Stetson Kennedy fed Klan secrets to Superman radio show

In the years after World War II, the Ku Klux Klan was attempting to rebuild membership and influence, and conventional countermeasures — investigative journalism exposing Klan activities, law enforcement pressure — reached audiences already inclined to oppose the Klan without doing much to puncture the aura of secrecy and menace that made the group attractive to potential recruits or intimidating to its targets. An exposé in a newspaper mostly told people who already disapproved of the Klan more about an organization they already disapproved of.

Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the Klan directly and learned its actual rituals, hierarchy and internal vocabulary, needed a way to strip that secrecy of its power rather than simply reporting on it after the fact — the Klan's mystique depended on outsiders not knowing its internal workings, and reporting that mystique to people who already found it menacing didn't dissolve it.

Fed real Klan rituals and ranks to a Superman radio serial, making them cartoonish villain-of-the-week material that stripped the mystique for a mass young audience.

Exposés reach only those already opposed, leaving mystique intact for others.

Children's radio reframed Klan rituals as silly, not scary, for a broad audience.

Ridicule to a neutral audience damages recruiting appeal more than outrage to foes.

To weaken a group whose power is mystique, make its secrets mundane to a mass audience, not just to the already convinced.

Klan morale and membership enrollment reportedly declined as the serial aired, an attempted boycott of the show's sponsor, Kellogg's, failed to gain traction, and Kennedy separately pursued tax and corporate-charter actions against the organization in Georgia. Economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner later called 'Clan of the Fiery Cross' the single greatest contributor to the postwar weakening of the Ku Klux Klan.