Our View: Klan not welcome here

Flyers bearing information about the Loyal White Knights were dropped in the driveways of homes in those communities last week. If you can’t tell by the name alone, the Loyal White Knights are a Ku Klux Klan group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a research group monitoring the actions of hate groups.

The SPLC says the flyering is a common tactic for the hate group, and it’s something we’ve seen here in Loudoun County before. The Times-Mirror has reported on the flyering multiple times in recent years.

An Anti-Defamation League profile on the Loyal White Knights says the group combines traditional KKK styling with neo-Nazi beliefs, openly preaching antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and virtually every other brand of hate one can think of.

For those who are aligned with the group who spread the flyers, allow us to ask, can you not see the community you’ve found yourself in? While it’s unclear if the person or persons who spread the flyers are members of the community or not, it is certain that Loudoun County is not the kind of community that would find a Klan group palatable.

The most recent census data shows that Loudoun is only about 65% white. Admittedly, that’s a large percentage, but when nearly a quarter of the county’s population is of Asian decent, and nearly 14% is Hispanic or Latino, it might be difficult to find recruits interested in restoring the white man to primacy, or whatever nonsense it is that the Klan is interested in.

The fact of the matter is, Loudoun County is a community which thrives on a plurality of cultural backgrounds and beliefs. Recent reporting from the Times-Mirror showed our own paper ran paid advertisements from the Klan back in the 1920s, but those days are long dead and buried. Now, Loudoun County is home to a diverse smattering of people of a number of ethnic and racial backgrounds, religious creeds or lack thereof, and any number of other differences.

Our differences should be celebrated, because they are what makes this community so vibrant. If the Loyal White Knights had their way, the county’s beautiful events celebrating Black and Hispanic heritage, LGBTQ pride and religious beliefs outside America’s Christian majority would be gone.

And what would they be replaced by?

And not to put too fine a point on it, but let’s think about the reasons why those events would be gone. The Loyal White Knights, and other Klan-affiliated and neo-Nazi groups, don’t just preach hate. They preach violence. They don’t just want outward expressions of difference gone. They want people who are different gone as well.

Klan groups and neo-Nazis spray hate like shotgun blasts, targeting Black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, members of the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims, Catholics and others. The people in these groups are tired. Tired of constantly having to fight back against people who hate them purely for being who they are (and in many cases, for being things that they had no control over in the first place, like their race or sexuality).

This places the onus on, well, everyone else. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t check any of the boxes the Klan would hate — meaning, if you’re white, Protestant, straight, etc. — it’s time to use your voice. Let members of hate groups know that, even though you don’t fall into one of the groups they hate, you still have no room in your heart for hate. Those in the targeted groups can’t do all the fighting alone; they need allies who fight against hate not because they are targeted by the hate, but because they know hate is wrong.

The Klan should have no home here in Loudoun County.