Maybe the polemic fascination for the subject of white supremacists and extremists comes from my South American background. We had no such thing in our history, or at least nothing so strongly rooted in our cultures.
And while the modern Ku Klux Klan is trying to distance itself from its predecessors, this seems unlikely.
It’s hard to understand. The KKK website fills its pages with an extended list of explanations and reasons the group has no part in crime or hate groups, saying members rely on the quality of people that believe America should be a Christian and white nation — as it was founded.
On those texts, of course, we see several biblical quotes taken out of context in an attempt to justify their “30 Reasons for Seperatism” – their typo, not mine.
Here’s the second online quote on  the list: “God made everything to reproduce ‘after his own kind’ (Gen 1:11-12, 6:20, 7:14). Kind means type and color. He would have kept them all alike to begin with had he intended equality.”
Even more fluctuating arguments are thrown in the list, like No. 6: “Isaac forbade Jacob to take a wife of the Canaanites (Gen. 27:46-28:7).”
All right, so because millennia ago Isaac couldn’t marry a woman from another tribe, you better not get involved with that African-American friend on whom you have a crush.
It makes a lot of sense, especially if you have biblical-religious knowledge, that most of the passages cited are from the Old Testament.
What makes all of this harder to understand is why — if you want to gather people in a social-political organization — would you bear the name of one that has a violent, intolerant and criminal past?
Though today’s Klan is a mere shadow of what it was in the past, it is very much alive, and in our case, really close to home. Most of these groups can be more easily associated with extremist activists, sympathizing with anti-immigration and anti-government movements. Sound familiar?
Photojournalist Anthony Karen, author of “Invisible Empire: Ku Klux Klan,” published in 2009 by Powerhouse Books, portrays a journey to the heart of the Klan during the days after President Barack Obama took office. Pictures include ceremonies in Walker, La.
Karen doesn’t say how, but he had access to secret ceremonies such as the famous cross burning. It appalls me that such things still happen, just like it amazes me that African rituals where animals are sacrificed still happen everywhere.
And for those who question the capacity of the Klan for violence should remember 2008’s murder of Cynthia Lynch. Ironically, or not, she wanted to be initiated in the Klan and came from Oklahoma to Louisiana to meet members and be part of a Klan’s boot camp. After 24 hours of chanting and running with torches, she couldn’t take it and asked to be taken back to the bus station.
After an argument, the group’s “Grand Lordship,” Chuck Foster, shot her to death. This happened 60 miles from New Orleans.
I thought we said goodbye to the last few centuries, but these people are proving me wrong.
Despite the fact that Karen’s book depicts various groups that barely resemble the 19th and 20th centuries’ Klan, dissolved under at least 34 different names, it alerts us of an uprising of hate groups that have intolerance and extremism as their primary principles.
Let’s not kid ourselves and forget. Racism and intolerance are very much alive, and be it against whatever group, race or denomination, it is a social disease and doesn’t fit America’s slogan of “the land of the free.”
Marcelo Vieira is a 32-year-old graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on twitter @TDR_MVieira.
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Contact Marcelo Vieira at [email protected]