If We Must Die
Kaspar the Unfriendly Ghost: Part One
Kaspar the Unfriendly Ghost: Part Two
The Ku Klux Klan was not the only far-right vigilante group to become active during World War I. The American Protective League would prove to be the second most influential. The APL was a loosely organized group of spies contracted by the Justice Department to track down dissidents and opponents of the war effort. They harassed German-Americans, leftists, draft-dodgers, and quite frequently, the falsely accused. The Justice Department planned on dismantling the American Protective League following the collapse of the Central Powers. However, after the Spartacist Revolution the Justice Department allowed the APL to continue in order to fight Bolsheviks, despite the misgivings of Attorney General Palmer. After the White House Bombing the APL gained enormously in size, rising to over a million members. The Harding administration came to rely upon the American Protective League to patrol dissenters and maintain public support for the war effort against the German and Russian Communists. The American Protective League came to be increasingly associated with conservative Republicans. Ironically, it was the American Protective League which produced the investigation which led to Harding's impeachment. While investigating Carrie Fulton Phillips for suspected German sympathies, members of the APL found that not only had she supported the Kaiserreich, but that she had had an affair with the President. Harding's affair with an enemy sympathizer would end up bringing down his presidency. President Nicholas Murray Butler attempted to restore the patriotic credentials of the Republican Party by granting the American Protective League free reign to go after German-Americans and enemy aliens. During the Harding and Butler administrations, the American Protective League conducted mass arrests, beatings and killings of supposed domestic enemies. When Nicholas Murray Butler claimed there was a Communist conspiracy of Jewish-American subversives during the 1924 Presidential Election, the American Protective League embarked on an anti-Semitic harassment campaign. Jewish immigrants were attacked, beaten, boycotted, and even killed. The American Protective League vandalized synagogues and Jewish businesses. Eventually, the Butler administration attempted to reign in the APL's excessive activities. When A. Mitchell Palmer became President, he cut off government cooperation with the APL. Palmer's distrust of the APL was motivated by a dislike of vigilantes and secret societies, an impulse which would later lead him to oppose the Ku Klux Klan. As the Klan grew in influence in both political parties, the APL came to cooperate with the Klan. There was a significant overlap in membership and goals. With the Republican Old Guard discredited by Harding's failures and corruption, the APL and the Ku Klux Klan collaborated to stage a far-right takeover of the Republican Party. When Kaspar K. Kubli was elected President, he restored the APL's official status as agents of the Justice Department. The APL worked with Bureau of Investigation Chief J. Edgar Hoover to persecute and destroy the domestic enemies of the Kubli administration. The APL supplemented the mass vigilante violence carried out by the Klan in 1929.
"The Klan", wrote H.L Mencken in the pages of the
American Mercury, "is the epitome of American humbug and hokum. Inspired by a maudlin and overdone motion picture, the Ku Kluxers represent the most foolish of the many foolish fads we have suffered this decade. It has combined the empty-headed religious chicanery and dogmatism of the 19th century with the empty-headed hysteria and anti-Bolshevik nonsense mongering of the 20th. The pious blather of the Reverend Shuler masks the extent to which the Klan is a modern mass political movement- not unlike the Communists, although the resemblance is certainly lost on them. The great P.T Barnum once said that "A Sucker is Born Every Minute." The leadership of the Klan has taken this adage to heart, growing enormously rich by separating the small-minded recruits of the Klan from their money by means of initiation fees and costume sales. They have persuaded millions of American adults to parade about like children in Halloween costumes, proud of their Anglo-Saxon mediocrity. Like children, the Klansman is frightened by stories of monsters- of Catholic ghouls, of Jewish goblins, of Bolshevik dragons, of foreign beasts and improbable conspiracies. The Klan has a whole nation frightened of the monsters living under their beds. Small-minded men attracted to the Klan find solace in the existence of conspiracies and monsters, for it provides a rationale for their failures in life other than their own personal inadequacies... And now, the American people, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to give the Ku Kluxers control of the government. The Klan have made short work of their enemies in the weeks since Kubli has become President. Many great and accomplished Americans, including some well respected men of letters, have been brutally murdered at the hands of these hooded hooligans. I have not been admirers of all of them, but it is nevertheless a travesty that so many intelligent personalities have been destroyed by the hooded legions of pin-headed mediocrity. My good friend Clarence Darrow was openly attacked by a Klan mob at his home. The Klansmen sung, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, how they would hang Clarence Darrow from a sour apple tree. They then made good on their threat. The socialist author Upton Sinclair was similarly lynched by a Klan mob in California. Sinclair Lewis was shot and drowned. Helen Keller, the famous deaf and mute prodigy, was violated and killed by a Klan mob in Alabama. Jane Addams