WHEN RACISTS CLAIM ANTI-RACISTS ARE RACIST:

While Cruz's claim that critical race theorists are "every bit as racist" as Klansmen is laughable, it notably fits into a larger historical pattern in which white southerners asserted that the critics of white supremacy were just as bad -- or worse -- than the defenders of white supremacy.

During the civil rights era, segregationist leaders across the South complained that they were being besieged by "extremists on both sides," by which they meant white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and its white-collar counterpart, the White Citizens' Councils, and civil rights organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In Louisiana, Democratic Governor Russell Long in 1956 blamed racial troubles in his state on "extremists" he saw in both the NAACP, which was seeking enforcement of the Supreme Court's rulings against school segregation, and the White Citizens' Councils, which was working furiously to block its implementation. The Louisiana legislature even tried to ban the NAACP, notably using a law originally designed to crack down on the Klan.

In South Carolina, Judge J. Henry Johnson told a grand jury in 1958 that both sides of the civil rights struggle were to blame for racial turmoil in the region. "The NAACP is just as bad as the KKK," the segregationist asserted, because he believed both as "violence inciting organizations." (Cruz might be interested to note that the judge also disparaged Communists, who he said tended to be "first or second generation Americans with names ending in X, or Y, or Z.")

This is a tried-and-true line of attack from those who wish to preserve the status quo.

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