The Ku Klux Klan: American Fascists (Part 4)

April 1, 2026·1 hr 12 min·6 clips

Klan leader D.C. Stephenson kidnapped Madge Oberholzer, raped and bit her repeatedly on a train, leading to her agonizing death.

Kokomo begins as spectacle. The Fiery Cross makes July 4th sound less like a picnic than a national awakening, with America's 147th birthday soaked in patriotic and Protestant language. Respectability is the sell. Farmers, wives, merchants, bankers, mechanics, doctors, ministers, and church workers are lined up as proof that extremism can arrive in Sunday clothes. Then the grandeur curdles. Once the ceremonial language drops away, the Klan looks like a business of titles, contracts, disgrace, and stage-managed hierarchy. Simmons becomes the cipher. He is kicked upstairs into an emperor-like office, a comparison the hosts quickly tie to their next subject, the emperors of Japan. Evans gets the real power. The Texas Stalin dentist becomes Imperial Wizard, while Stevenson gets a free hand in the North. Clark brings the farce. The PR man preaches against drink at a prohibition event, gets drunk, is arrested for drunkenness, and then faces a Mann Act indictment. The hypocrisy does not need much help. His accused arrangement for a young girl to travel from Houston to New Orleans to ease his loneliness is followed by Evans terminating his contract. Then come the lawsuits. Simmons and Clark spend a year in demented legal infighting, even trying to build a rival organization while fighting over copyright. Money ends Simmons's part. In February 1924, Evans buys him off for $146,000, and the men who relaunched the second Klan start slipping from view. Simmons tries one more group, inevitably called the Knights of the Flaming Sword. It fails, leaving Evans in command as the close turns toward samurai, the newsletter, and the club release.

As heard by us

A sharp look at how the Klan sold itself, fought itself, and kept going.

This episode treats the Klan as a public machine as much as a terror outfit, with publicity men, internal feuds, and a stage-managed image. It starts with The Fiery Cross, then shifts into the cleanup around Hiram Evans, Simmons, and Edward Young Clark, and the contrast gives…

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Why you'd press play

You want the Klan's rise told through patriotic propaganda, corruption, and backroom power plays.

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