Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

Although this association has rarely been made, the similarities between the 1920s Ku Klux Klan and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are marked. Both movements have preached the centrality of being anti-immigrant. Both have been rooted in white supremacy. Both had and have a dark side of associated hate crimes. Both have wrapped themselves in the flag and pretended to be the most patriotic and pro-American.

I submit that to understand MAGA, the Klan must be considered as a formative background influence. MAGA didn’t spring full-blown from the mind of Donald Trump. Many Americans like to hide the deep-seated racism which is part of our history and that is the case with the Klan. In the early 20th century it was far more influential than is now recognized.

When most people think about the Klan, I believe they think about the night riders, cross burnings and terrorism after the Civil War directed against Black people. For that Klan, vigilantism was their calling card.

The 1920s Klan was dramatically different. It was another kind of beast altogether. While it remained absolutely committed to white supremacy, it was not a secret organization. It published recruiting ads in newspapers and it strove to be mainstream. Like MAGA, its members included professionals, business people, farmers, and wage workers. Also like MAGA, it advocated a brand of Christian nationalism. As bizarre as it may seem, in the 1920s, joining the Klan was connected to middle-class respectability.

I had assumed that the Klan’s heyday was after the Civil War but that is wrong. In the 1920s, the Klan made its biggest splash. This is described very well in two books, “A Fever in the Heartland” by Timothy Egan and “The Second Coming of the KKK” by historian Linda Gordon.

By the mid-1920s the Klan had an estimated four to six million members across the U.S. It experienced enormous growth in membership in the North, Midwest and the West. In some states, like Indiana and Oregon, the Klan was a powerful political presence, effectively controlling state governments. It elected hundreds of its members to state offices and judicial positions. The Klan owned cops, prosecutors, ministers, mayors and newspaper editors.

Nationally, the Klan claimed 15 senators and 75 congressmen under its control. Indiana was its strongest base with Klan chapters in 90 out of 92 counties in the state. This story has been erased from conventional historical memory. It is part of the American tendency to whitewash history to maintain the heroic narrative.

A stereotype that the Klan was a bunch of ignorant rural hicks was far from the truth. The historian Kenneth Jackson has written that the 1920s version of the Klan was strong in cities — 50% of active Klan members in the 1920s were urbanites. The Klan had thousands of members in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Philadelphia.

The 1920s Klan was heavily influenced by exponents of “scientific” racism and eugenics. Intellectuals like Madison Grant, author of “The Passing of the Great Race,” worried about non-Nordic immigrants like Italians and Jews. Linda Gordon says the Klan’s favorite term for the white people they approved of was “Nordic.”

Probably the Klan’s biggest victory was around the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 named in part for Washington Klan Congressman Albert Johnson. That act assigned quotas for immigrants in proportion to the ethnicity of those already in the U.S. in 1890. The design mirrored the Klan agenda for keeping out those they considered undesirables like Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe. The act also excluded all Asians.

The Klan had a huge effect on public conversation about immigration much as MAGA has had over the last eight years. That Klan also talked about building a wall. The Johnson-Reed Act directly harmed European Jews who desperately needed to escape Nazi persecution both before and during the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews perished, in part, because of the odious quotas which effectively shut down Jewish immigration to the U.S.

I could not help but recall former President Trump’s comments in January 2018 when he said “we should have more people from Norway.” He also complained about “having all these people from shithole countries come here” and he cited Haiti, El Salvador and Africa. The New York Times reported that in a December 2017 meeting in the Oval Office Trump complained Haitians “all have AIDS” and Nigerians would never “go back to their huts.”

This could have been a Klansman speaking. The racism could not be more straight up. Just like the Klan, Trump has acted like he is protecting the “purity” of American citizenship. Now he wants to overturn birthright citizenship, something enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

The Klan self-destructed in the late 1920s because of corruption, internal feuds, and its charismatic leaders like David Stephenson being convicted of rape and murder. Since the 1920s to our time, America has never seriously and self-critically reflected on the racism and xenophobia promoted by the Klan and other hate groups. We pretend a dishonest colorblindness that avoids engaging history.

Xenophobia can be defined as fear, skepticism or hatred of foreigners. There is a long-term pattern of hating on new groups of foreigners who came to the U.S. The historian Erika Lee says, “History shows that xenophobia has been a constant and defining feature of American life.” The pattern pre-dates the Klan.

When the Klan lost prominence at the end of the 1920s, its ideas remained potent among millions of Americans. Unchallenged racism does not automatically disappear. On the contrary, it is often passed along as a family legacy.

Both the 1920s Klan and MAGA have thrived on hate and fear. For the Klan, it was immigrants, people of color, Jews and Catholics. MAGA has a shifting hate list but it currently includes immigrants, trans people, and Black Lives Matter. Immigrants have remained a constant target of resentment.

Complicating the whole picture is the reality that immigration driven by climate change will be an unrelenting part of the future. It is predictable that demagogues like Trump will gin up fear about brown hordes at the Southern border. Fascists internationally see playing the immigration card as their path to power. The strategy has been effective in Italy, Holland, Sweden and Hungary.

Probably the biggest challenge for all who support democracy is figuring out a way to respond to this challenge. The Klan/MAGA approach of scapegoating immigrants for political gain is toxic. Xenophobia, not immigration, is the greatest threat.

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