Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

By the late 1970s, various factions of the white power movement had started working together by staging events, such as screenings of the pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation, to provoke confrontations with left-wing demonstrators. Screenings of Birth of a Nation afforded them a chance to demonstrate to a wider audience their willingness to step up to those they regarded as communists and other “traitorous, radical, and dangerous” elements (58). Even when police or the National Guard were able to forestall violence, white power activists hoped their appearance in public as a well-armed militia would impress potential recruits and intimidate foes. Preparation for “war against communists, blacks, and other enemies” (60) helped erase distinctions between Klansmen, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and other white power elements, just as the radical left was cracking under internal divisions and government infiltration. Linkages among various white power groups turned factions into a broader social movement, with networks of kinship and mutual support developing among them. To patch up their differences, they downplayed race and instead focused on communism, which was perceived as a threat to religion, marriage, and property, as well as established racial hierarchies.

A major area of focus was North Carolina, where socialist labor organizers had run afoul of the Klan.