and Alice Paul were found dead under mysterious circumstances. But the Klan has reserved the worst of their wrath for the American Negro. The colored inventor George Washington Carver was shot by a Klan mob, following the recent murder of Negro luminaries including W.E.B Dubois, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and Walter White. There have been reports of Negroes being publicly lynched all over the country under the justification that Negroes are all Bolshevik agitators taking jobs from the supposedly more-abled Anglo-Saxon. In one particularly disturbing incident, a Negro preacher by the name of Reverend King was burned alive in his Georgia church along with his wife and unborn child for the crime of speaking against the Klan. A Klansman took the Reverend's remains like a souvenir, and a photograph was printed in the Georgia newspapers of this Klansman grinning with it. Negro sympathizers like Oswald Garrison Villard and Rabbi Stephen Wise have also been killed, along with countless, nameless others. Most national newspapers, in their sycophantic cowardice and desire to please the new President, have ignored these murders, or obscured the Klan's guilt. Rest assured that I will continue to document the crimes of the Klan at the American Mercury."
Mencken was killed by the Klan shortly after the publication of this editorial. His death was deemed an accident by law enforcement. Mencken's editorial did not mention the wave of attacks on synagogues and Catholic churches carried out by the Klan. Grand Dragon Hiram Wesley Evans organized vigilante violence against opponents of the Kubli administration with the tacit approval of the President. Kubli never acknowledged the atrocities the Klan carried out in his name. Instead, President Kubli worked to entrench discrimination into federal law. Pro-KKK Republicans in Congress, under the leadership of Owen Brewster, allied with conservative Dixiecrats to provide Kubli a congressional majority necessary to pass legislation. Under the Kubli administration, Congress passed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage. Kubli also implemented a federal eugenics program which sterilized minorities and the mentally infirm. Thousands of suspected homosexuals were castrated after Kubli ordered the Justice Department to carry out an anti-gay purge. Bootleggers were executed, and immigrants were deported and killed. While President Kubli was ultimately unable to carry out his campaign promise of banning Catholicism altogether, he severely curtailed the operations of Catholic institutions in the United States. Catholic schools were banned and shuttered- Catholic students were forced to attend public schools which now taught pro-Klan explicitly protestant propaganda. The Department of Education, under Secretary William David Upshaw, monitored public schools, disseminated moralist propaganda, promoted creationism, and shuttered Catholic institutions. While Catholic worship remained legal, Catholic churches became subject to unofficial social sanction, with members of the Klan attacking Priests and burning churches. Jews were subject to similar violence. Latino immigrants in the American southwest were additionally deported and persecuted en masse. Even Hispanics with American citizenship were subject to persecution and deportation during the Great Repatriation. Kubli converted the Committee of Public Information into the Department of Public Information. The CPI had been established as a propaganda organ by the Wilson administration in the war against the Central Powers, and was repurposed as an anti-Bolshevik outfit in the war against the Communist International. Many in the Klan distrusted the CPI since Edward Bernays, an early participant with the CPI, was Jewish. Kubli thus decided to appoint Luther Powell, founder of the Oregon Klan, as Secretary of the Department of Public Information. Powell used his powerful government position to disseminate white supremacist propaganda. The Department produced racist films and literature while enforcing censorship of mass media. Freedom of the press was completely curtailed, as Powell forced newspapers and radio to disseminate pro-government, pro-Klan propaganda. The Espionage Act passed by President Wilson and the National Security Acts passed by Presidents Lansing and Palmer gave President Kubli the legal mechanisms to assume dictatorial powers. For the lawyers and judges who weren't attacked by the Klan, Attorney General Edward Jackson provided the justification that the broad use of the National Security laws were justified as a wartime measure. Despite the armistice with the Communist International, American was still technically at war with Germany, and the U.S in an actual war against Communist insurgents in Italy. Powell additionally served as the ideological enforcer of the Klan within the government, ensuring that all high ranking public officials swear allegiance to the Klan. Nearly all of Kubli's appointments were already members of the Klan. While the Kubli administration nominally remained bound to the Constitution, the executive branch in practice became an extension of the Invisible Empire, with public officials being subordinate to Klan instructions. The extent to which the Klan took over the executive branch was not made public. J. Edgar Hoover was given the task of arresting dissidents and leftists who weren't subject to Klan vigilante violence. Hoover provided a veneer of law enforcement legitimacy to KKK violence, and ultimately proved more efficient at oppression than the scattershot paramilitary activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Hoover enforced federal bans on certain organizations, including the Socialist Party and the Anti-Defamation League. Kubli ordered Hoover to carry out an anti-Semitic purge.
