Thomas Robb (Ku Klux Klan)

Thomas Robb is the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Early Life

Robb grew up in Detroit, Michigan and Tucson, Arizona Upon finishing high school, he received a scholarship from the Rocky Mountain Kingdom Bible Institute, eventually earning a Doctor of Theology degree. He returned to Tucson and opened up a printing business where he began publishing The Torch.

Robb's extremism originated with his parents, who also shared the politics of Joseph McCarthy, Gerald L.K. Smith, Kenneth Goff, and Conde McGinley. He claims to have become awakened to the "Myth of the Holocaust" at 13 years old while reading Conde McGinley's anti-Communist and antisemitic paper Common Sense. While still in high school he was an outspoken supporter of American far right ideals and an active member of the John Birch Society.

Over the years Robb has developed a close relationship with other far right extremists including, J. B. Stoner, Dr. Ed Fields, Don Black, David Duke, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, and Canadian extremist Paul Fromm.

In 1986 Robb organized a protest against the Martin Luther King National Holiday in Pulaski, Tennessee. The event eventually became known as the White Christian Heritage Festival, held each October in Pulaski.[1] Pulaski is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.

A news article from the London Sunday Times said, "An accomplished and charismatic speaker, Robb is viewed by civil rights experts as the most dangerous of the new breed of white supremacists because of his communication skills, political ambitions and his impressive ability to cloak the underlying message of hatred and intolerance in an avuncular garb of reason and logic."

Robb's children have followed him into right-wing extremism, and so have two of his grand daughters who have recently formed a "white nationalist" band called Heritage Connection.[2]

Robb's far right politics are especially disturbing to Klan monitoring groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League because of his ability to cloak his message in the garb of Christianity. He is the pastor of a church, Christian Revival Center, [3] and broadcasts on shortwave radio and Stormfront internet radio.

Robb claims to defend a harmless organization, "gentle, upbeat, and friendly" and to preach a message of "love, not hate, to reverse some of the negative images that he feels the Klan has been given. When featured in the PBS documentary Banished, Robb compared a Klan hood to a businessman's tie, claiming that "it's just tradition."