Word: klan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since then, Robb has taken up where Duke left off, using modern marketing methods to enhance the Klan's image. The Klan sells itself on tabloid TV and on business cards emblazoned with three large red Ks. There is even something for Klan kids: balloons depicting a hooded night rider on horseback. "We're selling white pride, white power, whatever," Robb says. "It doesn't make any difference if you're selling the Klan or used cars or toothbrushes...
...liars. They talk about peace, but there is no peace over there. They are being built up by hatred." Then he tells his fans that they are on a "mission of love" at a "white Christian revival." With his message goes a commercial tie-in. Besides the usual Klan caps and T shirts and stickers, these rallies offer pricey Klan kitsch, like a ceramic statuette of a hooded Klansman whose eyes glow an eerie red when you plug it into an electrical outlet ($25 at a rally or $20 for the mail-order version...
When outsiders are nearby, Robb is careful to avoid the word nigger, though he admits to an occasional lapse. He avoids directly denigrating blacks and other races, and he shies from embracing white-power hero Adolf Hitler. He stresses that the Klan, or at least his branch of it, does not advocate violence. "We're not night riders running around beating people up," he says, "but we're setting our sights on governmental power." Robb thinks the future of the Klan lies in politics, and to prove it, he is running for the Arkansas legislature. In speeches, he blames...
Like an infectious virus, the Klan has learned to mutate and survive, and that's just what Robb is doing. "It's the shadow side of the American character, and it's not going to go away," explains Wyn Wade, author of The Fiery Cross, an excellent study of the Klan. "The power is their history. We can never forget their potential to do it again...
...member of the lunatic fringe, one cannot so easily dismiss the forces that drive his crusade or its impact. His updated rhetoric provides a paper-thin layer of respectability to a noxious creed that appeals to alienated white youths like Shawn Slater, whom Robb is grooming as a future Klan leader. An ex-skinhead, Slater now heads the Klan's chapter in Aurora, Colo. Like his mentor, Slater has mastered the art of attracting publicity by staging events that draw the wrath of protesters. In Denver last January, he orchestrated a Klan rally on Martin Luther King Day that turned...