Kubli additionally annexed American occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Ku Klux Klan found the very existence of Haiti, an independent black Republic, as a threat to their way of life. There was some opposition to the annexation given that it meant the black residents of Haiti could potentially become American citizens. Kubli created the category of American Nationals, which were subject to the American government but had none of the rights of American citizens. Kubli further officially entrenched racial discrimination into American law. Dominican forces under the command of General Trujillo carried out violent massacres of black Haitians under the supervision of the Ku Klux Klan, killing over a hundred thousand. The Ku Klux Klan carried out hundreds of pogroms of Jews and African-Americans in the mainland United States. Thousands were killed in these pogroms, the most famous was which was the Battle of Harlem, which was carried out by the federal government. The Army Air Corps bombed Harlem and killed hundreds in an attempt to wipe out Black opponents of the Klan and kill several prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
The two groups which provided the bulk of violent opposition to the Klan regime were Italian Communists and Italian-Americans. Italian Communists, under the leadership of Antonio Gramsci, continued to launch guerrilla attacks against the U.S Army and D'Annunzio's government. The Kubli administration did not prove particularly effective at managing the war effort, and its anti-Catholic tendencies made Italians suspect of the President's intentions. General Smedley Butler's forces did oversee the capture of Antonio Gramsci, which the Kubli administration used as a propaganda victory. The American Mafia resisted the Kubli's efforts to crack down on bootlegging, which involved arrests and massacres of Mafia members. The American Mafia was further incensed by anti-Italian and anti-Catholic violence carried out by the Ku Klux Klan. The Battle of East Flatbush proved to be the start of the Mafia-KKK Wars. Incensed by Klan atrocities, Chicago Outfit Captain Al Capone decided to retaliate. Al Capone bombed the Chicago headquarters of the American Protective League, killing Alexander Briggs and much of the APL leadership. Chicago Outfit gangsters killed several prominent Klan members in numerous drive by shootings. The Federal government retaliated by launching blanket raids on Italian neighborhoods. Capone personally killed numerous members of the Ku Klux Klan and other prohibitionists. Capone was ultimately killed in a shootout with J. Edgar Hoover's men. In New York City, Mafia Boss Lucky Luciano carried out numerous attacks against the Klan, successfully putting out a hit on Fred Trump. Bugsy Siegel organized Jews to fight alongside Luciano to take back control of New York City. Organized crime effectively wiped out the Klan in New York City, prompting the Kubli administration to deploy federal law enforcement to take down the Mafia. Kubli deployed federal troops in Little Italy to destroy the Mafia. Across the United States, the Mafia mobilized Italian-Americans to defend bootleggers and Catholicism from Klan persecution. Thousands were killed in the ensuing violence. In response to the Mafia-KKK Wars, Kubli authorized the most controversial action of his Presidency, the mass internment of Italian-Americans.
In the executive order authorizing internment, Kubli cited the White House Bombing as an example of how the Italian-American community was politically subversive. Italian-Americans were responsible for anarchism, violence, and organized crime, Kubli said. Kubli falsely claimed that the Italian Mafia was allied with Gramsci's Communists, and that all Italian-Americans were thus potential enemies of the state. The U.S Army converted Italian neighborhoods into walled off ghettos; and federal and state forces across the United States began arresting Italians and deporting them to remote internment camps. While the Kubli administration failed to intern all Americans of Italian descent, it is estimated that about 500,000 Italian-Americans were effected by the policy. About 50,000 would die in the camps due to disease, malnutrition and mistreatment. Tens of thousands of Jews were also subject to internment as part of Kubli's executive order. There were public protests against internment, and Italian-Americans violently resisted in some instances. The bulk of Italian-Americans complied with the order. Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia declared he would challenge Kubli for the Republican nomination in response to internment. LaGuardia was assassinated by the Klan shortly after declaring his candidacy. The Italian government of Gabriel D'Annunzio formally protested Italian-American internment. D'Annunzio recalled Italy's Ambassador to the United States in response to persecution of Italian nationals and the destructions of hundreds of Catholic Churches which followed the announcement of the Internment. Pope Pius XI openly denounced Kubli as a tyrant, declaring that he was just as bad as the Communists. Pius XI further condemned the massacre of hundreds of Catholic priests at the hands of the Klan. Recognizing that a continued alliance with the United States was a liability, particularly after the capture of Gramsci, D'Annunzio declared an end to American-Italian military cooperation, forcing the U.S Armed Forces to mount a quick withdrawal from Italy. Catholic nations worldwide denounced Kubli's persecution. In the American controlled Philippines, Catholic militants launched a revolt against the Kubli administration.
