KKK leader Thomas Robb told Al Jazeera that support for the Ku Klux Klan is growing ahead of next month’s midterm elections, a claim he could not back up with a single membership number.
“Support for us is growing, there’s no question about that,” Robb told Al Jazeera correspondent Phil Lavelle in an interview published Sunday. Robb, 79, is the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Klan organization based in Arkansas that he has led since taking over from David Duke in 1989. He credited the supposed rise to people becoming angry about what they see happening in the country.
When 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 took place at the group’s headquarters near Harrison, Arkansas, where the Klan has been trying to rebrand itself around family and faith. The new image only goes so far. Robb told Lavelle the robes still come out at times, and when asked whether a Black person would be welcome at the church on the property, he said no, because it is a white nationalist church. Lavelle’s report placed that rebrand against the Klan’s long history of cross burnings and the lynching of Black people.
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 Senate in Michigan.
“Well, first of all, they’re not Americans,” Robb said.
Lavelle pushed back, pointing out that El-Sayed was born in Michigan. Mamdani was born in Uganda and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, meaning he became a citizen through the legal process available to immigrants. Robb, meanwhile, had no problem calling white Christians with parents from Ireland or Italy American, and he said plainly that race was the difference. That is the KKK leader’s definition of who belongs in this country, stated on camera.
Robb also defended Trump’s record during the interview and brushed aside rising fuel prices as less important to him than his group’s priorities.
For all the talk of growth, Lavelle reported that Robb’s online audience numbers only in the dozens. The Klan has moved from printed newsletters to the internet, but newer white nationalist figures have built far bigger followings by borrowing other people’s platforms. Lavelle pointed to Nick Fuentes, the far right streamer whose interview with Tucker Carlson drew backlash even among conservatives. Even after being banned from Instagram, Fuentes’s movement is linked to 105 accounts with roughly 1.4 million followers combined, according to Anti-Defamation League research cited in the report. The report also looked at Patriot Front, a separate white supremacist group whose marches have gone viral and whose slogan, “American by blood,” defines citizenship through ancestry the same way Robb does.
The KKK leader’s claim of growing support also ran into a wall in his own backyard. In Harrison, the residents Lavelle spoke with said their biggest concern heading into the midterms is paying their bills.
“No one cares about the color of the person’s skin next to them if they are not able to provide for their family,” Harrison resident Layne Wheeler said.
Al Jazeera’s report also cited a poll showing the cost of living is the single biggest issue for nearly half of voters heading into November.
