The sudden rise of the Ku Klux Klan has created a veritable stir all over the country, for the Ku Klux Klan is a government within a government, a state within a state, its patriotic program notwithstanding. It is primarily an organization of dark forces. It is not for anything positive and definite, but against many things, against many groups of people, against many religions, races, nationalities, etc. In its relation to the Jews, it can be compared to the Black Hundreds in Russia. In its relation to the Negroes, it may be compared to the old Ku Klux Klan, the sole program of which was the annihilation of the Negro, and its relation to the Catholics is similar to that of the fanatic English Puritans of the seventeenth century. In addition, it is anti-liberal, anti-Socialist, anti-radical, and what is of most importance, it is thoroughly anti-American. Its danger to true Americanism lies in the fact that it is cynically anti-American. It arrogates to itself the rights 2exercised by American courts of justice, and by the American government. It is an organization of violence, murder, and arson, and it commits crimes, obnoxious and brutal crimes, in the name of law and order. It goes without saying that the broad-minded American people will not stand for a government within a government, and for a state within a state, and will fight these black forces until they are crushed. There is already a movement afoot in Chicago to counteract the efforts of this new Black Hundred, and there is no doubt in our mind that the efforts of the new movement to smash the Ku Klux Klan will be successful. Because we Jews are on the first list of the Ku Klux Klan, and because the Ku Klux Klan is primarily a silent pogrom organization, co-operating with all the dark forces in the country, we are especially interested in the suppression of this organized banditry. At present, when the minds of the people are still somewhat confused as a result of the war and its aftermath, the Ku Klux Klan will find it easy to enroll tens of thousands of members, and to organize a force of terror in this country. Therefore, no right thinking American citizen can postpone the fight against the Ku Klux Klan. It must be taken up at once, and it must be waged until the forces 3of light will emerge victoriously from the struggle, and the forces of darkness will be crushed. The Ku Klux Klan must not be permitted to accumulate power, because it will abuse this power. An organization like the Ku Klux Klan, describing itself as an invisible government, and meting out justice to the people in its own way and according [to] its own understanding, is always a danger to civilization, to orderly government, and to the normal political development of things. One need only to be reminded of the Spanish Inquisition in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The struggle in the Spanish Inquisition was very similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan, and its program also similar to that of the Black Hundreds in this country. The program of the Inquisition was against Moors, against Jews, against Protestants, and before the rise of Protestantism, against heretics, this is to say against all those who refused to accept the rule of the corrupted priest of that time. The result of the Spanish Inquisition is well known. The Inquisition has not only ruined and wrecked the Moors and the Jews and the heretics, but it has also ruined and wrecked Spain, and to the present day, Spain is still suffering from the attacks of the Inquisition. The Ku Klux Klan, if left alone, will not only ruin Catholics and Negroes, and 4Jews, and freethinkers, and radicals, and all those against whom it has declared war, but it will mainly ruin America. It will upset its economic system, it will smash its institutions, it will undermine civil liberty, and it will bring terror and darkness. The Ku Klux Klan is not only a dark, but a destructive force. Just because it is a state within a state and a government within a government. In America there can be only one government, the government elected by the people and for the people and the city of this government is Washington, D.C. There cannot be a second government in addition to this government in Atlanta, Georgia. There is only one president in America, President Harding, and there cannot be a second one, and there is only one place in America where justice is being meted out to the people, in the court of justice, and no group of people, no matter how powerful, how patriotic, and how influential, can replace this court of justice, and arrogate to themselves the rights, duties, and privileges of these courts of justice. Those who do it, or who intend to do it, are guilty of high treason, and should be rounded up and punished for their crimes.

The Ku Klux Klan can become a real menace to this country. It can endanger the very existence of the American people, and the sooner it will be crushed and eliminated altogether, the better for America and for humanity.