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<DIV><FONT size=2>Besides No Weatherman and his affiliates, I wonder how much of
this is happening on the Palouse.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2>W.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="MARGIN-LEFT: 1em; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em"><A
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-klan23-2008nov23,0,7570102.story?track=ntothtml">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-klan23-2008nov23,0,7570102.story?track=ntothtml</A><BR>
<DIV class=body><I>From the Los Angeles Times</I></DIV>
<H1>White extremists lash out over election of first black president</H1>
<DIV class=storysubhead>The Ku Klux Klan is emerging from decades of
disorganization and obscurity, and the turnaround is acutely evident -- more
than 200 hate-related incidents have been reported since the Nov. 4
election.</DIV>By Howard Witt<BR><BR>November 23, 2008<BR><BR>Reporting from
Bogalusa, La. — Barely three weeks since America elected its first black
president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens
of towns across the country.<BR><BR>More than 200 such incidents -- including
cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect
Barack Obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and
the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.<BR><BR>Racist
websites have been boasting that their servers have been crashing because of an
exponential increase in traffic.<BR><BR>And America's most potent symbol of
racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, is reasserting itself in a spate of recent
violence, after decades of disorganization and obscurity.<BR><BR>Nearly two
weeks ago, the leader of a cell based in Bogalusa, La. -- a backwoods town once
known as the Klan capital -- was charged with second-degree murder in the
shooting of a woman who allegedly sought to become a member but then changed her
mind.<BR><BR>Late last month, two men with ties to a notoriously violent Klan
chapter in Kentucky were charged in a bizarre plot to kill 88 black students and
then decapitate an additional 14 students -- and then assassinate Obama by
shooting him from a speeding car while wearing white tuxedos and top
hats.<BR><BR>"We've seen everything from cross burnings on lawns of interracial
couples to effigies of Obama hanging from nooses to unpleasant exchanges in
schoolyards," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the
Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala. "I think we're in a
worrying situation right now, a perfect storm of conditions coming together that
could easily favor the continued growth of these groups."<BR><BR>Experts
attribute the racist activity to factors including the rapidly worsening
economic crisis; trends indicating that within a generation whites will not
comprise a U.S. majority; and the impending arrival of a black family in the
White House.<BR><BR>The FBI is investigating whether the recent Klan-related
incidents involve conspiracies. And the Secret Service is monitoring the racist
activity "to try to stay ahead of any emerging threats," according to spokesman
Darrin Blackford.<BR><BR>One white supremacist leader, describing himself as
moderate, professes alarm.<BR><BR>"There is a tremendous backlash" to Obama's
election, said Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement in
Learned, Miss. "My focus is to try to keep it peaceful. But many people look at
the flag of the Republic of New Africa that will be hoisted over the White House
as an act of war."<BR><BR>The FBI has no hate-crime statistics yet for
2008.<BR><BR>But based on local media reports, some experts are calling the rise
in hate incidents surprising and unprecedented.<BR><BR>"The rhetoric right now
is just about out of control," said Brian Levin, director of Center for the
Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. "When you get this
depth of hatred, it usually is the smoke before the fire."<BR><BR>In the small
Louisiana town of Angie, 58-year-old Judy Robinson put an Obama sign outside her
home a few weeks before the Nov. 4 presidential election. The morning after
Halloween, she awoke to find the words "KKK" and "white power" spray-painted
around her yard.<BR><BR>"I thought all that KKK stuff was in the past," said
Robinson, who is black. "But now I look at people and think, 'Could he be Klan?'
Suddenly I'm feeling like my town is hostile territory."<BR><BR>Experts say
modern Klan chapters remain isolated and small, with perhaps 6,000 members
nationwide -- a shadow of the group's membership of 4 million in the early
1900s.<BR><BR>Bogalusa, a lumber and paper mill town of about 13,000, is just
down the road from Angie.<BR><BR>In the 1960s, historians say, the Ku Klux Klan
so dominated Bogalusa's commerce, politics and law enforcement that the group
once held a public meeting to debate which black church to burn down
next.<BR><BR>Several Bogalusa Klan members were long suspected of shooting two
black sheriff's deputies in a 1965 ambush, killing one. No one was ever brought
to trial.<BR><BR>"To this day, most white people in Bogalusa know who the
killers were, and they were never brought to justice," said Lance Hill, a Tulane
University law professor and Klan expert.<BR><BR>That past now seems less
distant.<BR><BR>On Nov. 10, local law enforcement authorities arrested Raymond
"Chuck" Foster, 44, the leader of a Bogalusa Klan chapter called the Sons of
Dixie, and seven other Klan members in connection with the shooting death of a
Tulsa, Okla., woman who went to the group's remote campsite in St. Tammany
Parish for an initiation ceremony.<BR><BR>Authorities say Foster shot the woman
when she tried to change her mind about joining the group. He has been charged
with second-degree murder; the other Klan members, including Foster's
20-year-old son, have been charged with obstruction of justice.<BR><BR>City
officials say they had no idea that Bogalusa has Klan cells.<BR><BR>"I've been
here 13 years, and this was a complete surprise to me that there was Klan here,"
said Police Chief Jerry Agnew.<BR><BR>Yet members of the town's black community
say they have been reporting Klan sightings to the police for more than a year.
About 40% of residents are black.<BR><BR>In October 2007, residents of one black
neighborhood reported white-hooded Klan members riding horses through the
streets.<BR><BR>And in March, Klan members openly handed out fliers advertising
the second annual Sons of Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Craw Fish Boil --
held at the house on Louisiana Avenue that Foster was renting from a Bogalusa
deputy sheriff.<BR><BR>"The city leaders want to make it look like this is just
some small fringe group," said former City Councilman Marvin Austin, 61, who
once belonged to the Deacons for Defense, a black group that formed in the 1960s
to defend black residents from the Klan.<BR><BR>"But the Klan still has a lot of
sympathizers here."<BR><BR>Witt writes for the Chicago Tribune.
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