Ku-Klux-Klan recruited with anti-immigrant, anti-MLK fliers on Trump's inauguration day
The extremist Ku-Klux-Klan (KKK) movement in Kentucky has released fliers ordering immigrants to leave the USA. The Washington Post has referenced police reports on the incident.
The fliers appeared on Monday, 20 January, the day of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, as he has, among other things, announced a plan to start mass deportations of immigrants living in the USA without permission. The fliers warn of “mass deportation” and urge immigrants to “leave now” so they can “avoid deportation”.
The Washington Post reported that the fliers feature a caricature of Uncle Sam, the personification of a white male American patriot, kicking a family of four. The flier also calls on people to surveille immigrants and report them to authorities.
The fliers were authored by a KKK group in Maysville, Kentucky. They also include telephone numbers for local KKK organizations in the states of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jon McClain, the chief of police in Bellevue, Kentucky, told The Washington Post. “It was kind of alarming for our community.”
Fliers were reported in the small towns of Bellevue, Ludlow and Fort Wright in northern Kentucky on the day Trump was inaugurated. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday, was also observed on the 20th, honoring the legendary leader of the movement for Black Americans’ civil rights.
Authorities condemned the fliers and said they would be filing charges against their distributors. These most recent fliers also urge people to join the KKK.
One version of the flier also called Martin Luther King, Jr. a fraud and a traitor. In 2017, during his first term in office, Trump called the KKK “repugnant”.
Trump did so after he was criticized for not condemning radicals promoting the idea of the superiority of the white race when a neo-Nazi killed a counter-protester at a white hate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump tried to downplay the incident at the time, The Washington Post reports.