The focus of the Kubli administration on religious and racial conflict and efforts to convert the United States into a dictatorship under the control of the Invisible Empire proved unpopular with the public. What proved even more unpopular was the Kubli administrations' anemic response to the Great Depression. The Kubli administration's economic policy largely consisted of tariffs on foreign goods in the name of "Americanism". The Klan was unable to provide any other organized or cohesive response to the Great Depression, and the trade wars with foreign nations only worsened the situation. Unemployment rapidly skyrocketed. There was a growth of support for Communist and radical groups, the very outcome the Klan sought to avoid. While Communist and Socialist organizations had already been banned, new organizations were formed to which existing bans did not apply. J. Edgar Hoover mounted mass arrests of the unemployed and poor who sought to join such organizations. Hoover's efforts were ultimately undermined by war hero Smedley Butler, who had recently resigned from the Army. In 1932, Smedley Butler led a march of unemployed veterans on Washington D.C seeking bonus payments from the federal government. This Bonus Army attracted members of the unemployed who were not veterans, and the purpose of the Bonus Army expanded into general dissatisfaction with the economy and the government. Kubli refused to meet with Butler or acknowledge the Bonus Army's demands. In response, the Bonus Army marched on the White House, with Butler vowing to depose Kubli's dictatorship. The Bonus Army was met by U.S Army forces under the command of Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur. General MacArthur, sworn to protect the elected government of the United States, ordered his troops to fire upon the Bonus Army. Over a thousand were killed in the subsequent Bonus Army massacre. Butler was arrested and killed in prison by Klan loyalists. Riots broke out across the United States in support of the Bonus Army. The Kubli administration claimed that the Bonus Army was under the control of the Communist International, which it used as an excuse to crack down on pro-Bonus Army riots. The Bonus Army Riots led to thousands of deaths nationwide, and President Kubli tried to use the threat of Communist subversion as political fodder for his 1932 re-election campaign. This campaign would ultimately prove unsuccessful.
The Republican "Old Guard" had lost patience with the corruption, bigotry, authoritarianism, and incompetence of the Kubli administration. Kubli had badly damaged the Republican Party brand. Progressive and conservative Republicans alike were disgusted by Kubli's extreme actions. Hamilton Fish III, conservative congressman from New York, organized Republican opposition to Kubli. The main rationale Fish provided was that Kubli's sectarian antagonism and economic mismanagement had resulted in increased radicalism, thus discrediting the cause of anti-Communism. The Communist International cited Kubli's various atrocities in official propaganda as proof of the failure of the American system. Fish was additionally disgusted by the Kubli administration's anti-Black pogroms, citing the Republican Party's traditional commitment to black civil rights. Fish recruited Oregon Governor Julius Meier to challenge Kubli at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Meier had dismantled Kubli's political machine in Kubli's own home state. Meier had run as an independent for Governor in 1930, defeating the Republican nominee, Phil Metschan, who was Kubli's brother-in-law. Metschan's defeat was seen as a massive rebuke to Kubli from his home state's voters, and Meier subsequently became a celebrity. The fact that Meier was Jewish allowed him to further define himself as the anti-Kubli and oppose Klan bigotry. Nominating a Jew would prove the GOP had fully divorced itself from the Klan. Fish and Meier organized an anti-Klan paramilitary group called the Wide-Awakes, named after the abolitionist vigilantes who opposed the Democrats before the Civil War. The name of the Wide-Awakes was meant to reinforce the notion that Kubli had hijacked the Republican Party, and that Meier represented the real GOP. The Wide Awakes mobbed the GOP Convention, violently battling the Klan. The Wide Awakes seized control of the Convention, allowing Julius Meier to be selected as the GOP nominee.
