Why on Earth? Ku Klux Klan
How come the Ku Klux Klan claim to be Christians, yet burn crosses?
Blame that fine old film-maker DW Griffith. In his spectacularly racist 1915 feature Birth of a Nation - it tells how the Klan save the US from a slave uprising and was memorably described by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People as “Three miles of filth” - ol’ DW filmed his pointy-headed heroes spreading the alarm by galloping through the countryside waving flaming crosses.
Before the film was released, the KKK not only did not burn crosses but had more or less disappeared from view. Griffith’s movie sparked a major resurgence in KKK fortunes and gave the Klan a potent new icon. So where did he get the idea from? A potboiler historical novel about the Scottish Highlands which omitted one vital detail - the crosses the clans used as warning beacons were of the diagonal, St Andrews variety.