Another point about that second Klan was that it was a nationwide movement. It encompassed the Eastern, Mid-Western, and Pacific States as well as the South. While Klan propaganda focused on blacks, Catholics, and Jews, it has been suggested that white Protestants who failed to abide by the moral code of small-town America were its principal victims.

Closer to the present, the third Klan arose in the South in the 1950's among working class and lower-middle class Southerners, mainly in the Southern rural areas, people who feared the effects of improved civil rights for black Americans on their own precarious economic and social status.

Mr. CoNYERS. Why do you number them? Did it grow and disappear and then constitute a reemergence?

Mr. GURR. There is a continuity in the tradition of the Klan as a form of organization.

The only organizational continuities of any consequence are those between the third wave of Klan activity in the 1950's and 1960's and the present resurgence of Klan activity.

I think what is more important than the existence of ongoing organizations is the tradition of Klan activity to oppose social change and the belief, rooted especially in the Southern United States, that Klan activities are an appropriate way to act upon a variety of social grievances.

I might mention also that violent anti-democratic group action is by no means limited to the Klan. The lynch mobs flourished in the South and elsewhere in the country from the period after the Civil War down to immediately preceding World War I.

Few of those lynch mobs, only a small proportion of those lynch mobs, were organized by people who called themselves Klansmen. Again, we are dealing with a tradition of violent group action, especially for racial purposes.

I would make several general points about this history of violent anti-democratic action. The victims of anti-democratic violence have not been limited to ethnic or religious minorities. Whites of Protestant backgrounds often have been victimized as well because of their alleged criminality, immorality, or their radical political views.

I suggest black Americans are not the only ones who need fear the resurgence of anti-democratic groups.

Second, I would point out that most anti-democratic violence in the past has occurred in rural and small town America. Antidemocratic groups have rarely gotten a toehold in or attracted significant followings in the larger cities.

There are a number of reasons for that, which I won't go into now, but if that interpretation is correct, it may help explain why the neo-Nazis who have been attempting to mobilize support in the Northern industrial cities have been successful only in attracting public hostility.

Third, and I regard this as the most important of these three points, anti-democratic groups usually have thrived in times and places where the general climate of opinion favored their purpose. The vigilantes were active in areas where there was a heartfelt desire to impose law and order. The Southern Klans and lynch mobs were active where attitudes of white supremacy prevailed.

The moral policing which the Klan engaged in during the 1920's, was encouraged by the traditional moral code of small-town America.

I can go on from this to say something about the conditions under which these kinds of groups faded away. Their traditions have remained. The willingness of people to act on those traditions is very considerable. But organized activities based on these traditions have been episodic, not continuous.

Historically, anti-democratic groups that have used violent means have been able to flourish under two conditions: when their cause was supported by public opinion, and when local and Federal officials followed a policy of benign-neglect toward them.

In those circumstances they often achieved their immediate objectives. They lost ground when public sympathies shifted against them and when Government took concerted counteraction.

It is clear that anti-democratic groups cannot flourish without the tacit support or at least the tolerance of public officials. It has been shown, for example, that reactionary violence in the Reconstruction South after the Civil War flourished in just those States, and at those times, when State officials gave it the tacit encouragement.

Once law enforcement agencies and the courts began to take strong and consistent action against the illegal acts of these groups, they began to lose their credibility and their effectiveness.

It seemed evident, for example, that the decline of the activities of the most recent Klan in the 1960's was due in substantial measure to the concerted efforts of Federal and, to a lesser degree, State and local enforcement agencies, prosecutors and courts.

Second, I point out that the successes of these groups usually were won because public officials, especially at the State and local levels, were either supportive of them or ambivalent.

In those circumstances, violent action and the threat of violent action often achieved significant local purposes. People who violated the moral code were thrashed, recalcitrant blacks were lynched, robbers hanged, radicals beaten and run out of town, and Jews and Catholics intimidated in very large numbers.

Third, it is also clear that anti-democratic groups sometimes overstep the bounds of public acceptability. The use of violence itself has often led to public revulsion and loss of support. In other cases, anti-democratic groups lost credibility because they violated some of the standards they were sworn to uphold.

The death knell of the Klan of the 1920's was sounded when some of its most prominent leaders were accused, and in several cases imprisoned, for moral and financial wrongdoing.

Now, I have suggested that anti-democratic groups lost ground when public sympathies shifted against them and when Government took concerted counteraction. I would maintain Government counteraction is the most important of these two factors. It continues to be not a necessary cause but a sufficient cause for the decline of anti-democratic groups. It also helps mobilize local and national opinion against the purposes and the tactics of these groups and thus ultimately undercuts their attempt to recruit followers.

I have intended this historical survey to provide a background against which to explain the rise and the prospects of contemporary anti-democratic groups.

Let me focus on four factors which are relevant to their resurgence.

First, I would point out to the persistence of anti-democratic sentiments in the American public. I regret to say that a significant minority of Americans have social and political views which are contradictory to mainstream American values and constitutional principles.

This minority does not believe in equality of opportunities for racial minorities nor in Government policies which have that objective.

On the contrary, many of them regard nonwhite minorities as inherently inferior and advocate social policies built on the premise of unequal treatment. They do not believe that full civil rights should be enjoyed by all social groups. In varying degrees, they believe minorities and Jews have had an unfair advantage and that their exercise of rights and enjoyment of benefits and privileges should be curtailed.

