The leader of a Ku Klux Klan group in Virginia says the notoriously racist "Hooded Order" is really just a non-violent Christian organization.
"We don't hate people because of their race. I mean, we're a Christian organization," Frank Ancona, an Imperial Wizard of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told WWBT on Thursday.
He insisted that the KKK had been unfairly maligned for its acts of violence against black people in the United States.
"Because of the acts of a few rogue Klansmen our Klansmen are supposed to be murderers and want to lynch black people, and we are supposed to be terrorists, and that is a complete falsehood."
Ancona's KKK group has been tossing racist fliers onto residents lawns in Chesterfield County in the middle of the night. The fliers include a phone number, an email address and information about two websites that claim the KKK is a non-violent group that is not the “enem[y] of the colored and mongrel races.”
Earlier this month, Ancona told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that “[t]he thing that really gets me is that [people are] saying we’re teaching our children to hate people just because of their race, creed and color, and that’s a complete lie and falsehood.”
He said the racist fliers were an effective recruitment tool.
"In the last 6 years that I've been president of this organization I've seen the numbers probably triple," Ancona told WWBT.
"We want to stay white. It's not a hateful thing to want to maintain white supremacy," he added.
Watch video, courtesy of WWBT, below.
[Image via Flickr user Martin, Creative Commons licensed]
