State politicians may have reached an agreement on immigration yesterday, but it will do little to quiet the issue. Especially if groups like the Ku Klux Klan have their say.
The Rocky Mountain News reported-also, yesterday-that a leader from the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has credited the immigration issue with a rise in membership. A rise, he says, has taken place in the Olathe, Colorado, a small town on the western slope.
“It’s just a little klavern,” he said.
To form a klavern, or KKK chapter, at least 15 members are required, he said.
According to the Local History Center of the Canon City Public Library, the Knights had one of the most “largest and most influential” Colorado followings of “any other state west of the Mississippi River” during the 1920s-a time when the Klan had great influence over the country.
Last May, the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors racialist groups in the United States, also claimed to find a direct link between immigration and racist extremism. The study showed a 33% growth in extremist groups over five years and gave examples of their involvement:
With political operatives paying credence to the immigration “crisis” for their own agendas, and with the Klan’s historical footprint in the state, it is certainly no surprise that racist groups would use the issue to bulk up the ranks.
It is also not something to be taken lightly. For encapsulated in that history resides years of violence and intimidation, right in our own backyard.
