Investigation by Hope Not Hate finds police officers among members of Loyal White Knights, names of expelled ‘race traitors’ and links to violence

One of the most notorious Ku Klux Klan groups is stepping up attempts to ignite race war across the US with a call to arms against black people and violent support of the White Lives Matter campaign.

An inside account from within the Loyal White Knights of the KKK also reveals that the group is linked to stabbings of anti-fascists, Holocaust denial, threats to attack gay men and extreme anti-Black Lives Matter propaganda.

During a 15-month online infiltration of the Klan, British anti-racist group Hope Not Hate obtained the membership list of what is described as the largest KKK faction, a list of 270 individuals including police officers. (The group claims it has 3,000 members.) Most hailed from southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina, although there was a considerable cohort from the Midwest, the east coast and California.

Among them is a 28-year-old British man from Suffolk who claims to be a member of the Knights Templar, an “interdenominational association of active Christians”. Another is a 44-year-old Frenchman based in Marseille who recently uploaded a series of anti-Muslim pictures to a secret Klan chatroom.

Investigators also obtained a list of members expelled from the Loyal White Knights for so-called violations, ranging from drug use to sleeping with “a Jew whore” or a Mexican, watching Asian porn or having a “mixed child”, which made them a “race traitor”.

Based in North Carolina, the Loyal White Knights was founded in 2012 by Chris Barker, a far-right supporter who last year was linked to a plot by a New York white supremacist convicted of conspiring to use a remote-controlled radiation device he called “Hiroshima on a light switch” to harm Muslims.

Barker is a contentious figure among Klansmen, partly because of his connections to neo-Nazis. He recently became part of the Aryan Nationalist Alliance, an extreme coalition of white nationalist groups, including notorious US organisations such as Matthew Heimbach’s Traditionalist Worker Party.

Heimbach , who is dubbed the “face of a new generation of white nationalists” by critics, and has advocated racial segregation – was banned from entering the UK last year by Theresa May, who was then home secretary.

Hope Not Hate’s investigation found considerable evidence that Loyal White Knights retains its desire for extreme racist violence, seeking to exploit the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant climate fostered by Donald Trump.

“Once inside, we came across some of the worst racism we have ever encountered and learned about their dangerous racist ideology, witnessing a culture which encouraged extreme violence,” said one of the infiltrators.

It also found that the Klan is actively involved in “Knight Rides”, where members drive around communities at night and throw white supremacist leaflets on to the lawns of black people’s homes.

“They organise White Lives Matter demonstrations where they get ‘tooled up’ and also Knight Rides that hark back to when members rode horses through towns at night, to terrify communities,” said an investigator.

In February this year, members of Barker’s group held an anti-immigration demonstration in Anaheim, California, during which they held White Lives Matter signs. The protest erupted into violence, with three people stabbed and 13 others arrested.

Barker then emailed the infiltrator and wrote: “We just had a fight between our members and communist [sic] our members stabbed 3 in California.” Five KKK members were arrested following the brawl but later released as police said they had evidence the KKK members acted in self-defence. Barker, who calls himself the imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights, claimed his members were holding a peaceful anti-immigration demonstration. “If we’re attacked, we will attack back,” said Barker, who did not attend the rally.

Eventually, Hope Not Hate investigators were invited into the closed sections of the group’s website, where they found members circulating images of themselves posing with firearms or holding a hangman’s noose – a symbol linked to the lynching of black people – with one mocked-up picture showing President Obama apparently being hanged. Jokes and memes about hanging and running over black people were also posted.

Investigators were sent magazines and leaflets, some of them deeply antisemitic. One image depicted a hooded figure in front of the confederate flag with the words: “Help save our race; everything we cherish is under assault by ZOG” – an acronym for zionist occupation government, which is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims Jews secretly control world power.

During the undercover operation Barker, a Holocaust denier, wrote: “They said there [sic] goal was to destroy the white race. Here they are doing just that – by brainwashing our people through the media.’

The most extreme leaflet encouraged violence against gay men, with one stating: “Stop Aids: support gay bashing,” and “Homosexual men and their sexual acts are disgusting and inhuman.” The same leaflet also espouses racism, adding: “Ban non-white immigration. Outlaw Haitians – deport mud people.”

The extremism of the modern Klan movement may appear to be undimmed, but its membership has rapidly declined over recent decades. During the 1920s, the organisation’s four million members were able to stage huge demonstrations in Washington. The Southern Poverty law Centre estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members active at the moment, split across dozens of groups.

In their responses to questioning about the findings of the investigation, Barker and his wife Amanda referred to the Holocaust as a “money-making scam”. They added: “Our group does not call for the killing of black people, but we do tell our members to arm and protect themselves.” Barker’s statement also defended the group’s homophobic stance.