Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan is invoked in 2666 not through a documented account of its organization or activity, but through a conspiracy-laden exchange and the racial assumptions of a newspaper editor. Its name becomes a contested explanation for hidden power: Khalil imagines it everywhere, while the novel places that rhetoric beside the editor’s effort to reduce a Black political group to a story about surveillance and racial violence.

The Klan in Khalil’s account

In a basement near Baychester, Oscar Fate meets Khalil and other members of the Mohammedan Brotherhood. Asked why the group marches against Israel, Khalil frames the Klan as a ubiquitous force. He claims that its leaders include Jews and that it can be found in Tel Aviv, London, Washington, and Hollywood. These statements are Khalil’s allegations, not independently confirmed facts about the Klan.

When Fate presses him to name people, Khalil says the discussion is off the record and names three film directors and two actors. Fate tests the claim by asking whether Woody Allen belongs to the Klan. Khalil answers yes, using the perceived absence of Black men from Allen’s films as his reasoning. The exchange exposes the logic of Khalil’s accusation: the Klan is not established by evidence, but made into a hidden network that can explain cultural and political power.

The Brotherhood and the politics of speech

Khalil describes the Holy War as a voice for people who have lost the power of speech or never had the chance to speak. His account connects political grievance to enforced silence, while Fate’s questions challenge the sweeping claims that follow. Their conversation moves from the Klan and Hollywood to Osama bin Laden, the attacks on the Twin Towers, and the alleged disappearance of Mohamed Atta’s body. The Klan thus enters a wider field of conspiracy claims, where assertions about secret control and concealed deaths are offered as explanations for events that Khalil presents as hidden from public view.

The scene does not establish Khalil’s claims as true. Instead, it lets the claims accumulate in conversation, with Fate questioning their premises and asking for specifics. The contrast matters: Khalil’s certainty depends on an imagined network extending across countries and institutions, while the exchange itself supplies no corroboration for that picture.

The editor’s racialized reading

Elsewhere, Fate’s editor responds to a report about roughly twenty members of the Brotherhood by assuming that at least five must be FBI agents. When Fate argues that the group could yield a major story, the editor shifts the subject to Black men and asks how many have ropes around their necks. Fate rejects the reframing, distinguishing his interest in the Brotherhood from a story about a riot in a Black neighborhood.

The editor’s remarks do not provide information about Klan membership or action. They do show how the Klan’s racial history shadows the newsroom’s language: the editor treats Black political activity as a likely object of federal surveillance and invokes lynching to steer the story toward a familiar racial frame. By placing this exchange alongside Khalil’s conspiratorial claims, the novel presents the Klan’s name within a broader struggle over who can define political resistance and whose account will be treated as news.

Narrative significance

The Klan is not given a verified structure, membership, or direct action in these passages. Its significance lies in the way different speakers use it: Khalil turns it into a hidden, far-reaching explanation for power, while the editor’s conversation makes racial suspicion and the history of lynching part of the media’s handling of Black political life. Fate’s questioning and resistance prevent either frame from passing without friction. The resulting portrait is less an organizational profile than an account of how the Klan’s name can be recruited into narratives of conspiracy, surveillance, and racialized public attention.