The Politics of Losing

by Rory McVeigh

  At a 1923 meeting of Klan leaders in Ashville, North Carolina, Imperial Wizard Evans claimed that the assembled represented more than five thousand local chapters. Another leader, an Imperial Klazik, announced that the Klan aspired to reach ten million members, with “every one of them up and working for Klan principles and ideals.”62 Evans pushed back against local newspapers that suggested the movement was waning: “The newspapers are sore and would preach any doctrine which would indicate that the Klan is defeated in its principles or disrupted. Just as long as our doctrine is a pure and holy one the newspapers won’t be able to grasp what it is. They are continually looking for a bug under the chip, when the Klan neither has bug nor chip.”63

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  Reading the Imperial Night-Hawk, one discovers a very different Klan than the one we think of today, one that was a popular and patriotic movement, dedicated to the public good and charitable works, and decidedly nonviolent. “Klansmen are opposed to all manner of violence in every form,” a Louisiana member wrote in 1923, “to violent labor agitations and destruction of public and private property without due process of law. Klansmen contend that all disputes between citizens, which cannot be adjusted by the parties directly interested, should be and must be settled through regular established courts of the country.”64 He added, “The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has no fight to make upon the Negro. He is recognized as an inferior race and Klansmen are sworn to protect him, his rights and property and assist him in the elevation of his moral and spiritual being and in the preservation of the purity of his race.”

  To deflect bad press, the Night-Hawk emphasized the Klan’s charity. One article reported on how Klan No. 1 in Pennsylvania maintained a welfare fund “which has been dispensed to numerous needy families, most of whom were foreigners.” A Polish widow with five children “was astounded when she wanted to know who her benefactors were.”65 The paper also protected leadership from allegations of corruption, as articles heaped praise on the leaders, emphasizing their virtue, wisdom, and fiscal responsibility: “Under the direction of Imperial Wizard Dr. H. W. Evans the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is now financially able to combat the assaults of its enemies, is in a position to permit the Klansmen of the nation to enjoy the fruits of national economies and has also ample funds available for vigorous membership extension campaigns throughout the United States.”66

  The national newspaper could spell out only the movement’s general goals, size, and scope, so dozens of local Klan newspapers sprang up to report on community goings-on. The Dawn was a sixteen-page magazine widely distributed in Chicago.67 The Fiery Cross was centered in Indiana but was widely read in nearby states like Michigan and Ohio. Some papers were distributed across states, and others were based in cities. Some were dailies, others were published weekly. Many featured ads from local businesses that wanted to capitalize on the Klan’s popularity. Kluxer, a weekly paper from Dayton, Ohio, typically ran about fifty pages, more than half of which were devoted to ad space.68 Historian Felix Harcourt notes, “The advertising director for the Fiery Cross, C. B. Salyer, boasted that the newspaper offered the best return on its display advertising (seventy-five cents per column inch) of any newspaper in Indiana.”69 Local Klan papers were decentralized, and the Imperial Palace on Peachtree Road had no say over their content. One local Klan leader even complained that papers were using hate and bigotry to sell more papers, which was harming the reputation of the organization.70 Soon after Evans took over, he placed the local papers under the national organization in an attempt to control the Klan’s public image.71 Evans put Indiana’s Milton Elrod, former editor of the Fiery Cross, in charge of the Klan’s new Bureau of Publication and Education and tasked him with centralizing Klan publishing. Elrod bought out some of the papers and used threats and coercion to force out the rest.72 Elrod was active in Klan affairs in Indiana. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he led a failed drive to nominate Indiana’s Senator James Watson for vice president.73

