FREE ESSAY ON INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM By John Freel.
This was a very difficult project for me to carry out, coming from an area were racial
discrimination is almost non existent were only sometimes does religious bigotry raise
it's ugly head, but not nearly in the proportions of this project.
KU KLUX KLAN.
Ku Klux Klan, is a secret terrorist organisation that originated in the southern states
during the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War and was reactivated
on a wider geographic basis in the 20th century. The original Klan was organised in
Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former Confederate army officers who
gave their society a name taken from the Greek word kuklos, which means circle. Although
the Ku Klux Klan began as a prankish social organisation, its activities soon were
directed against the Republican Reconstruction governments and their leaders, both black
and white, which came into power in the southern states in 1867.
ORIGINAL TARGETS AND TACTICS. 
The Klan regarded the government at the time as being hostile and oppressive. They also
generally believed that the black people were inferior and therefore they mistrusted the
rise to civil equality and sometimes to the position of political power, so the Klan
became an illegal organisation who were committed to the destruction of the new
government from the Carolinas to Arkansas.
Dressed in robes or white sheets and wearing a mask which came to a point, the Klan
terrorised officials to try and scare them from office and any black person to intimidate
them into not voting or holding any type of civil position or using any of their newly
acquired political rights. It would be a usual sight to see a Klansman burning a wooden
cross on hills or near to the home of someone that they were trying to intimidate or were
just trying to frighten. When this type of intimidation failed their victims might be
flogged, mutilated or murdered. The Klan believed these measures to be justified as
necessary in the defence of white supremacy and the sanctity of woman.
A secret convention of the Klan held in Tennessee, in 1867, adopted a declaration of
principles expressing loyalty to the United States Constitution and its government and
declaring the determination of the Klan to protect the weak, the innocent and the
defenceless; to relieve the injured and oppressed; [and] to succour the suffering The
convention designated the Klan as an Invisible Empire and provided for a supreme
official, called Grand Wizard of the Empire, who wielded virtually autocratic power and
who was assisted by ten Genii. Other principal officials of the Klan were the Grand
Dragon of the Realm, who was assisted by eight Hydras; the Grand Titan of the Dominion,
assisted by six Furies; and the Grand Cyclops of the Den, assisted by two Nighthawks. In
1868 until the end of 1870 whilst the occupational troops were being withdrawn from the
southern states and the extremist regimes replaced with Democratic administrations, the
rougher sections of the population were now ruling the Klan. The local organisations,
called Klaverns became so violent and uncontrollable that the Grand Wizard, who was then
the former Ex-confederate officer General Nathan B Forrest, officially disbanded Klan in
1869.
Klaverns however continued to operate on their own. In 1871 congress passed the bill to
implement the 14th amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the rights of all
citizens. In the same year President U.S.Grant issued a proclamation calling on members
of the Klan and any other illegal secret organisation to disarm and disband, not soon
after hundreds of Klansmen were arrested under this new law. The remaining Klaverns
gradually faded as the political and social acceptance of blacks were being socially
accepted.
The name, rituals, and some of the attitudes of the original Klan were adopted by a new
fraternal organisation incorporated in Georgia in 1915. The official name of the new
society, which was organised by a former preacher, Colonel William Simmons, was Invisible
Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Membership was open to native-born, white,
Protestant males, 16 years of age or older; blacks, Roman Catholics, and Jews were
excluded and were increasingly made targets of defamation and persecution by the Klan.
Until 1920 the society exercised little influence. Then, in the period of economic
dislocation and political and social unrest that followed World War I, the Klan expanded
rapidly in urban areas and became active in many states, notably Colorado, Oregon,
Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New
Jersey. Although the Klan everywhere fiercely preached white supremacy, it focused its
attack on what it considered to be alien outsiders, particularly the Roman Catholic
church, which it believed was threatening traditional American ways and values. All
non-Protestants, aliens, liberals, trade unionists, and striking workers were denounced
as radicals.
Like it's fore-fathers this new Klan burned crosses to frighten their victims, masked men
marched up and down the streets of many communities, carrying placards threatening any
one who even spoke to blacks that they would be punished or murdered and forcing others
to leave town. Many people were kidnapped, flogged, and mutilated and hundreds killed by
Klan members. Only a few of the Klan members were brought to trial but many more were
being praised by some local community officials for the good work that they did to clean
up the town's.
News paper reports of crimes committed by the Klan and of corruption in it's leadership
led to a congressional investigation in 1921, and for some time the Klan were forced to
change their tactics. From 1922 it experienced a rapid growth in its membership and
became a political power to be reasoned with through out the nation.
One estimate in 1924 had the Klan figures at over 3 million, in the mid 1920s an internal
leadership conflict and further allegations of Klan immorality and violence severally
damaged their reputation and political opposition increased, by 1929 it 's numbers had
reduced to several thousand members. During the depression the Ku Klux Klan remained
active on a very small scale, particularly against trade union organisers in the south,
it was also at this point severally punishing blacks if they tried to use their right to
vote.
A former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and the founder of the National Association for the
Advancement of White People (NAAWP), controversial Louisiana politician David Duke has
gained recognition running for high office in Louisiana and for his unsuccessful bid for
the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1992.
Born David Ernest Duke in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Jul 1, 1950, Duke was the son of a petroleum
engineer who moved his family from city to city before settling in New Orleans,
Louisiana. He began reading white supremacist literature in his teens and was heavily
influenced by Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. While attending Louisiana State University, he
was active in the Ku Klux Klan and proclaimed himself a Nazi in 1969. A year after
graduation in 1974, he became grand wizard, or head, of the Louisiana Klan.
Duke began his political career during his years with the Klan, running twice for the
State Senate while openly acknowledging his position in the white supremacist group. He
left the Klan in 1980 and founded the NAAWP, which he publicised as a white civil rights
organisation. He ran a little-known presidential campaign in 1988, first as a Democrat
and then as the candidate of the Populist parties, receiving a negligible portion of the
vote. Duke then won a vacant seat in the Louisiana State legislature; in 1990 he ran for
the U.S. Senate and received 40% of the vote in losing to incumbent J. Bennett Johnston.
The following year he ran for governor, emphasising how the practices of affirmative
action and welfare discriminated against whites and trying to present himself as a
mainstream candidate. He lost the election to former governor Edwin Edwards.
Duke made a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992, though his candidacy
never got off the ground. The campaign received some publicity in its earliest stages,
though it was undercut by the candidacy of conservative political columnist Pat Buchanan
and hindered by a lack of funds.
The Klan is every bit still active with the burning of over 33 black churches in the past
18 month sand the so called  night riders  burning a further 100 in Mississippi.
The Klan still believe today that no integration of white and black should be allowed or
tolerated their for is it a breach of their 14th amendment not to allow them their
beliefs or is it naive of the rest of us to think they will stop at this should we be
allowed to persecute anyone just by the colour of his/her skin?
 ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL
By John Freel.
Bibliography
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