The reason why the “Democrats created the KKK” false narrative is so widespread, is because those who are trying to counter it aren’t doing so very effectively. In fact, they are unintentionally validating and enabling it. ”Those were the old Southern Democrats, not the modern Democratic Party” doesn’t work. The reason why, is because conservatives can only think in black and white — they see the world in binary false dichotomies. There is no room for grey area or nuance, In the eyes of a conservative, a Democrat is a Democrat. There are no nuanced variations of Democrats. Just like there are no nuanced variations of Muslims — they’re all Sharia Law loving terrorists as far as many conservatives are concerned. Also, conservatives have no concept of progression over space and time. That’s why the world begins on inauguration day in a conservative’s alternative reality, and the current president gets credit for the accomplishments of the previous president. The only thing they understood from your mouth was ‘Yes, those were Democrats.’ That’s it. Everything else is noise. So how do you destroy that meme? Easy — stop saying that, because it’s false. STOP SAYING THAT. Here’s what you say: Wrong — the Ku Klux Klan was founded by former Confederate troops after the Civil War as a terrorist insurgency against the Reconstruction effort in an attempt to take back the South, just like ISIS was a terrorist insurgency founded by former troops of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was a founder and its most prominent member. That’s why the Ku Klux Klan wears ghost costumes — they were called ‘the ghosts of the dead confederate soldiers’. And they WON back control of the South from the Union through violence and terror. That is why the Klan flies the Confederate flag wherever they march and why white supremacy reveres Confederate heroes and statues. This is highly effective because provides the missing link in the misguided conceptualizations that too many Americans have regarding the Civil War and the Confederate flag.. Many Americans know the above to be true by heart, but have yet to *connect* the dots between these facts because our cultural indoctrination has a tendency to make us compartmentalize concepts separately in our head this way in order to sanitize uncomfortable truths. We have to connect these dots for them. There are many such examples of conceptual disconnects, like how the Party of Lincoln is now based in the Confederate South & now defends the flag of the enemy that assassinated him.. Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave. Many Americans don’t realize that John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate spy, therefore the Confederacy assassinated an American president, one who is highly revered and has a face on Mount Rushmore. The fact that John Wilkes Booth is portrayed as just a lone wolf in their minds is one of many contributions to the general perception of the Confederacy as a noble institution and not a treasonous insurrection.
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