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New Documentary Series Goes Inside the Ku Klux Klan

Dec 19, 2016  •  Post A Comment

The Ku Klux Klan is on the rise, according to the producers of a new documentary series that takes viewers inside the organization.

The New York Times reports that the eight-part series “Generation KKK,” which premieres Jan. 10 on A&E, “burrows in with high-ranking Klan members and their families. The series also takes A&E, best known for long-running favorites like ‘Hoarders’ and ‘Intervention,’ into programming waters more complicated — and politically charged — than anything it has shown before.”

The report notes: “According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of independent Klan chapters in the United States (there is no national organization) grew from 72 to 190 between 2014 and 2015. The Anti-Defamation League estimates membership at 3,000, while the law center places the figure at between 5,000 and 8,000. And the indoctrination of young people, members say, is crucial to the Klan’s survival.”

Filmmaker Aengus James says the project, which began taking shape a year and a half ago — just before the presidential election began to cast the Klan and other nationalist groups in a brighter light — focuses largely on the struggles of Klan families.

“We had a stance, and we were clear with folks that we were hoping for them to see the light and to come out of this world. It’s an incredibly destructive environment for anybody to be in, let alone children,” said James, an executive producer on the series.

The Times adds: “As they sought to capture this relatively unseen world, the filmmakers also incorporated the anti-hate activists Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Arno Michaelis and Bryon Widner as they tried to persuade members to leave the Klan — or at least to leave their children out of it.”

2 Comments

  1. “According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of independent Klan chapters in the United States… grew from 72 to 190 between 2014 and 2015.”

    One wonders if the report will mention the inconvenient fact that, according to Mark Potok, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Public Relations chief, the number of alleged Klan chapters collapsed from 163 to 72 between 2013 and 2014. THIS is “hard data”?

    It really doesn’t matter what numbers Mr. Potok throws out there, nobody in the media will perform even the most rudimentary fact checks on his ridiculous claims. Potok’s “Hate Map” is a fundraising tool, nothing more.

    http://wp.me/pCLYZ-tF

    Meanwhile, Mr. Potok has been predicting the demise of the Invisible Empire for years, except when he needs it to “double in size” every so often.

    “The Klan of today is small, fractured, impotent and irrelevant.” (www.timesfreepress.com, September 12, 2010)

    “But Potok said the Klan has disintegrated. ‘There is no Klan now,’ he said, ‘only a collection of squabbling organizations.” (www.sanluisobispo.com, March 23, 2011)

    ‘The Klan today is weak, poorly led and without any sort of centralized organization,’ Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the [SPLC], told Vocativ. ‘It’s even looked down upon by other hate groups – they look at them as these country bumpkins, and they’re generally right’ (www.vocativ.com, August 18, 2016)

    As long as there are tax-free donor-dollars to be had, the KKK will never go away.

  2. This is ridiculous. First of all, I don’t need to watch a sympathetic series on the trials and tribulations of “belonging to the Klan.” Secondly, I agree with Richard, the statistics thrown out by the SPLC are garbage. A & E should have requested to see their data and examined how they came to their conclusions. Finally, when is A & E going to do a deep dive documentary on Black Lives Matter? The Nation of Islam and Calypso Louie? Liberation Theology and Reverend Wright?

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