In response, Kubli decided to form his own political party- the America First Party, which was just an appendage of the Ku Klux Klan. The America First Party nominated President Kubli and Vice President Shuler to run again, and Kubli would ultimately surpass Meier in vote total in the general election. America First and the GOP would ultimately split the GOP vote. This gave an advantage to the Democrats, who had decided to nominate President Palmer again on a "I Told You So" platform. Palmer vowed to end Kubli's anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic persecution, attacking racist and religious bigotry. He promised to help the poor and unemployed through federal spending programs. Palmer's central position, however, was to restore order and the rule of law. The United States had fallen into violent chaos and vigilantism, and Palmer vowed that his firm hand would crush the Klan and return calm and peace. Business groups rallied behind Palmer, seeing him as more reliable and stable than Kubli. In an attempt to rejuvenate his flagging re-election bid, Kubli decided to go to war with Mexico. Relations with Mexico had rapidly deteriorated under Kubli, as the U.S government embarked on a campaign of ethnic cleansing and massacres in the American Southwest. While Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party was opposed to the Catholic Church, it nevertheless condemned Kubli's anti-Catholic persecution and the Klan destruction of churches given that Mexico was a Catholic country. The leftist leanings of the Mexican government led the Ku Klux Klan to denounce Mexico as Communist. Kubli claimed that the Mexican Army was responsible for Bonus Army riots in El Paso and Los Angeles, and claimed that Mexico was planning to implement the terms of the Zimmerman Telegram- annexation of the Southwest- with the aid of the Communist International. Kubli provoked a border skirmish with Mexico, which he cited as a casus belli for war. The U.S Army occupied Veracruz and invaded the Sonora Desert. The initial victories of the U.S Army were not followed by any advances, as the invasion stalled amidst confusion of the purpose of the invasion. The invasion of Mexico was largely seen as a political stunt which flopped as Kubli had not launched the military preparations needed for a long-term war with Mexico.
Palmer would ultimately win the 1932 Presidential Election in a landslide. The Republicans won only Vermont and Maine, while America First won Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia- all Klan strongholds. Despite his unpopularity, Kubli nevertheless maintained a core base of supporters. Millions of Americans remained loyal supporters of the Ku Klux Klan, maintaining a cultish devotion to the organization. The radio sermons of Vice President Shuler had cultivated an enormous following which allowed America First to develop into a competitive political party. Shed of the GOP label, Kubli increased his vote share in the deep South, although Palmer ultimately swept the region. Kubli refused to accept the election results, claiming that Bolsheviks and Catholics in the state governments had rigged the election. Kubli and Shuler railed against the supposed influence of urban political machines and their ballot stuffing. Kubli sued to overturn the election results in various states, these lawsuits were rejected by the Supreme Court. The Ku Klux Klan appointed alternate slates of pro-Kubli electors which were not recognized by the state governments. Klan mobs had organized to attack election officials and intimidate voters at the ballot box, but it was to no avail. Kubli had established all the political infrastructure of a dictatorship but despite his efforts he had failed to learn how to rig elections. With a few notable exceptions, Kubli had avoided persecuting elected officials in order to maintain the guise the Klan was dedicated to the Constitution. Kubli regretted that he had not done more to dismantle America's electoral infrastructure or to purge his opponents in Congress. Kubli decided to attack the certification of the 1932 election results by Congress. Vice President Shuler agreed to try to overturn Palmer's slate of electors, and the Ku Klux Klan organized a mob of militants in white hoods to descend on the Capitol in order to intimidate Congress. Klansmen rioted across the country, attacking supporters of Palmer. Thousands of Klansmen converged on Washington D.C in January 1933, preparing to attack Congress. Kubli arrived to lead the mob personally. General Douglas MacArthur, appraised of Kubli's efforts to overturn the election, mobilized the Army to attack the Klan mob, which was armed with weapons. The Army killed over two hundred Klansmen, and MacArthur arrested President Kubli and took him into federal custody. While Vice President Shuler avoided arrest, his efforts to seat Kubli's electors had been rejected by Congress. Congressional leaders declared their support for MacArthur's actions, and MacArthur remained in informal charge of the federal governments until Palmer was inaugurated in March. Kubli was prosecuted by the Palmer administration for his crimes and was sentenced to federal prison. The America First Party, however, would remain a significant political force.
