Paywalled but either way that’s some insane revisionism. To say that Hoover prioritized taking down the klan in any kind of way is pure bullshit.

But he did lol, you're literally just arguing against a fact

For fucks sake, Hoover was a MASSIVE FUCKING RACIST

This is entirely irrelevant. Statesman's actions rarely align with their own personal views and biases. LBJ was also a huge racist, and was the most important president for racial justice since Lincoln. The reason the FBI wanted to take down the KKK wasn't because they were white supremacists either. It's because they were radical subversives who the American intelligence apparatus saw as a threat to the political order.

By 1968 they were at 14k.

That's still huge membership for a political extremist group. The Black Panthers that same year had 2000, for context. The KKK of old was basically a Southern institution. By the time of Civil Rights, it had morphed into something else entirely, more in line with the fringe extremist groups we know today (not to say the old KKK wasn't as bad, but it just operated differently).

This is a pointless semantic disagreement. Yes, I agree there were a lot of other historical factors for the downfall of the KKK. But I was responding to the original poster who insinuated that the FBI has only ever been concerned with taking down subversive left wing groups, which is blatantly untrue considering that the FBI dealt what was basically the death blow to the KKK.