Dominic Sandbrook

baseball teams.

There is a song called the Ku Klux Midnight Roll Call.

And there is Ku Klux merch.

So you can buy knives.

You can buy paint.

You can buy... This is the maddest one.

A Ku Klux smoking tobacco pack that contains the spirits of a hundred faithful KKKs with an accurate and attractive full-length portrait of the great Grand Cyclops.

So this makes the whole thing sound like a joke.

And there is still an element that you describe as japery.

So they never burn crosses, the clan, the first clan, but they do play weird practical jokes on their black neighbors.

So they will dress up in these sort of frames that make them look like 12-foot tall ghostly figures, and they'll intimidate the freedmen.

They will do stuff like, I mean, this sounds so deranged.

They will put on detachable hands and force black people to shake their hand in the street, and then their hand will come off.

Or their favourite trick just sounds so weird.

They will strap a sort of bottle to their chest underneath their hood and their robes, and they will pretend to drink gigantic quantities of water.

How does that work?

Because basically you're pouring it into your... If you're watching a video, you can see me.

I'm miming it.

You're pouring this water into your hood, and then you've got a kind of concealed... Oh, I see.

You've got a concealed bottle.