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Academic Study Says KKK Played a Major Role in Swinging the South for GOP

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COMMENT: It comes as no sur­prise that a recent aca­d­e­m­ic study indi­cates that the Ku Klux Klan played a promi­nent role in con­vert­ing the South from Demo­c­ra­t­ic to Repub­li­can con­trol.

Uti­liz­ing the “South­ern Strat­e­gy” to cap­ture a “sol­id South” while mak­ing uneven gains in oth­er states, the GOP has used the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s sup­port for African-Amer­i­can civ­il rights to put the for­mer Con­fed­er­a­cy solid­ly in the “W” col­umn for the Repub­li­cans.

This should be weighed against back­ground of the Cru­sade For Free­dom, an ille­gal domes­tic covert oper­a­tion that import­ed large num­bers of Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing entire SS intel­li­gence units, into the U.S.

The CFF was the brain­child of Allen Dulles and was over­seen by Richard Nixon. The chief spokesper­son for the group was Ronald Rea­gan and the State Depart­ment machi­na­tions used to bring them into the coun­try were han­dled by William Casey, who was Rea­gan’s 1980 cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er his CIA chief. It result­ed in what became–literally–a Nazi branch of the GOP, with roots firm­ly plant­ed in the Third Reich.

George H.W. Bush made the Nazi branch of the GOP per­ma­nent while serv­ing as cair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee in the ear­ly 1970’s. Of course, Bush was Rea­gan’s Vice-Pres­i­dent.

“Study: The Klux Klan Played a Major Role in Gar­ner­ing South­ern Sup­port for the GOP” by Tay­lor Gor­don; The Atlanta Black Star; 12/9/2014.

The Ku Klux Klan may be large­ly respon­si­ble for the his­to­ry of white vot­ers in the deep South show­ing unwa­ver­ing sup­port for the Repub­li­can Par­ty, a new study has revealed.

In recent polit­i­cal bat­tles it seems as if the Repub­li­can Par­ty is left try­ing to fight the per­cep­tion that their par­ty is the plat­form for racist vot­ers and that the par­ty has no con­cern for the Black com­mu­ni­ty.

In the midst of many Black politi­cians climb­ing the ranks with­in the polit­i­cal par­ty, it cer­tain­ly sug­gests that those alle­ga­tions aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly true, but the party’s his­tor­i­cal back­ground and the polit­i­cal involve­ment of the KKK could explain why the par­ty is often brand­ed with that label.

Dur­ing the 1960s the Civ­il Rights Move­ment was at its peak and it was enough to threat­en many white peo­ple at the time.

As a result, the white suprema­cy group resurged to promi­nence and moved quick­ly to divide the races and polar­ize com­mu­ni­ties for gen­er­a­tions, a study pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review explains.

The study’s authors say that the group “encour­aged white vot­ers to pri­or­i­tize the defense of white suprema­cy when mak­ing vot­ing deci­sions.”

What many younger vot­ers don’t real­ize is that there was once a strong bond in the South between the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and white suprema­cists.

That changed after the nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty close­ly aligned itself with civ­il rights issues and stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with African-Amer­i­cans who were fight­ing for equal­i­ty.

The Klan’s push for white vot­ers to focus on vot­ing against poli­cies that would help Blacks encour­aged many of the vot­ers to toss their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions aside and grav­i­tate towards politi­cians who were opposed to deseg­re­ga­tion and any­thing else that would treat Black peo­ple as equals.

The effect the Klan had on polit­i­cal results was made evi­dent as for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers start­ed giv­ing their sup­port to Repub­li­can can­di­date Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter in 1964 and third-par­ty can­di­date Alaba­ma Gov. George Wal­lace in 1968 after he took a firm stance against deseg­re­ga­tion.

After ana­lyz­ing coun­ty vot­ing records in 10 South­ern states where the KKK was active­ly recruit­ing mem­bers in the 1960s, the study’s authors con­firmed the white suprema­cy group’s impact on vot­ing behav­iors.

“The Klan played an active role in encour­ag­ing white south­ern­ers to pri­or­i­tize white suprema­cy over par­ty loy­al­ty,” the authors wrote.

Coun­ties with an active Klan chap­ter were found to be much more like­ly to back Gold­wa­ter and Wal­lace.

Despite the fact that chap­ters of the white suprema­cy group were often formed in coun­ties with high home own­er­ship rates and a high per­cent­age of Black res­i­dents, coun­ties that were con­sid­ered less pros­per­ous and sub­ject­ed white peo­ple to eco­nom­ic com­pe­ti­tion with Blacks housed the most active KKK par­tic­i­pants.

“Giv­en the bar­ri­ers to vot­ing still in place in the South for blacks in 1964, pri­or to the pas­sage of the Vot­ing Rights Act, this find­ing reflects high sup­port among white vot­ers in coun­ties where the per­ceived threat posed by African-Amer­i­cans to white inter­est was great­est,” the authors con­tin­ued.

By the time the 1970s rolled around, most white vot­ers in the South felt loy­al to the Repub­li­can Par­ty because they were “more in line with the inter­est of those opposed to civ­il rights than was the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.”

The study revealed a near­ly 4 per­cent increase in Repub­li­can vot­ing in coun­ties that had active KKK chap­ters com­pared to coun­ties that didn’t have active chap­ters of the white suprema­cy group.

Despite the fact that the Repub­li­can Party’s eco­nom­ic views were gen­er­al­ly not in favor of work­ing-class south­ern­ers, they still remained loy­al to the par­ty based pure­ly on the KKK’s call for white vot­ers to make sure any “n****r‑loving politi­cian that runs for office” is trumped in the polls by those who sup­port­ed white suprema­cy.

 

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