  The Klan’s extensive newspaper portfolio allowed it to speak directly to supporters, but Evans also recognized the limits of his media empire, so he advised Klan officers to befriend papers outside of the movement that would give the Klan favorable coverage.74 The Klan fascinated many readers, and horrified others, and newspaper editors recognized this. Coverage of the Klan, good or bad, sold papers.75 According to a short article in the Night-Hawk, “Not all editors are controlled by the dictates of Jewish advertisers who hate the Klan. Some have high principles and a spirit of fair play which prompts them to permit the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to present their side of the argument and refute the malicious attacks made on this order by un-American influences.”76 In Indiana, only a handful of papers—like the South Bend Tribune and Indianapolis Times—openly criticized the Klan. Others, like the Kokomo Daily Tribune and the Franklin Evening Star, “openly gushed enthusiasm for the Klan’s appearance in their communities.”77

  When the Klan couldn’t secure friendly coverage from more objective papers, they attempted to discredit the source. “Here’s a Typical Example of How Some Newspapers Will Falsify about Klan,” ran one headline.78 The article concerned a story in the Kansas City Post that reported on a farmer’s suicide, which locals blamed on the Klan. The story alleged that the farmer, Thomas Henderson, took his own life after threats from Klansmen. The Klan offered their own version. The Night-Hawk first established that Henderson was black, a fact, they emphasized, that the Post had neglected to mention. What’s more, the Night-Hawk wrote that Henderson was a plasterer, not a farmer, that he did not receive any communication from the Klan, and that he did not commit suicide, but rather shot himself by accident. “This typical case of distorting the truth on the part of an anti-Klan newspaper,” the Night-Hawk wrote, “is set forth here merely to show just how low some sheets can sink in their efforts to discredit an organization whose ideals are of the highest and whose principles are patriotism of the purest.”79

  Through its alternative press and attempts to discredit hostile news, the Klan attracted and maintained broad support from those who were convinced it could restore their power and return America to its former glory. Supporters saw the Klan as an organization of patriots, and in Klan-friendly towns like Kokomo they proudly displayed their affiliation and even used it to attract business or to secure employment.80 Klan symbols and signifiers “were used to sell everything from newspaper exposés and tell-all memoirs to pulp novels and Tin Pan alley tunes. Even products with little to no connection to the Klan were sold on the back of the Invisible Empire’s commercial draw.”81

  But this was not the case everywhere. When the Klan marched into towns like Perth Amboy, New Jersey, they concealed their identities, fearing violence from anti-Klan forces.82 The Klan was most successful where native-born white Protestants were losing their footing. The movement, they believed, was a way for them to improve their lives and defeat their enemies.

  ALTERNATIVE FACTS AND FAKE NEWS

  Like the 1920s Klan, presidential candidate Trump needed to project the aura of a winner who could solve his followers’ problems, while at the same time managing the flow of information so that his flaws and foibles would not sink his candidacy. His campaign was, it would seem, vulnerable. Vulnerable to attacks on his reputation and vulnerable to his own actions, which could undermine support among those who liked his message but might see him as a flawed messenger. It was vulnerable to his personal scandals, and it was vulnerable to his tendency to lie in easily refutable ways. So how did his campaign weather this vulnerability in a way no other candidate ever has? The Trump campaign, like the Klan, insulated supporters from these reputational threats through alternative media, establishing close ties to friendly outlets, and attacking the credibility of the mainstream press that challenged him.

  Much has been made of how Trump exaggerated the size of crowds attending his rallies and speaking events.83 “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” said Trump’s press secretary, Sea
n Spicer.84 In spite of his exaggerations, Trump did draw large crowds to his rallies. Attendance surpassing ten thousand was not uncommon, and loyal supporters often stood in line for hours for a chance to see their candidate.85 He spoke directly to their losses of status and economic and political power. And he did so while sending clear signals that he was primarily concerned with the grievances of white Americans. His proposed solutions bore that out: building walls along the border and restricting immigration from Muslim countries—the sorts of claims that drew stinging rebukes from mainstream and progressive outlets. Trump’s supporters were stepping out on a limb, attaching themselves to a campaign reviled by many Americans. His rallies and obsession with crowd size comforted them—they were not alone, but part of a powerful movement that would bring cultural and economic change to America.

