Who could reduce the chaos of racist, pro-Fascist KKK - only Superman!

KKK and leader, 1946

American racist organisations were well documented since the start of the Ku Klux Klan. But the situation in the inter-war years was tot­ally unexpected. The Friends of New Germ­any, supported by New York’s German consul, were largely naturalised Ger­man emig­rants based in NY. The Friends was a small group that exist­ed into the mid-1930s, attacking Jews, Communists and the Versailles Treaty.

German Fritz Kuhn (1896-1951) emigrated to the USA in 1928, joined the Friends of New Germany and quickly became leader. When the Friends ended, he un­d­erstood that the only way for a pro-Nazi move­ment to suc­ceed in the US was with an organisation based on Amer­ican citizens of German Protestant des­cent. The German-American Bund took over in 1936, its members “representing loyal, pat­riotic Amer­icans who were strength­ening their ad­opt­ed home­land, prot­ecting it from Jewish, Communist and black cul­tural infl­uences”. They urged US neut­ral­ity in European aff­airs and at Bund rallies, Am­erican flags an­d swas­t­ikas flew; both national anthems were played.

The Bund’s most publicised rally was at Madison Square Gar­den NY in Feb 1939. In front of 22,000 fanat­ical sup­porters, Kuhn delivered a rousing speech, decry­ing the USA’s suic­idal tol­erance of paras­it­ical aliens. Kuhn condemned Pre­s­ident Roosevelt, call­ing his New Deal the Jew Deal and crit­icising Bolshevik-Jewish American leaders. Outside was a huge crowd of anti-Nazis, protest­ing loudly. The 1,500 police on duty were ord­er­ed to remove all anti-Nazi signs!

WW2 broke out in Europe etc in Aug 1939. The Bund was offic­ially disbanded days after the bomb­ing of Pearl Harbour Harbour Dec 1941 and the USA’s own declaration of war. By the time the USA join­ed the war, I assumed Nazism would never raise its ugly head in the USA again.

WRONG! Other pro-Fascist org­anisations continued to promote the Nazi values vigorously. The old Ku Klux Klan and the newer Christian En­for­cers found common ground with the anti-Semitic, white-supremacist ex-Bundists, sharing rall­ies. And Wesley Swift moved to California as a Ku Klux Klan organiser and rifle instructor. He found­ed his church and became the West Coast repres­ent­ative of the Christian Nationalist Crus­ade. Swift also hosted a daily radio programme, broad­casting that “Aryans were God's chosen race and that non-Caucasians could never be saved”.

And after the war, who was responsible for funding, publicising and org­an­ising the anti-Black, anti-Semitic riots at a Paul Robeson concert in Peek­skill New York in 1949? The Ku Klux Klan! Despite the most trag­ic world war having ended, the pro-Fascist mobs screamed “We are Hit­ler’s boys, here to finish his job”. The violence overflowed even to a bus of concert-goers travelling along the highway to visit Roose­v­elt’s Hyde Park home. Hundreds of Jews and blacks were hospitalised.

Clearly pro-Fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-black organisations in the USA continued to rally. The American Nazi Party’s founder and leader, George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–67), was one of the most significant ex­tremist ideologues of the post war period, con­tinued to appeal to rac­ist Americans. The Klan was experiencing a huge resurgence in the post-WW2 era; its membership was going up and its political influence was increasing.

Stetson Kennedy, revealing the KKK's secret material

So a young activist writer Stetson Kennedy went undercover to in­f­il­trate the group. By regularly attending meetings, he heard the organisation's secrets. But by the time Kennedy took the inform­at­ion to the media and law enforcement agencies, the Klan had become so powerful and int­im­idating that police were hesitant to act.

Superman had been fighting crime in print since 1938. Bookriot showed that early Superman was always a left-leaning, populist rabble-rouser, and as WW1 continued, his opposition to Fascism strengthened. The series described Superman as a “champion of the oppressed,” but after a few years they added “champion of equal rights and fighter against the forces of hate and prejudice.” The characters tangled with hate groups of all stripes.

Adventures of Superman became a radio sensation in the mid 1940s when kids across the USA huddled weekly to listen. It was on the radio that Superman first developed his pow­ers, and became assoc­iat­ed with truth, just­ice and the American way. So it was no wonder that when Stetson Kennedy decided to ex­pose the sec­rets of the KKK, he looked to the superhero for insp­iration.

To share his findings, Stetson Kennedy approached the writers of the Superman radio serial. With the Nazis probably no longer a threat, the producers were looking for a new villain for Superman to fight - the KKK was a great fit! The radio episodes exposed many of the KKK's most guarded secrets and rit­uals, completely stripping the Klan of its mystique. Although the KKK was masked as The Clan of the Fiery Cross, Klan leaders were furious about the por­trayal and threatened to boycott the show's sponsor. Too late. The Clan of the Fiery Cross episodes, which got brilliant rat­ings, had exposed the hate group's practices to the general public.

Could Superman reveal the KKK's hate practices?

While we may doubt that a fict­ion­al children’s superhero could single­-handedly defeat the powerful, violent racists, the Klan did suffer from decreasing recruit­ments. So thank you Sup­er­man for pitting your moral strength against those immoral KKK men in white hoods.