Democratic Alabama Sen. Doug Jones called for a newspaper editor to resign after publishing a “disgust … racist, hateful” editorial in which he called for the Ku Klux Klan to return to the state.

“OMG! What rock did this guy crawl out from under? This editorial is absolutely disgusting & he should resign -NOW! I have seen what happens when we stand by while people —especially those with influence — publish racist, hateful views. Words matter. Actions matter. Resign now!” Jones tweeted Monday.

Last week, longtime Democrat-Reporter publisher and editor Goodloe Sutton wrote an editorial that called for “the Ku Klux Klan to ride again.”

“Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there (the northeast U.S.),” Sutton wrote.

The piece went viral Monday after an Auburn University student newspaper reporter posted it online.

Sutton defended his stance and even doubled down on the rhetoric.

“If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” Sutton told the Montgomery Advertiser. “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.

“These are socialist-communists we’re talking about (not real Americans). Do you know what socialism and communism is?” Sutton asked.

The Democrat-Reporter is based in Linden, a small town near the Alabama-Mississippi border of barely more than 2,000 people, according to the 2010 census. The town’s population is relatively evenly split demographically among African-Americans and whites.

Sutton also falsely claimed that the Klan killed “but a few people” and argued that it “wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”

Between 1881 and 1968, lynch mobs killed 4,743 people, nearly three-quarters of whom were African-Americans, according to the Tuskegee Institute.

— New York Daily News