>>56971634It's actually a funny story only when told in broad strokes. A lot of their kulture like the pointy hoods and grandiose titles that sound like a fantasy roleplay club stem from their Protestant roots. Throughout the first generation of klansmen, the sheetboys were riffing on overblown Catholic culture first and foremost before they turned their attention toward harassing freed blacks and their benefactors. Giving themselves goofy names like Wizards and Cyclopes and the weird rituals they did like gathering at midnight and burning crosses were a direct parody of the endless self-important secret societies that had branched off of Catholicism over the years. Secret cults that claimed to preserve the true faith of Christianity but really just sat around doing nothing except sipping wine in exclusive gentlemen's clubs. So the Klan, founded by ex-Confederates and spurred by the bitterness of the Reconstruction Era, decided they would preserve the true faith of Southern Christians... by drinking moonshine and playing psychotic pranks like raiding the homes of freed blackmen to steal their toilets. Later, other ex-Confederates successfully wrested control of the Klan's identity in order to wage an actual terror campaign against Republican politicians and freedmen hoping to kickstart another revolution. As a bit of a cosmic punchline, these actions instead galvanized the public and federal government in favor of reformation and exercising equal rights. People no longer wanted to be associated with the meme and the first generation fizzled out entirely. Most--most--of what we know the second generation for now would later be codified by Woodrow Wilson hosting screenings of Birth of a Nation at the White House and reversing public perception on the klan. This isn't /pol/, so that's all I'm going to say on that.
