic ties. But he manages to make them all sound conventionally conservative. He doesn’t acknowledge that Woodrow Wilson was Birth of a Nation’s most famous booster. Nor does he mention that World War One was the Progressives’ war and that “100% Americanism” was touted and promoted by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson — our two progressive presidents. He doesn’t mention that evil spirits of World War One were orchestrated by progressive wordsmiths, activists, and artists.

The fact that racism and other evils were commonplace, even central, to much of the progressive project is simply too jarring to contemplate and so we get either a whitewash or blame-shifting. And with Boyle, we get both.

National Review