The leader of a Ku Klux Klan group in Virginia says the notoriously racist “Hooded Order” is really just a non-violent Christian organization.

“We don’t hate people because of their race. I mean, we’re a Christian organization,” Frank Ancona, an Imperial Wizard of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told WWBT on Thursday.

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He insisted that the KKK had been unfairly maligned for its acts of violence against black people in the United States.

“Because of the acts of a few rogue Klansmen our Klansmen are supposed to be murderers and want to lynch black people, and we are supposed to be terrorists, and that is a complete falsehood.”

Ancona’s KKK group has been tossing racist fliers onto residents lawns in Chesterfield County in the middle of the night. The fliers include a phone number, an email address and information about two websites that claim the KKK is a non-violent group that is not the “enem[y] of the colored and mongrel races.”

Earlier this month, Ancona told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that “[t]he thing that really gets me is that [people are] saying we’re teaching our children to hate people just because of their race, creed and color, and that’s a complete lie and falsehood.”

He said the racist fliers were an effective recruitment tool.

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“In the last 6 years that I’ve been president of this organization I’ve seen the numbers probably triple,” Ancona told WWBT.

“We want to stay white. It’s not a hateful thing to want to maintain white supremacy,” he added.

Watch video, courtesy of WWBT, below.

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NBC12.com – Richmond, VA News

[Image via Flickr user Martin, Creative Commons licensed]