he was selected. However, by the end of their feud, he described Simmons as the "leader of Bolshevik Klansmen betraying the movement" and later expelled the former leader. As the leader of the Klan, Evans advanced a form of nativist, white supremacy that cast Protestantism as a fundamental part of American patriotism. To Evans, whiteness and Protestantism were equally valued and sometimes conflated: he said the Klan supported the "uncontaminated growth of Anglo-Saxon civilization". He maintained the belief that white Protestants had the exclusive right to govern the US because they were the descendants of the early colonists, whom he described as fleeing Europe for the US to escape its societal bounds. He admitted that many Klan members were of rural, uneducated backgrounds but argued that power should be given to "the common people of America." In a pamphlet entitled Ideals of the Ku Klux Klan, Evans described the Klan as follows: This is a white man's organization. This is a gentile organization. It is an American organization. It is a Protestant organization. Under Evans, the Klan supported a mixture of right-wing and left-wing political positions, which were described by Thomas Pegram of Loyola University Maryland as "too much of a patchwork to be considered an ideological system." Klan literature spoke highly of politicians such as Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Grover Cleveland. Evans borrowed numerous concepts from the writings of Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, American writers of the period who promoted eugenics and scientific racism, and he attempted to cast his platforms as if they were based on science. Evans attacked immigrants by arguing that they would promote ideologies such as anarchism and communism, were threats to national unity, and were involved with bootlegging during Prohibition. He considered immigrants "ignorant, superstitious, religious devotees" intent on earning money in the US before retiring to their homelands. However, he supported immigration of whom he deemed "Nordic." Evans also argued against miscegenation, and Catholic and Jewish immigration on the grounds that they were threats to genetic "good stock," a racial division that was widely supported among white Americans. Evans believed the Catholic Church sought to take control of the US government; he also questioned American Catholics' loyalty to their country, writing that they were subject to their priests, and, as such, to the entire Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Pope. In other writings, he expressed fears that the Catholic Church,