Three Ku Klux Klan members may owe their lives to a Jewish activist who attended a rally Saturday by the hate group and then held angry counter-protesters at bay until police arrived.
The Klan members were participating in an anti-immigration rally in Anaheim, a city with historical links to the Klan. But when signs declaring that “White Lives Matter, ” in response to the African-American movement whose mantra is that “Black Lives Matter, ” appeared, a brawl broke out, according to witnesses. A black SUV that brought Klan members had its windows smashed, and sped away, leaving three Klan members garbed in black and festooned with Confederate flags, alone amid the counter-protesters.
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“(The counter-protesters) were so angry, they would have torn these folks limb from limb, ” said Brian Levin, who directs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “I was afraid for their lives.”
Levin, who went to Pearson Park expecting to record the rally for research, found himself protecting the Klansmen until police could intervene. On a video Levin shot and posted to Twitter, he later asked one of them, “How do you feel that a Jewish person helped save your life today?”
“I thank you. I thank you, ” said the Klansman, waving away the question with his blood-spattered arm. “I would have saved a colored man’s life, ” he added.