  If Trump were to succeed, he would need to secure voters who found his white nationalist agenda appealing, but this ran the risk of turning off voters who liked his agenda but did not think of themselves as racists or extremists. Violence at Trump’s campaign rallies and the support that Trump received from white nationalist extremist organizations could have turned away voters who did not want to associate with the extreme elements of the Trump faithful. Removing protesters became a regular feature of Trump rallies, which were fraught with tension and, at times, violence. Trump told ralliers he would pay the legal fees, if needed, of supporters who forcibly removed protesters.86

  Reminiscent of the Klan’s tussles with local media in the 1920s about the strength of their movement, Trump fought with the media for weeks regarding his claim that attendance at his inauguration exceeded that of Barack Obama. Photos compare the size of the crowds at Trump’s inauguration in 2017 (left) and Obama’s in 2009 (right). Photos by Reuters Pictures.

  Trump was at the center of scandals that could have derailed his campaign. Accusations of sexual misconduct seemed particularly perilous, since Republican candidates rely heavily on the votes of conservative Christians. His campaign also trafficked in deception—a practice that continued into his presidency. In late June 2017 the New York Times published a comprehensive list of over one hundred false statements Trump made during the first six months of his presidency.87 The list ranged from the trivial—like exaggerating how many times he has appeared on the cover of Time magazine—to the serious, like asserting that voter fraud lost him the popular vote. Just weeks after the election, in which Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote, Trump wrote on Twitter, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”88

  A FAMILIAR MEDIA STRATEGY

  Why didn’t Trump’s scandals destroy his candidacy and the movement behind him? Like the 1920s Klansmen, his supporters were willing to overlook alleged shortcomings as long as the movement was on the rise, and so long as it seemed he alone could effectively lead their crusade. But this also made him vulnerable to bad press, and so he adopted a familiar strategy of engaging the American press. He found ways to communicate directly to his supporters, in rallies and through alternative media, limiting opportunities for opponents to challenge his claims. He forged connections with media outlets that were friendly to him, and he disparaged mainstream media, which he deemed “fake news.”

  Fox News delivered positive coverage of Trump on a daily basis. Since 1996, Fox has secured high ratings by presenting news and commentary with a strong conservative spin, while characterizing other news outlets as liberally biased. But Trump as a campaigner proposed many ideas that broke with conservative orthodoxy. Once it became clear that Trump would actually win the Republican nomination, Fox supported him aggressively. A Pew research poll in January 2017 reported that 40 percent of Americans who said they voted for Trump received most of their information about the presidential race from Fox News. No other news source topped even 10 percent.89 The positive coverage of Trump clearly paid off for the network: Fox experienced its best ratings ever in 2016, averaging 2.4 million nightly prime-time viewers.90

  As much as Trump complained about the mainstream media, he relied heavily on that same media during his campaign to deliver his message largely unfiltered. Many, if not most, candidates for their party’s nomination begin the process with relatively little name recognition among the larger voting public. A victory in an early primary or caucus state—or even an unexpectedly strong showing—can attract press and donors. But Trump entered the process with unusually high name recognition. For decades he presided over a real estate empire, orbited the center of New York’s high society, and starred in the popular reality TV show The Apprentice. He had no need for pig roasts in Iowa or meet-and-greets at a New Hampshire mall.

  Trump quickly realized that his time was best spent holding massive rallies that would guarantee press coverage. In most cases, he held these in “friendly” territories. Sometimes, though, he would appear in locations that were sure to draw protests. He abruptly canceled a rally scheduled at the University of Illinois, Chicago, as protesters gathered outside the venue (and some had made their way inside).91 Often the campaign screened the crowds, only letting Trump supporters into the events. At a rally in Burlington, Vermont—Bernie Sanders’s territory—the campaign handed out twenty thousand tickets for a venue that would hold only fourteen hundred. Trump staff admitted only those who told them they were Trump supporters. “I’m taking care of my people,” he said, “not people who don’t want to vote for me or are undecided.”92

