An award-winning small-town Alabama newspaper editor is calling for the Ku Klux Klan to head to Washington and deal with the politicians there, saying he'll provide the "hemp rope" so they can be hung.
The editor, Goodloe Sutton told the Montgomery Advertiser that he had written the editorial in the Linden, AL Democrat-Reporter. “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off. We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them,” Sutton said.
Asked by the Advertiser's reporter if it was appropriate for a newspaper editor to be calling for public lynchings, Sutton replied: “It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communists we’re talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?”
In that same interview, Sutton argued that the KKK “didn’t kill but a few people” and “wasn’t violent until they needed to be.” He compared the Klan, a white supremacist hate group, to the NAACP.
In his editorial, Sutton claimed Democrats in Congress were trying to raise taxes in Alabama and blamed Democrats for everything from "getting us into" World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and said Democrats banned the draft so their sons wouldn't have to serve.
"Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there," he wrote. "They call them compounds now. Truly, they are the ruling class."
Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), who prosecuted two members of the Klan for their role in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, called the editorial “disgusting” and demanded Sutton’s immediate resignation.
“I have seen what happens when we stand by while people-especially those with influence- publish racist, hateful views,” he wrote.
Incredible. This is 2019 and this kind of stuff still happens.