'Fever in the Heartland' links Klan history to MAGA movement [View all]

BY TIMOTHY KELLY
August 26, 2023

... A Fever in the Heartland draws powerful and uncomfortable parallels between the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the rise of the MAGA movement in the past decade ...

... Egan .... focuses intently on a particular Klan organizer with unsettling parallels to some of today's right-wing leaders ...

... the state with the highest percentage of Klan members and the state in which the Klan exercised the most complete control over state and local governments was actually Indiana ...

... Stephenson was a charismatic salesman whose oratorical and organizational skills ballooned the Klan's membership throughout the northern states. He sold a Klan that focused intently on cleansing American society of moral ills and those whom he blamed for fostering those ills: Catholics, Jews and Blacks. He exhorted Klan recruits and members to prohibit alcohol's sale and consumption and to police their neighbors' sexual activities ...

Republican leaders feared criticizing the Klan in public and refused to denounce their extralegal activities ...

https://www.ncronline.org/culture/book-reviews/fever-heartland-links-klan-history-maga-movement