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Bronze-level articleDavid Duke

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David Duke in Belgium, 2008.

David Duke is a longtime American far-right and white nationalist activist. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax related charges[1].

Contents

[edit] Early life of a loser

David Duke joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1967 while still a teenager. While attending Louisiana State University [2], he joined the National Socialist White Peoples Party, and founded an LSU student chapter of the group in 1970 called the White Youth Alliance. He became a notorious joke on campus for parading around in a Nazi uniform. After graduating from college he formed a new Klan group called the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. This was during a period when some Klan leaders were trying to resuscitate their group's image by shedding the white sheets and putting on suits and ties. He eventually got tired of having to deal with the sort of degenerates and misfits the Klan attracts, and left the Klan in 1980 to found a "more professional" organization called the National Association for the Advancement of White People. The NAAWP proceeded to attract the same sort that the Klan did. Today, David Duke hangs out on Stormfront with a whole new crop of twits and misfits.

[edit] Running for office

He was perhaps best known for running umpteen times for several public offices on the Democratic, Republican, and Populist party tickets. Most of the time he did poorly, but the voters in Louisiana must have been drunk on November 3, 1989 because he somehow managed to get himself elected to a term in the Louisiana State Senate as a Republican. Smelling the sweet stench of success, he proceeded to run for U.S. Senate the very next year against incumbent J. Bennett Johnston. Fortunately, Duke lost. Undaunted, he ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991. His opponent, Edwin Edwards, was notoriously corrupt and has been sentenced more than once on various charges of racketeering, bribery, etc. Because of this, Duke actually had a strong likelihood of getting elected governor of Louisiana, and the race attracted national attention over concern an avowed white supremacist could win the seat. This spawned the bumper stickers seen around Louisiana, "Vote for the Crook: It's Important", and "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard". Edwards won, 61-39%. Still not getting the message, David Duke sought the Republican nomination for president in 1992, which tanked so badly it consigned Duke to the Alan Keyes realm of perennial candidates.

[edit] Delusions

A look at some of Duke's statements reveals a man with significant delusions of grandeur; he claims his books to be among the most influential in the world (not to mention his website!)[3]. He has said that he flew very dangerous missions to drop supplies to anti-communist guerillas in Laos, though no-one can recall him doing this. He also claims to have been begged to run in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election on a Republican ticket.

[edit] Books and other "works"

  • After several more failed runs for the U.S. Senate, he wrote a book called My Awakening. (Ever notice how narcissistic those Nazi works tend to be? Mein Kampf, My Awakening ... My, my, my...)
  • David Duke is also purportedly the author of a 1976 self-help sex manual for women on how to perform fellatio and anal sex under the pen-name of Dorothy Vanderbilt,[4] and a 1973 street fighting manual for radical black militants, African Atto under the pen-name of Mohammad X.[5]
  • He holds a Ph.D. from a university in the Ukraine, notorious for its anti-Semitic views [6]. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism".
  • He has an active account on Stormfront which he uses to big up his own articles. Incidentally, his ex-wife set up the site.
  • From 2003 to 2004 he served a prison term for mail fraud (bilking his supporters into giving donations under false pretenses, much of which he spent on his gambling habit), and for filing a false tax return. [7] [8]
  • He has come out in favor of the Tea Party, speaking in April 2010 to tell the world they aren't racist because he says they aren't. [1] Under the delusion that "the 1%" were almost exclusively Jews, he also supported Occupy Wall Street, or, as he put it, Occupy "Zionist" Wall Street. Most people in the Occupy movement tried their best to ignore this. [9]

[edit] Links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. USA Today:David Duke pleads to mail fraud, tax charges
  2. Motto: "LSU. Go in dumb, come out dumb too".
  3. http://www.davidduke.com/general/1957_1957.html
  4. Seriously, it's even sourced and everything on Wikipedia.
  5. According to the Anti-Defamation League
  6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregional_Academy_of_Personnel_Management#Controversies
  7. David Duke Arrested In Germany, Ex-Klan Leader Faces Deportation
  8. David Duke Pleads Guilty to Fraud and Tax Charges
  9. Talking Points Memo.
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