Argument Against American Nationalism

Furthermore, the KKK combined Protestant ideology with American nationalism in order to justify the KKK’s existence as an organization and the superiority of the White race. The Imperial Wizards of the KKK, William Simmons and Hiram Wesley Evans, believed that the KKK was an order to defend “100 percent Americanism and Protestantism by intermixing them together.” In 1915, William Simmons, the first Imperial Wizard of the KKK, led a group of Klansmen up Stone Mountain, Georgia where they set fire to a cross and built a temple claiming that they were re-enacting the forefathers that committed themselves to the U.S. constitution and the Protestant religion. The re-enactment on Stone Mountain, done by William Simmons and KKK members, illustrates

The KKK was many times depicted as burning a cross and to them this represented Jesus’ selfless sacrifice that would triumph over any evil like immigration, Catholicism, Bolshevism, and Judaism, but also the cross represented 100 percent Americanism because the KKK protected the American nation by purifying it from any foreign and internal threats. William Simmons argued, “America must close the door to the diseased minds and bodies of foreign lands because the present horde of immigrant invaders composed of Italian Anarchists and Russian Jews deride America and its own ideals.” Simmons illustrates the idea of the KKK’s position against anti-immigration by arguing that if foreign immigrants were allowed into America, they would transform American society and would destroy American ideals, like Protestantism. This shows how American men and women believed that racism, violence, and terrorism was justified in protecting the purity of the White race from immigrants that threatened to destroy the 100 percent pure American ideals that America was founded on. The KKK behaviour in the 1920s showed that they had anxiety about foreign immigrants because the KKK believed that if foreign immigrants were

Jackson argues that the KKK believed that the spirit of Americanism and the spirit of Protestantism were one and the same and in order to protect America it required a defense of Protestantism against forces that would weaken or denounce the faith like millions of immigrants that were non-Protestants and would not assimilate to the KKK’s version of American culture. Samuel Campbell, who was a lecturer for the KKK argued that “there needs to be a greater education of American nationalism and Protestantism to save the American ideals of this great country against the swarm of foreign born immigrants that seek to change our style of government and force new ideals that will break down Americanism.” Campbell demonstrates the KKK’s paranoia about foreign immigrants having different ideals than American ideals, which would destroy White purity and superiority in America. Therefore, this shows that by making nationalism a white supremacist religious experience, American men and women justified any violence or terrorism against immigrants as protecting pure Protestant tenants linked Protestantism and