New documentary series will take the masks off the rising Ku Klux Klan movement.
The Ku Klux Klan is on the rise as the nation becomes increasingly divided and hatred gets normalized after a bitter election year. A&E Network announced that their new documentary series, Generation KKK, will unmask the hate that propels new generations to sign up for old prejudices or try to escape long-held family ties. Generation KKK will consist of eight one-hour episodes.
Rob Sharenow, Executive Vice President and General Manager of A&E and Lifetime, announced that Producers This Is Just A Test Media, along with three peace activists, will follow members of prominent Klan families as they face decisions about their future in America’s most infamous hate-group.
"This series gives viewers an unprecedented look at what it is like to be born into hate. Our producers gained access to Klan families allowing for full immersion into this secret world and its impact on the next generation," Sharenow said in a statement. "Generation KKK brings viewers inside the places where hatred and prejudice are born and bred, and carried forward or not."
“By actively targeting families and indoctrinating children, membership in the Ku Klux Klan is on the rise, causing America to come face to face with its stark divisions,” reads the official press announcement. “In Generation KKK, cameras follow four prominent Klan families who each have a family member trying to escape the Ku Klux Klan.”
The Anti-Defamation League calls the Ku Klux Klan "a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a commitment to extreme violence to achieve its goals of racial segregation and white supremacy."Generation KKK will pull back the curtain on the organization that to show its effects on American families as members grapple with the consequences of leaving.
According to the announcement, Generation KKK will focus on four families: an "Imperial Wizard" who “hopes to groom his teenage daughter to take his place; an Iraq war veteran and proud member of the KKK determined to raise his four-year-old son to embrace his views; a young man who sees his close friend and Klan leader as the father he never had, asked to pledge his loyalty to the KKK; and a fifth-generation Klan family struggling to keep up the legacy.”
The series will also follow "a network of anti-hate and peace activists who are working to break the cycle, by helping to convince members to leave the hate group," reads the offical statement.
"The team consists of Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the co-founder of One People's Project, an organization that monitors and investigates hate groups; speaker, author and peace educator Arno Michaelis, a former skinhead who joined the white power movement at the age of 16; and Bryon Widner, a reformed Neo-Nazi and subject of the documentary Erasing Hate, who spent sixteen years as a skinhead until he realized the environment wasn't best for his son. These activists develop deep relationships with Klan families attempting to convince them to hang up their robes and finally leave the group for good."
Generation KKK is produced for A&E Network by This Is Just A Test. Executive producers for TIJAT are Aengus James, Colin King Miller, Cynthia Childs and Paul Lima. Executive producers for A&E Network are Elaine Frontain Bryant, Amy Savitsky and Evan Lerner.
Generation KKK will premiere on January 10th at 10 p.m. across A&E and Crime + Investigation channels in over 100 territories worldwide.