In the years after WWI, the rising tide of nativism continued to grow in the 1920s. After the blockbuster release of "The Birth of a Nation", a virulently racist film, the United States saw millions join the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization which had been largely dormant since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s. This new iteration of the KKK was viciously anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, and believed all Mexicans and Mexican Americans were "subhuman foreigners." The KKK widely held that there was a vast global conspiracy seeking to subvert U.S. sovereignty and install Pope Pius XI as leader of the country. Believing Mexicans and Mexican Americans were part of this conspiracy, the KKK mounted an extensive campaign of violence across the Southwest.