The editor of a small-town Alabama newspaper called for the Ku Klux Klan to “ride again” and lynch “Democrats [who] are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama” in a recent editorial, the Montgomery Advertiser reported Monday.

In the editorial published on Feb. 14, Goodloe Sutton, who inherited the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama, from his father and who has worked for the paper since the 1960s, complained of the “socialist-communist ideology [that] sounds good to the ignorant, the uneducated, and the simple-minded people.”

When asked by the Advertiser if he was really calling for the revival of the Klan, he responded, “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off.” He later added: “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them. … It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communists we’re talking about.”

When asked about his opinions on the KKK, he rejected the assertion that it was a violent hate group. “A violent organization? Well, they didn’t kill but a few people,” he said. “The Klan wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”