Gunfire in Kentucky

Since Barack Obama’s election, America’s racists have been on the rise. A visit to the militant Ku Klux Klan

Uninvited guests never stray into this place by mistake. The place is nameless and is situated in a secluded forest and swamp area in southern Kentucky; the nearest small town, Dawson Springs, is miles away. Millions of mosquitoes swarm over the humid meadows, coyotes howl in the distance, and there’s not a soul to be seen anywhere – yet, suddenly, around the bend, a charred cross and a swastika, burned by the wayside. Empty cartridges in the grass catch the sun’s rays. A rusty metal fence winds its way between the trees. Behind it, in a hollow, are a handful of ramshackle barracks over which two flags fly: the Confederate Stars and Bars and a red flag bearing three black letters, KKK. This place belong to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the secret organization that used to lynch black people from trees or burn them alive.

No lights, no voices, no movement can be seen. A child’s empty swing squeaks in the wind. One might think the inhabitants had abandoned the compound, were it not for the chained up, snarling dogs, baring their teeth, and the red car and brown pickup truck that appear suddenly, in a giant cloud of dust out of nowhere. Two men and one woman get out.

The bald man among them growls, “I’m Ron Edwards,” and then loudly shouts, “Wolfgang! Wooolfgang!” Immediately, one of the gigantic dogs crouches on the ground at his feet, whimpering. It’s a mutt, half German shepherd and half wolf and obviously the pride and joy of its owner. “The only bastards we allow here are animals,” Edwards grins. “America’s darkest day was January 20, when Obama, a nigger bastard, moved into the White House.” Edwards displays his world philosophy tattooed on his skin: swastikas; SS runes; the white hood of the KKK; the words, “death to Zionists” and “hate.” The white race, he says, is threatened by extinction and has to regain control in America. Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Jews should be sent back to where they came from.

This is a journey into the midst of the Imperial Klan of America (IKA). According to security experts, Edwards’ group is the second largest and possibly the most dangerous right-wing extremist group in the nation, responsible for several recently committed crimes. In July 2006, IKA members nearly beat 16-year-old Jordan Gruver to death at a county fair. They detained the son of a Latino father and Indian mother, because they said he was a “spic,” an illegal alien. In November 2008, shortly after Obama’s election, the FBI arrested two white skinheads who were planning to assassinate the new “nigger president” and massacre at least 100 African Americans. One of them is a friend of Edwards’ adult son, Steven, and a former member of the violent skinhead group known as the Supreme White Alliance.

Security organizations in Washington, as well as members of the respected Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, say that right-wing extremist groups constantly sow incessant hatred on their websites. They are, thus, partially responsible for the increase in terrorism and crime, because it is here that the perpetrators of violence get “their tools,” much like the Maine racist who refused to accept that his countrymen had actually elected an African American as president and in whose kitchen police discovered materials necessary to build a “dirty bomb” last December. Or like the Massachusetts man who murdered two African Americans on the day Obama was sworn in as president. Or like 88-year-old James von Brunn, who stormed the Holocaust Museum last June and shot a guard to death. Police found a note in Brunn’s car saying, “Obama was created by Jews.”

Morris Dees, co-founder of the SPLC, says not every racist attack is directed at Obama, but that the rage behind them often is. Last spring, the SPLC, as well as Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, sounded the alarm: The danger of an assassination attempt on Obama had increased. Nazi, skinhead and KKK groups showed marked increases in membership, up 54 percent since the year 2000. The concerns have increased, because the protest demonstrations this summer against health care reform have attracted more fanatics. Last weekend, those opposed to Obama showed up at the protest march in Washington, carrying toy assault rifles, shouting, “We came from Montana and Utah, and we’re unarmed – this time!”

Ron Edwards proudly boasts that, on election night, the huge number of sympathetic visitors to his website caused it to crash. “Thousands of patriots wanted to express their anger,” he says. Still, he rejects any blame for violence on the Klan’s part, pointing to the statement on his website that proclaims, “We, the Imperial Klan of America, oppose violence and are law-abiding!”

The left side of his bald head bears the tattoo, “Fuck the SPLC!” The civil rights organization, with some 150 employees, went on the attack. Last November, the SPLC was successful in convincing an all-white Kentucky jury to find Edwards guilty of complicity in a “hate crime” against Jordan Gruver, although the Klan chief wasn’t personally involved in the beating and had no direct knowledge of it. The rationale: Whoever preaches hate and cannot control his or her organization is jointly culpable. Edwards was ordered to pay Gruver $1.5 million in damages.

