The editor and publisher of a local paper in Alabama is under fire for writing an editorial calling for mass lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
The opinion piece ran Feb. 14 in a print-only newspaper, the Democrat-Reporter, based in Linden, Alabama. The editorial, with the shock headline “The Klan Needs to Ride Again,” was written by Goodloe Sutton. The editorial, like the rest of the paper, was not published online.
The Democrat-Reporter back at it again with things you’d never thought you’d see published anymore. pic.twitter.com/i5b7gKD1SC
— Mikayla Burns (@mikaylasburns) February 18, 2019
“Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again,” begins the editorial, “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.”
“This socialist-communist ideology sounds good to the ignorant, the uneducated, and the simple-minded people,” it continued. “Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there.”
The editorial first started getting attention on Monday afternoon when two student-journalists at Auburn University posted photographs on Twitter.
Sutton told the Montgomery Advertiser on Monday that he had, indeed, penned the incendiary editorial.
“If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” he told the Advertiser. “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.”
