Ku Klux Klan in Decline with No Future, Says ADL

The Ku Klux Klan has been in decline for a decade, and there is little prospect of the hooded order once again becoming a significant force, according to a recent report issued by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

There are about 4,000 members of the different competing factions which together are known as the KKK. During the 1980s, ADL estimated that Klan membership ranged from a high of 11,500 in 1981 to 4,500 in 1987-88.

Several factors caused the decline, including the implication of Klan members in violent crime across the country; highly publicized criminal and civil trials indicting Klansmen; and the passage of hate-crimes legislation and anti-paramilitary training statutes in several states.

The Klan was also weakened internally with the departure of its most effective leaders: David Duke, Robert Shelton and Bill Wilkinson.

Duke went on to found the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which is “essentially a Klan without robes,” according to Irwin Suall, director of ADL’s fact-finding department.

Shelton’s sect, United Klans of America, was dealt a fatal blow in 1987 when a $7 million judgment was levied against it. The United Klans was deemed responsible for a murder committed by its agents. Wilkinson left the Klan when he was exposed as an informant for the FBI in 1985.

Their departure gave way to a period of intense factionalism for the Klan, according to the ADL report.

Some Klan leaders are trying to convince their followers to pattern propaganda on the Duke model. The idea, the report said, is to use code language for their racist ideology and to avoid being implicated in violent crimes.

“These new tactics will enable them to gain some additional strength,” according to Suall, but “the Klan is doomed to remain a fringe organization.”