Edwards says, “Let ‘em come,” patting the barrel of the pistol loosely stuck in the waistband of his jeans. “This guy, this spic, won’t get one cent from me, because I don’t own anything, I’ve signed it all over to my son.” The courts estimate the value of the forest property to be between $200,000 and $300,000. Edwards has no regular income. The Grand Wizard, the great sorcerer, as his followers call him, exists on donations from his followers. But Morris Dees says the camp could be confiscated as KKK property.

Ron Edwards ambles over to a small, white hut at the compound’s gate. As he wipes his boots on a threadbare Israeli flag, he says, “The Jews don’t deserve any better.” Then he pulls a document out of a drawer – 10 pages of fine print. His defense lawyer has just filed an appeal of his conviction and sent him a copy. In it, he admits that, although the Klan chieftain and the IKA may employ drastic, militant speech to express their views, they essentially live peacefully. The Constitution also protects “hate speech” and, thus, guarantees their right to say whatever they wish, and the violent acts with which the four Klan members are charged have nothing to do with their leader. “I’m a radical defender of tradition,” says Edwards, pointing to the flags at the entrance. “I’m defending white America, the legacy of the southern confederacy and the customs of the KKK! That doesn’t make me a criminal!”

In the South, the Confederate battle flag is flown on many rooftops and in many public areas, often not far from government buildings. Dealers at flea markets peddle Civil War medals and sing anthems to the heroic Confederate army. While some try to put this unfortunate part of history into perspective in far-away Washington, many here in Kentucky try to cling to the old glories. Kentucky and most of the bordering southern states didn’t vote for Obama, son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother.

But Ron Edwards doesn’t have much to do with any show of nostalgia or southern folklore. The Grand Wizard combines traditional white racism with the violent ideology of the neo-Nazis. He says of himself, “I’m a little bit of everything; a little KKK, a little Nazi, a little skinhead.” This highly volatile mixture, says Morris Dees of the SPLC, often attracts “bewildered loners, castaways that the country calls lone wolves.” But the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers painfully show that the assassins aren’t necessarily so alone, after all. During Edwards’ trial, a former KKK member described him as “highly dangerous” and said he had personally asked him to assassinate Morris Dees some years ago. “Damned slander,” Edwards answered.

In the IKA compound, meanwhile, there’s brisk activity. A man in a hooded white robe is putting up a Christian cross, while loudly proclaiming that he doesn’t in the least regret the beating of Gruver or the shooting death of the museum guard, adding, “It’s lucky there are still people who will defend white America” and show the world “that we won’t put up with a Holocaust Museum on our soil. Tell people that’s what happens when niggers run the country. America goes down the drain.”

Jim Steeley, Edwards’ right-hand man, has now made an appearance. The lanky man, wearing camouflage pants and boots, is a former prison social worker. Edwards greets him with a Hitler salute and accompanies him through the compound. A large, covered stage stands in a clearing behind the barracks, adjacent to the children’s playground. This is the site on which a two-day “Nordic Festival” is held each spring. Three hundred to 500 skinheads and their families assemble here from everywhere to sing hate songs with titles like, “A Dirty Jew Deserves Nothing Better Than Death” or “Let’s Send Mexicans Back Home in Coffins.”

Edwards is proud to have assembled such disparate extremist right-wing groups as skinheads, neo-Nazis and KKK members under his own roof. When evening falls on the Nordic Festival, Edwards distributes torches, and the cross and a swastika in the meadow are set on fire. The glow from the fires illuminates the white hangman’s nooses dangling from the stage. They’ve been the hallmark of the white racist KKK for 130 years. As election day 2008 approached, the nooses appeared in increasing numbers in schoolyards and on the doors of black professors. “Not to worry, we haven’t lynched a nigger in these woods yet,” Sheeley laughs. He then adds, “You gotta have some fun.”

Three to four times a year, right-wing extremists gather in the compound for combat training. They scramble through the undergrowth in camouflage uniforms, firing at targets with semi-automatic weapons. The most popular target shows a black man running away. Ron Edwards calls it “the runaway nigger.” As we depart, Edwards says he’s actually glad Obama was elected president. “He’s united the white opposition and finally put a recognizable face on our enemy.”