They are prepared to deny the right of open political expression to others, especially to those whose values and interests they regard as threatening to their own.

Finally, they believe that it is legitimate, acceptable to use forceful means, including violence and the threat of violence, both to protect themselves against other groups and to promote their own values.

These views have been part of the underside of American political beliefs for a very long time. Historically, the evidence we have for them includes the testimony of the leaders and the spokesmen of anti-democratic groups.

More recently it includes the results of opinion surveys which have asked substantial samples of Americans about their attitudes about civil liberties, their opinions toward minority rights, and their views about the justifiability of using violence to promote or defend their own interests.

I have, in an appendix to this testimony, summarized some of the results of opinion surveys about the prevalence of these kinds of views. Now, the presence of people who hold these views constitutes a potential for violent anti-democratic action. The more immediate question is what kinds of conditions, what kinds of social, economic, political changes cause those beliefs to be translated into collective action?

I have identified three factors, three general conditions in the remainder of my testimony.

First is the impact of economic crisis. Recovery from the current recession is not likely to dispel anti-democratic beliefs. It would, however, remove one immediate source of grievance that helps mobilize people to action. It takes only a little social insight to recognize that whites in a precarious economic position would be less hostile toward minorities if their own economic prospects were brighter.

We know that most of the historical episodes of anti-democratic action occurred in times, in places and among people who suffered

from economic dislocation. They often suffered from or feared some combination of the loss of their means of livelihood, job competition from minorities, rises in prices, shortage of goods and decline in their economic status.

The evidence suggests that people who hold antidemocratic beliefs today are more likely than not to be economically marginal. They also tend to live in rural and small town America, areas where wages tend to be lower and economic opportunities fewer. These are the people who are most likely to be especially hardpressed by current inflation, by rising unemployment, and by static or declining real wages.

Their grievances in those circumstances tend to focus on the Federal Government and on minorities: on the Federal Government because of tax policies, and because they believe Federal spending policies have contributed to inflation; and on minorities because they are believed to receive unfair advantage from Government programs.

The next factor I would identify is the resurgence of conservatism in the United States. Both opinion polls and election outcomes document a distinctive shift from liberal toward conservative social and political views during the last several years. I believe, although I cannot demonstrate it conclusively, that the prevalence of conservative views provides a climate which is more favorable to the expression of extreme right wing views than did the liberal attitudes that dominated public discussion and public policy during most of the 1960's.

I want to make it very clear that anti-democratic attitudes of the kinds I have identified are not part of the American conservative philosophy.

At best they are a perversion, an extremist formulation of some aspects of conservative thought. In general it has become more widely acceptable to oppose equal rights for women, to support legislation against forced busing, to restrict affirmative action programs and to oppose government intervention in social and economic affairs. These policy preferences all are associated in the public's eye with conservatism. Why not go several steps further and retaliate against the liberals, the blacks, the public officials who are responsible for, or who benefit from, these kinds of programs and activities?

I am suggesting that this is the kind of mental processes going on among people whom I have called anti-democratic. Right wing anti-democratic views probably are not more common now than they were 15 years ago. What has changed is that the shift in general public opinion has led extremists to feel that it has become more acceptable to express their views openly and to act upon them.

The final factor I want to discuss is the nature of official response to the activities of anti-democratic groups.

In my view, a vigorous official response within the framework of law is essential if the resurgence of anti-democratic activities in the United States is to be checked. Historically, these kinds of organizations have flourished when they were tolerated by politicians and officials but have withered away when they were subject to investigation, public condemnation and prosecution for violations of civil

and criminal law. Organizations such as the Klan and the National Socialist Party can and do operate largely within the legal boundaries most of the time, which means that officials ordinarily have no warrant for taking action against them, but their chances of attracting public attention, their chances for recruiting new members depend to a significant degree on their willingness to take dramatic public actions, some of which are violent or otherwise illegal.

What is problematic, at least for members of these anti-democratic organizations, is how much the police, prosecutors, judges, and juries are prepared to let them accomplish without imposing legal sanctions.

What the Klans and the neo-Nazis are doing now can be regarded as a kind of testing, both of public opinion and of official response.

Official responses which are tolerant, apathetic or simply ineffective are likely to encourage more extremist action. Such responses also signal potential supporters that it is acceptable to join such groups.

Several dramatic events have occurred during recent months which may well give encouragement to anti-democratic organizations. I refer specifically to the widely publicized failures of several grand juries to return indictments against police who appeared to use excessive deadly force against blacks; and, most recently, to the decision late last month of the Greensboro, N.C., jury which freed six Klansmen and neo-Nazis involved in the killing of five activists of the Communist Workers Party. One effect of these decisions, whether or not justified by the evidence, is to encourage extremist groups. It is equally important to know whether there is a trend in lesser cases toward jury or judicial decisions which give the benefit of doubt to racists and anti-democratic organizations. I do not know what the answer is, although Professor Kinoy may have more precise information on that kind of question. If there is such a general tendency, it is not only likely to encourage such groups, but also discourage enforcement and prosecutors from vigorous action.

Let me end my prepared remarks at that point and answer any questions that you may have.

[The statement of Ted Gurr follows:]