What actually was surprising to me was learning that they once were fairly powerful in NJ in the 1920's; at one point, they supposedly burned a cross up on Garrett Mountain in Paterson, a city chock full of Catholics, Jews, anarchists, and radicals. Nativism had taken a particularly virulent form in America (the Palmer Raids were a recent phenomenon) and WASP's were using the same sort of verbiage to describe Italians, Irish, Jews, and Slavs, as is now being used to describe Mexicans. The late William Kunstler posited a theory that the Klan were responsible for the notorious Hall-Mills murders in New Brunswick, and its certainly a plausible one. After a period of decline, there was another bloody resurgence of the Klan in the South as a reaction to the civil rights movement, and then David Duke came along, the articulate figurehead for a "New, Modernized Klan". Duke appeared intelligent and seemingly reasonable, but if you read his "My Struggle" (it's not easy reading; it's thicker than the Bible and "War and Peace" combined), it's the same trite, shop-worn racism that was being peddled by the original version of the Klan, albeit with a few patronizing new twists. The stereotype that Italians have been subjected to for generations is that they're criminally inclined by nature; Duke refutes this-- Jews are nature's true gangsters, and he cites the names of Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Arnold Rothstein as if he's uncovered a motherlode of empirical evidence that no one else has even been aware of  (of course, he doesn't mention Legs Diamond, who was Irish, or Murray Humphreys, who was a Welsh-Protestant, or Jay Gould, who was a "legitimate" WASP gangster masquerading as a moral, upright citizen, or Dubya Bush, who has done more damage than John Gotti could have ever dreamed of). Hitler allegedly had honorable intentions; according to Duke, he wanted to keep Europe from becoming what India is today. Anti-Jewish bomber Kathryn Ainsworth? She wasn't a terrorist; she was a "freedom fighter". Blacks? Duke doesn't hate blacks. In fact, his family used to have a maid named Pinky, and she was one of the most loyal people he ever knew, more loyal even than the family dog. It might be comical in a twisted, demented sort of way if I didn't think that Duke, for all his alleged intelligence, seems to be deadly serious about all of the nonsense, and there are hordes of benighted sad-sacks out there who gulp this crap down with assiduous, unquestioning devotion.