WI: KKK coup

Shortly after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act, the KKK launches a coup d'etat. To the surprise of everyone, the coup is successful in overthrowing Presdient Johnson. The KKK subsequently assert themselves as the legitimate US government and pass a series of acts voiding the Civil Rights Act and relacted acts, as well as partially re-instituting African-American slavery. What now?
 
How KKK manage make coup. Army would crush such thing quickly. In any succesful coup any extreme group would need support of whole army. And KKK is not going get that. If the organisation even would try that, army would crush that in couple days and leaders would be arrest and thrown to prison. And KKK knew that they can't succeed.

This is totally ASB.
 
A coup with even partial military support can work, but it's iffy. Granted, it works better if you have the Praetorian Guard to help you, but still.

The KKK is a radical group with support mostly in the lower classes and very little political or military clout. Any attempt at takeover would be something out of the Turner Diaries (which, btw, is full of bullshit in how the militiamen outsmart and outmaneuver the FBI and "corrupt government" at every turn).

Maybe if we had segregation-minded politicians take over instead of the KKK, it might work, but such people are unlikely to be very influential outside of the South, and even then, they'd have little to stand on if they willingly subvert the Constitution. Most US citizens would balk at a deliberate undermining of the US Constitution.
 

elkarlo

Banned
The post WWII klan wasn't strong enough. It had tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand at most. It coukd take over and run a state, and maybe infiltrate the military to some degree. But not enough to sieze control of the US without some crazy crisis.
The 1920s klan if it didn't collapse on its self, coukd have taken over with the depression given its numbers and control
 
"Total membership was estimated at the beginning of 1965 at about 10,000, and, with isolated exceptions, Klan membership was entirely in the South. The largest group was believed to be the United Klans of America Inc., with 5,000 members. It was headed by Robert M. Shelton, Jr., with headquarters in Tuscaloosa, Ala..." https://webcache.googleusercontent....5-875-26759-1261051+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

And these clowns (sinister and occasionally murderous clowns but still clowns), scattered throughout (mostly) the South are supposed to overcome the armed forces of the United States? They are supposed to get together with nobody looking (because nobody has infiltrated them, right?) and somehow seize the Capitol, the White House, the Pentagon, radio and TV broadcasting, etc., get all government employees to do their bidding... Look, it is ridiculous to compare this with alien space bats, because alien space bats might actually exist.
 
Even the Second Klan, with a geographic reach and membership orders of magnitude above the sixties group would have found a coup beyond their capabilities. They at least might have been able to try- though they'd have failed quickly, disastrously and bloodily.


The few thousands in the south in 1965? Not a chance. Not a chance in hell.
 
If they were absolutely crazy, and very lucky, they might seize Congress and the white house, with the president. (I think that it's still ASB, but I'm running with it.) In the process, a segregationist is the senior survivor in the cabinet--so sorry about the accidental breakage. That survivor claims the presidency. (Or if he refuses to support the coup, which is MUCH more likely IMVHO, he also has an accident. Segregationist doesn't mean willing to commit treason.)

About a month later, the firing squads are busy carrying out treason sentences en masse.

The aftermath will include security theater that makes 2019 look slack, sedition acts, and all sorts of bad things. The KKK and other segregationist groups are broken, witch hunts...
 
ASB

I don’t think the military would have to intervene. The klan wouldn’t be able to get passed local, state, and federal law enforcement. They’d have to do that before the military gets involved domestically.
They’d also have to pull off a take over of the majority of the state governments as well. And how are they supposed to keep all this quiet?
 
Last edited:
A better framing of this topic might be "Have far-right racist groups morph into an organization so powerful that it can orchestrate a coup against the US government." So, you've got the KKK, the White Citizens Councils, John Birch etc. all medling into one, possibly with some allies in the upper reaches of government and the military, and then they launch their coup.
 
About a month later, the firing squads are busy carrying out treason sentences en masse.
Sedition, not treason. In the US, treason is very specifically described, and it doesn't fit. Beyond this nitpick, yep, it ends with a remake of the 101st showing the segregationists who's boss, except this time the ROE are to fire at will, according to the legal precedent of Washington VS Richmond (1865).

As for the less specific KKK and more general far-right movements doing it, it'd need massive, massive weakness of the current government combined with strong political trouble AND some figurehead who would have enough legitimacy to actually be accepted by the administration, population and military, AKA what happened here in 1958, the most comparable event (a successful coup in a modern democracy, and even then, the plotters were outmaneuvered by the figurehead in the end, who stabilized the whole system in a way they did not anticipate and subsequently went against them). For the States? At the height of the Civil Rights movement combined with a Vietnam War going even worse than OTL, add to it thorough systemic failures of the governmental system in place (thorough enough to make the US population lose confidence in its Constitution - which is ASB in itself considering the place of the Constitution in the national psyche of the US, a very unique phenomenon compared to other democracies which do not have a quasi-religious veneration of their fundamental law, might I add), a perfect medium- and long-term play by these far-right organizations over several decades and finally a unifying figure on the level of Theodore Roosevelt or Lincoln to take over the system.

That's the minimum.
 

elkarlo

Banned
ASB

I don’t think the military would have to intervene. The klan wouldn’t be able to get passed local, state, and federal law enforcement. They’d have to do that before the military gets involved domestically.
They’d also have to pull off a take over of the majoiof the state governments as well. And how are they supposed to keep all this quiet?
Given the general lack of security and all that, there's a chance they could take out or capture LBJ, but they couldn't wipe out or capture Congress at the same time.
The coup would look the the Turkish coup attempt form a few years ago
 
I think that staging a coup would be treason.

The US Constitution, Article 3, Section 3 states, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

A coup is essentially war on a small scale; a conviction might be possible.

IF the coup actually happens, and the plotters get their hands on DC (ASB level success, or a very long term, meticulous plan where everything goes perfectly) I suspect that it would be the army that resolves the situation. It could be the navy, though; it was marines under the army's Colonel Lee that captured John Brown in '59.

Since some southern governors were willing to use their troops to oppose integration (Little Rock Nine) might they, in a more volatile situation, send their national guard, or elements of it, to DC, in response to the "president" calling for them?

Obviously, things have been going from bad to worse compared to OTL for a while for something this extreme to happen.
 
Given the general lack of security and all that, there's a chance they could take out or capture LBJ, but they couldn't wipe out or capture Congress at the same time.
The coup would look the the Turkish coup attempt form a few years ago

Even that absurd attempt had far, far more military support (though only a small minority of the military) than the Klan would have. It had at least some generals supporting it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semih_Terzi and possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akın_Öztürk) Robert Shelton gets

  • 8,651 soldiers
  • 1,676 NCOs
    Non-commissioned officers
  • 1,214 military academy students
  • 74 tanks
  • 246 armored vehicles
  • 35 planes (24 fighter jets)
  • 37 helicopters
  • 3 warships
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d'état_attempt

???

I don't think so...
 
If the Klan tried to launch a coup against the federal government, it would've gone very badly for them. A bunch of assholes in white hoods against the United States Military? They'd pretty much be committing mass suicide.
 
So we're all agreeing this is basically a hare-brained fantasy out of the Turner Diaries.

Plus, it struck me that the protestors were waving Confederate flags, not exactly something to encourage creating a new government of the USA.
 
So we're all agreeing this is basically a hare-brained fantasy out of the Turner Diaries.

Plus, it struck me that the protestors were waving Confederate flags, not exactly something to encourage creating a new government of the USA.

I think so. Darwin Award for the ones that tried it
 
Top