Is The KKK On The Rise?

The South Bend Tribune's Nancy Sulok reports today there is disagreement over whether there is a resurgence of the KKK in Indiana and elsewhere, but there is no disagreement that hate groups in general are growing, fueled largely by anti-immigrant issues and lesser by gay marriage and urban crime issues. Sulok writes:

Is the KKK growing or shrinking? It depends on whom you ask. The Anti-Defamation League released a report earlier this month that said the Ku Klux Klan is undergoing "a surprising and troubling resurgence,'' largely by exploiting "hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime'' . . .

It's an issue of local interest, because the Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has its headquarters in Osceola.

The imperial wizard, or national leader, of the group is Railton Loy, a Mishawaka resident. CNN News broadcast an interview with him earlier this month. He was wearing his Klan costume and used his Klan alias, Ray Larsen, for the interview.

CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick asked him about the immigration issue. "Illegal immigrants is bringing us far more members than we had when we were just totally against any ethnic group,'' Loy responded.

When I called him to talk about the issue, Loy said, "I have nothing to say, ma'am." Then he hung up.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 15 hate groups in Indiana, of which seven are Klan. I think if you would poll members of Indiana's GLBT community, they would add at least three more groups to that list in Indiana--Advance America, the American Family Association of Indiana and the Indiana Family Institute--based upon the inflammatory, anti-gay bigoted rhetoric they have used in efforts to block the adoption of local human rights ordinances prohibiting discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender persons, support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and opposition to a hate crimes law.

On the point of this article, a good question to ask is why the KKK needs to show any visibility at all in Indiana or elswhere on issues like gay marriage and immigration when all these religious rights groups are advocating their agenda for them? It looks to me like they're getting their cake and eating it too. If the KKK openly advocates these positions, they are called on the carpet as a hate group. These other groups do the same and they are afforded respectability for simply expressing their religious and ideologicial beliefs.