President Donald J. Trump reportedly modeled his Inaugural Address after Andrew Jackson, a white supremacist who was the architect of one of the most shameful events in American history, the Trail of Tears. Listening to President Trump's Inaugural Address I heard another horrifying historical echo. When Trump used the phrase "This American carnage," claimed that his inauguration signaled the transfer of "power from Washington, DC... to you, the people," and promised to "make America great again" he sounded an awful lot like Hiram Evans, the Imperial Wizard of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan.
The white supremacist Evans is no longer a household name. But ninety years ago he was known and by turns feared and celebrated throughout the country. Under his watch the KKK reached its largest membership. In 1924, millions of white men belonged to the Klan. Senators, Governors, and Congressmen from nine states either openly declared their allegiance or owed their elections to the violent racist organization. Today white supremacists call themselves the alt-right and their movement is growing again.
As Imperial Wizard, the titular head of the Klan, Evans offered blueprints for other Klan leaders to follow in his speeches and pamphlets. His texts typically contained the same set of elements. He warned of terrifying enemies both inside and outside of the country. He believed there was a "vast horde of immigrants" threatening to overrun the nation. He claimed African Americans, Catholics, and Jews weakened it from the inside. He declared the country was in a state of decline. He said a "spirit of lawlessness is abroad in the land... fast ripening into an anarchy." He argued that action must be taken immediately, before it was "too late for the redemption of the Republic." Trump's speech contained some of the same elements.
Just as Trump berated the political "establishment," Evans attacked "politicians [who] seek not the common welfare, but their own success." He berated civil and religious groups who focused on their own particularities rather than "the forces of evil."
He also offered a formula to solve the problems the country faced. His formula was inevitably "unity" and a return to what one of his followers called "that real, genuine Americanism of... our forefathers." To return to this idealized America where "life is easy, health is good and conditions ideal" the Klan hoped to "Americanize America." This meant keeping out immigrants and purifying the country of everything that caused "white civilization" to "degenerate."
Sadly, these themes were present in President Trump's Inaugural Address. The new President painted a picture of American decline. Just like Evans, he claimed that there are external and internal enemies bent upon the nation's destruction. He also promised rejuvenation through unity.
Replace the word Muslim with the words Catholic and Jew in many of the President's campaign speeches and it's difficult to tell the difference between the new President and Hiram Evans. Klan leaders complained of American citizens who "owe allegiance to an institution that is foreign to the Government of the United States." Trump has repeatedly questioned the loyalties of American citizens whose parents were immigrants. He continually questioned the country of President Obama's birth. He has also made frequent use of the term "Americanism," a word that appears in innumerable Klan pamphlets and speeches.
The terrifying thing about the Klan, of course, was not the words of its leaders, but the actions of Klansmen across the country. These violent white supremacists assaulted, lynched, murdered, and abused African Americans, political radicals, Jews, Catholics, and anyone else they viewed as a threat to their vision of America. Immediately following the election, there is good reason to think that the words of now President Trump emboldened contemporary white supremacists to violent action. There has been a spike in hate crimes.
This brings into focus what is at stake in normalizing the words of President Trump and his administration. Their language has direct parallels to the violent language of earlier generations of white supremacists. This is unacceptable. The Klan was eventually marginalized by women and men speaking out, marching, and organizing against the white supremacist terrorist organization. The Klan-like rhetoric of the President cannot stand. The global Women's Marches sparked by his misogynistic behavior were but the first steps towards stopping it. Proving that the words of white supremacists have no place in the global discourse will require more marches, more organization, and a constant practice of speaking out.