Putnam's book asserted the genetic superiority of whites. In 1964, Duke began his involvement in radical right politics after attending a Citizens' Councils (CCA) meeting and reading Carleton Putnam's pro- segregation books, later citing Race and Reason: A Yankee View as responsible for his "enlightenment". Kennedy High School, and by the time he graduated was already a member of the Klan. His senior year, he attended the integrated John F. For his junior year, he attended Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia. After his freshman year, Duke transferred to Warren Easton Senior High in New Orleans. He said his segregationist awakening started during his research for an eighth-grade project at this school. Ganus School, a conservative Church of Christ-sponsored school. While in New Orleans, Duke attended the Clifton L. His mother was an alcoholic his father permanently left in 1966 for Laos taking a job with United States Agency for International Development (USAID). During 1954, they lived a short time in the Netherlands before settling in an all-white area of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1955. As the son of an engineer for Shell Oil Company, Duke frequently moved with his family around the world. Early life Duke as a teenagerĭuke was born on July 1, 1950, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Maxine (née Crick) and David Hedger Duke, the younger of two children. In December 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud and subsequently served a 15-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring in Texas. At the time, he was in fact financially secure and used the money for recreational gambling. He continued to run for public office through 2016, but after his reversion to open neo-Nazism, his candidacies were not competitive.ĭuring the 1990s, Duke defrauded his political supporters by pretending to be in dire financial straits and soliciting money for basic necessities. In his writings, he denigrates African Americans and other ethnic minorities, and promotes conspiracy theories about a Jewish plot to control America and the world. He then began to devote himself to writing about his political views, both in newsletters and later on the Internet. He mounted a minor challenge to President Bush in 1992.īy the late 1990s, Duke had abandoned his pretense of rejecting racism and antisemitism, and began to openly promote racist and neo-Nazi viewpoints. His campaigns were denounced by national and state Republican leaders, including President George H. He then ran unsuccessful but competitive campaigns for several more offices, including United States Senate in 1990 and governor of Louisiana in 1991. He soon won his only elected office, a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. In December 1988, he became a Republican and claimed to have become a born-again Christian, nominally renouncing antisemitism and racism. After failing to gain any traction within the Democratic Party, he gained the presidential nomination of the minor Populist Party. ĭuke unsuccessfully ran as a Democratic candidate for state legislature during the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite". His politics and writings are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party. David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American politician, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
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