The white men of the Confederacy who went to war to defend states’ rights to keep the Blacks in chattel slavery were not wrong to be terrified of the righteous retribution people they tortured for hundreds of years might rightfully visit upon them once free. That there was little of it was no reason not to fear a bloodbath. They themselves would have wished to do no less to their former enslavers, finding themselves no longer in chains.

After the war was lost Confederate veterans formed white terrorist gangs for a preemptive strike against a potentially powerful enemy. From the KKK point of view it was terror motivated survival, common sense to use terror against a terror they rightfully feared. They dressed up in disguises (many of them were respectable local professionals), ride at night, in numbers, shoot into their houses, their churches, whip the snot out of them, burn their houses, burn crosses, if he is an outspoken man they grab him at gunpoint, whip him bloody, sometimes, before they killed they tortured, cut off body parts, ears, nose, lips, fingers, breasts, genitals, then, if a man, castrate him, set him on fire and hang him slowly, so he can do one last dance for the boys. Pregnant women’s could be sliced open during hanging, a KKK twofer. Their argument: they’d do no less to us if they had the chance!

The irrefutable logic of hatred, the echoes that are so easy to hear in their populist modern day version.

Their logic is always the same, if we don’t dominate them they’ll seek justice against us, just like we would if the roles were reversed and they had the power.

The roots of the klan, a crazed terrorist organization if there ever was one, was the terror of righteous retribution, the recognition of what they themselves would have done in the freed slaves’ position, after centuries of rape and brutality, their anguished Jeffersonian mortal terror of a just God’s certain, terrible punishment of a long crime so wicked.

No reason to traumatize our own kids by making them read descriptions of this ugly war that needs to be fought everyday… ban history.