Which Republican public relations firm is handling the Ku Klux Klan PR these days? They seem to be undergoing a "rebranding," that overused euphemism for papering over their past in order to renew interest in their future.
“We don’t hate people because of their race. I mean, we’re a Christian organization,” Frank Ancona, an Imperial Wizard of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told WWBT on Thursday.
He insisted that the KKK had been unfairly maligned for its acts of violence against black people in the United States.
“Because of the acts of a few rogue Klansmen our Klansmen are supposed to be murderers and want to lynch black people, and we are supposed to be terrorists, and that is a complete falsehood.”
Awwww, they're just misunderstood. All of those photos of them burning crosses on lawns and the lynchings that actually did happen? Just a big fat lie.
At any rate, their rebranding is not going particularly well. Perhaps that's related to the flyers they've been leaving in Virginia neighborhoods. Here are some of their marketing pitches:
One of those fliers says “many people have experienced the blacks firsthand” and have seen the “savagery and animalism in many of these people.”
The flier that went to Chesterfield residents says the organization’s mission is “exalting the Caucasian race and teaching the doctrine of white supremacy.”
“That does not mean that we are enemies of the colored and mongrel race, but it does mean that we are organized to establish the solidarity and to realize the mission of the white race,” that flier reads.
Ancona said some misconceptions come from the fact that the organization is open exclusively to white, native-born Christians and that it has rituals and ceremonies that mysterious because they are known only to Klan members.
Yes, that could certainly have something to do with it. There's nothing particularly racist about excluding anyone who isn't white, now is there?
Watch the video:
