A kinder mask on a century of hate: the KKK tries to rebrand as midterms near

America's most infamous hate group wants you to know it has changed. The Ku Klux Klan is trying to rebrand itself around family and faith, its 79-year-old national director Thomas Robb told Al Jazeera in an interview published Sunday, claiming support for the Klan is growing ahead of next month's US midterm elections because of the current political climate. Robb, who succeeded David Duke as leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1989 and runs the Christian Revival Center at the group's headquarters near Harrison, Arkansas, credited the supposed rise to people becoming angry about what they see happening in the country. But when Al Jazeera correspondent Phil Lavelle pressed him to put a number on that support, Robb had nothing to offer. "Maybe we're wrong. Maybe everybody hates us. I don't know," he said. Asked how strong the group actually is, the KKK leader was even more direct. "Not strong at all. Not strong," Robb said, describing the Klan as "a voice in the wilderness." The interview exposed how thin the rebrand is. The robes still come out at times, Robb conceded. When Lavelle asked whether a Black person would be welcome at the church on the property, Robb said no, because it is a white nationalist church. The new image sits awkwardly against the Klan's long history of cross burnings and the lynching of Black people, which Lavelle's report placed front and center. The most revealing moment came when Lavelle asked Robb about two prominent politicians of color: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Michigan. The questions underscored who the Klan's rebrand is aimed against, even as its leader reaches for the language of faith and family. The Klan that Robb leads is a fragment of the organization that terrorized the American South through three incarnations, from Reconstruction to the 1920s and the civil rights era. Watchdog groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center report that today's Klan exists as scattered, decentralized groups that have shifted much of their activity to online propaganda and encrypted networks, exploiting social unrest to spread fear while occasionally dropping the overt KKK label to blend into the wider extremist ecosystem. Rebrands are cheap; the ideology is not. A movement built on the idea that some Americans are worth less than others does not become harmless by wrapping itself in the language of faith. The question for the midterms is not whether the Klan finds a new foothold, but whether a political climate that rewards grievance gives old hatred a new stage.