Editing Ku Klux Klan (section)

===== Anti-modern interpretations =====
[[File:Ku Klux Klan parade7.jpg|thumb|Ku Klux Klan parade in [[Washington, D.C.]], September 13, 1926]]
The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansmen, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to its activities. The historian Thomas R. Pegram says that published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan's enemies. There was almost no evidence in that time regarding the behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid-20th century emphasized its Southern roots and the violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity. Scholars compared it to [[fascism]] in Europe.{{sfn|Chalmers|1987|p=322}} Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."<ref>{{cite journal |jstor= 493879 |title= A 'Dog in the Nighttime' Problem: American Fascism in the 1930s |journal= The History Teacher |volume= 19 |issue= 4 |last1= Amann |first1= Peter H. |year= 1986 |doi= 10.2307/493879 |page=562}}</ref>

Pegram says this original interpretation:

{{blockquote|...depicted the Klan movement as an irrational rebuke of modernity by undereducated, economically marginal bigots, religious zealots, and dupes willing to be manipulated by the Klan's cynical, mendacious leaders. It was, in this view, a movement of country parsons and small-town malcontents who were out of step with the dynamism of twentieth-century urban America.{{sfn|Pegram|2011|p=222}}}}