"Democrats started the KKK"

[SHRED]

This is being pushed loudly in rightwing world right now.

Nevermind modern history. Nevermind Goldwater and Nixon's "Southern Strategy".

I guess they believe those marching carrying KKK flags are Democrats?

They are fucking nuts.

[guillaumeb]

1. They are correct.

But in 1964 Democrats enacted the Civil Rights Act and the white hoods and sheets were taken up by the GOP in 1968 with Richard Nixon's Southern strategy.

[trof]

31. Southern Democrats became Republicans almost overnight.

LBJ famously predicted that signing the voting/civil rights bill would lose the southern voters for a generation.
He was just off on how long it has lasted.

[DetlefK]

2. The Republican Party started the "War of Northern Aggression".

See? Two can play that game.

[still_one]

3. The OP just refuted their bullshit. A simpler answer is that most of those FORMER democrats became

republicans when the DEMOCRATS PASSED THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

case closed

and for those who are not aware, Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act

[SHRED]

4. Good and concise

[still_one]

8. I edited it to "most" from "all", because there were a few Democrats who didn't change parties

[ffr]

7. this

[dalton99a]

10. +1

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. Conservative Political Ideology started the KKK

It's just that back then, the major political party that fell under that description was the Democratic party.

They can't shove that shit onto liberals and progressives. It's a conservative movement, through and through.

[arthritisR_US]

28. This is the most astute summation of its origins, TY!

[Unrepentant Fenian]

35. Great point!

[ffr]

6. I'd carry it to its conclusion.

So the KKK are democrats? tRump supports the KKK. Therefore tRump voters voted for and are supporting democrats. Bill & Hillary Clinton are democrats too, were friends or were friendly with DJT for years. Ha! You RW'ers support the Clintons and demacrats.

Square that!

[gratuitous]

12. Precisely

If the KKK is still a Democratic organization (it isn't, and welcome to the 21st Century for the slow coaches who do), then why don't Republicans, and more specifically President Trump, oppose the KKK? Instead, they're doing practically everything short of donning hoods and robes in cozying up to these racist swine. The Democrats have no such problem denouncing the KKK.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. And the parties pretty much flipped during FDR's administration

and the Democrats became the defender of civil rights - except for the southern Dixiecrats, who went over to the Republican party in the '60s and have entrenched themselves there ever since. A lot of Republicans are people who left the Democratic party when it turned out not to be racist enough for them.

[scheming daemons]

11. From about 1820 until FDR, the Dems were on the wrong side of history

Starting with Andrew Jackson.... and with notable exceptions. And even after FDR, *SOUTHERN* Dems were on the wrong side of history, with respect to race.


But then a Dem President got the Civil Rights Act passed..... and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms led a revolt in which the Dixiecrats left the party and became Republicans.


And now 99.999% of white supremacists are Republicans.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

13. Then in the 60s, the segregationists went where?......... nt

[haele]

14. And the Republicans took over after the Democrats abandoned it.

So who's the stupid assholes taking advantage of a failed ideology?

Like saying - hey, look - he used to be a bank robber. Maybe I should be a bank robber too...

Haele

[kimbutgar]

15. My hubby got confronted with that line from a right winger yesterday

He said that was 150 years ago and it was in 1965 the Democrats passed the civil rights act and lost the white men votes since then. The guy walked away from him.

[procon]

16. That's like saying scientists once thought the sun revolved around the earth,

but then they learned more about astronomy and that knowledge changed their thinking.

By the same token, Republicans once opposed the Confederacy and more Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act than Democrats... what the hell happened to them since then?

[moose65]

25. That's actually a little misleading

To say that "more Republicans voted for it than Democrats" is not correct. 199 Democrats voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act, and 136 Republicans did. A higher PERCENTAGE of Republicans voted for it, but in absolute numbers there were more Democratic votes. There was also a strong regional component: about 90% of all Congress members from the old Union states voted in favor. The Democrats were split by the North/South divide.

[Eliot Rosewater]

17. Then why isn't every KKK member and Nazi a democrat?

[BainsBane]

18. The Democratic Party was in fact the party of slavery

and after it the party of segregation. The South was solidly Democrat from the antebellum period until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, though it took some years for them all to migrate to the GOP. Prior to the mid-1960s, the Democratic Party reinforced Jim Crow. For example, when FDR when directly asked to combat widespread lynchings refused to do so because he said it would alienate Southern Whites.

Republicans like to invoke that history to excuse their own segregationist stand today. It's transparent, and it's clearly a refusal to take responsibility for their own party's positions. Trump has officially made them the Party of White Supremacy, whereas dating from Nixon's time they were the party of the Southern Strategy.

The history of the Democratic Party, however, is real. It cannot be swept away or sanitized. That history also is why so many of us bristle at comments about how the Democratic Party has lost its way or doesn't represent "working people," as it once did. The Party of FDR was not just the New Deal, even though the New Deal itself was implemented in blatantly racist ways. It was also the party of Jim Crow and lynchings.
That is why it is essential for critics of the current direction of the party to quit invoking the segregationist past in idealized terms.

[Ilsa]

19. And the GOP ran them out of it and took it over. nt

[Leith]

20. I Remind Them That It Is a Southern Thing

Apologies to our Southerners here.

The KKK was started in Pulaski, TN, a few years after the Civil War ended by former confederate soldiers. They hated everyone except white protestants.

It resurged inAtlanta, GA, in the 1910s and 1920s. They still hated everyone except white protestants.

They reared their ugly hooded heads again in the 1950s. Their allies were police departments in cities across the south. Same viciousness, new generation.

There have been chapters across the country, but their strength comes from the former confederacy and the current rethug party.

I do even better when they try to claim that it was Congressional rethugs who gave us the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s. When you break down the numbers by region, it's painfully obvious where those who voted against civil rights are from.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

21. To them

The only history that seems to be relevant to right wingers in terms of Democrats and Republicans and racism is the Civil War-1964. The post-1964 and Civil Rights Act (which right-wingers also want to repeal or weaken) party realignments due to race don't matter/exist to them.


It should be fairly obvious after Charlottesville which party supports the KKK now and which one doesn't.

[Oneironaut]

22. It's true, but the parties kind of flipped.

Democrats used to be populist racists. Now it's Republicans.

[JHB]

23. The Democrats got out of the KKK business, and the Republicans...

...saw a recruiting opportunity and set up tables.

[NCjack]

24. If it is important that DEMs started the KKK (and they did), then today's KKKers

would join the DEM party, vote for DEM candidates and give money to the DEM party. I don't know of any KKKer who votes DEM, etc.

[rurallib]

26. Been under new management since 1964

[HopeAgain]

27. So we will happily finish them!

[bluepen]

29. Simple rebuttal: "Were they liberals or conservatives?"

[Montauk6]

34. Oh they'll quickly say "liberals"

I mean, these people think Hitler was a lefty lib because he was "National Socialist" and vegetarian.

[Elwood P Dowd]

30. Everyone with half a brain knows the republicans recruited and welcomed the racists Dems

beginning in the 1960s. Today they own them lock, stock, and barrel.

Also remember this: Not all republicans are racists. Only about 90% of republican politicians and voters are racists. However, 100% of the racists vote for republicans 100% of the time.

[MountCleaners]

32. Show them this documentary:

&t=78s

[ck4829]

33. And Republicans keep it alive.

[sinkingfeeling]

36. Yeah, but Democrats evolved while the GOP devolved.