  Trump was not wrong in thinking that the mainstream press was largely against him. In fact, he received fewer endorsements from the editorial boards of the nation’s largest papers than any major-party candidate in history, garnering just two, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union.93 Although Trump didn’t develop his own network of newspapers to disseminate his message, his use of Twitter—a one-way channel to millions—was a modern-day substitute. Conservative media personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity ginned up anger and resentment among white conservatives. The “alt-right” media also got behind Trump—a candidate who espoused views that aligned well with their own white nationalist visions. Some pundits credit Steve Bannon as the architect of Trump’s successful campaign. Bannon was the former head of the Breitbart News Network—a right-wing website known to float conspiracy theories meant to undermine the political Left. For instance, even though crime rates have been declining in the vast majority of cities,94 one Breitbart article instead claimed that “sadly, this stunning and unnecessary increase in crime is all part of the Left’s plan. You paralyze the cops with persecution, justify riots and looting, and by extension empower the criminals. The result is city-wide chaos, despair, and hopelessness.”95

  While Trump used the term “fake news” to refer to the mainstream media, real fake news was spreading online. Deliberately deceptive for-profit websites flourished. Social media venues, Facebook in particular, connected hundreds of thousands of Americans to phony news stories. Russian bots—fake social media accounts that automatically distributed high volumes of messages to social media users—delivered pro-Trump content through millions of posts.96 Political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of improperly using Facebook users’ personal data to direct pro-Trump messages to users deemed to be persuadable.97 Political scientists designed a study to assess the reach of fake news in the American population, using web traffic data to determine whether (and how much) users visited fake news sites. They found that one out of four Americans in their sample had visited a fake news site at least once between October 7 and November 14, 2016. They also found that Trump supporters visited the most fake news websites, “which were overwhelmingly pro-Trump.”98

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  Conservatives have, for some time, claimed that the American press has a liberal bias. The tipping point came with the Nixon administration, which was especially adept at taking its fight with the press to the public. Nixon�
��s vice president, Spiro Agnew, attacked the press coverage of Nixon’s policies around the Vietnam War. “It is time that the networks,” he said in a televised speech, “were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve.”99

  To combat this supposed liberal bias, conservatives have constructed alternative outlets of varying repute. Conservative intellectuals published their arguments in op-ed pieces in papers like the Wall Street Journal and magazines like the National Review and the Weekly Standard, while extremist groups like the John Birch Society published and distributed pamphlets, many of them delivered by hand at public events. There was, however, a sea change in the organization of conservative media that increased the size of the audience, attracted new consumers, and fundamentally altered the content of the coverage.100

  In the late 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminated the Fairness Doctrine, which had been in effect since the late 1940s. This doctrine required that any entity with a broadcasting license must cover controversial issues of public importance and stipulated that they must balance this coverage with different viewpoints.101 The policy was intended to serve the public good by requiring that important issues receive attention, while also preventing particular broadcasters from becoming propagandists. In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine was constitutional and used the scarcity of airwaves to justify broadcasters’ obligations to provide competing viewpoints on the issues.102

  Mark Fowler, appointed by Ronald Reagan as chair of the FCC, led the drive to repeal the Fairness Doctrine. At the time, however, legislators on both sides of the aisle were against repeal. Both houses of Congress approved legislation to enshrine it in law, but Reagan vetoed the bill. Ultimately, in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court supported Fowler’s claim that the “Fairness Doctrine chills free speech.”103 With the doctrine overturned, conservative commentators were quick to take advantage of the new broadcasting opportunities, inspired in large part by the success of Rush Limbaugh’s talk-radio program. Those who began to fill the airwaves with conservative programming had very different backgrounds from those who wrote for publications like the National Review. Rather than cutting their teeth in academia and conservative think tanks, the new breed of conservative broadcasters—like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly—more commonly emerged from the entertainment industry and had no particular credentials in public policy.104 This new style of broadcasting relied on anger, insult, and one-sided portrayals of social issues—and it proved very successful. Limbaugh, for example, reaches tens of millions of listeners and is compensated extraordinarily well for doing so. In 2008 he signed an eight-year contract worth forty million dollars; he signed an extension to that contract in 2016.105