David Duke

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.

Duke was born on July 1, 1950, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Maxine (née Crick) and David Hedger Duke, the younger of two children.

As the son of an engineer for Shell Oil Company, Duke frequently moved with his family around the world.

During 1954, they lived a short time in the Netherlands before settling in an all-white area of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1955.

While attending Riverside Military Academy, his class was disciplined after Duke was found to be in possession of a Nazi flag and, in public school, he vociferously protested the lowering of the flag after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the late 1960s, Duke met William Luther Pierce, the leader of the neo-Nazi and white nationalist National Alliance, who was a lifelong influence on him.

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".

Putnam's book asserted the genetic superiority of whites.

Also during his adolescence, Duke began to read books about Nazism and the Third Reich, and his speeches at CCA meetings became more explicitly pro-Nazi.

This was enough to gain him disapproval from some members, who were more anti-black racists than antisemitic.

His mother was an alcoholic; his father permanently left in 1966 for Laos taking a job with United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

While in New Orleans, Duke attended the Clifton L. Ganus School, a conservative Church of Christ-sponsored school.

He said his segregationist awakening started during his research for an eighth-grade project at this school.

After his freshman year, Duke transferred to Warren Easton Senior High in New Orleans.

For his junior year, he attended Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia.

His senior year, he attended the integrated John F. Kennedy High School, and by the time he graduated was already a member of the Klan.

Duke joined the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in 1967.

In 1968, Duke enrolled at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.

Duke unsuccessfully ran as a Democratic candidate for state legislature during the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

After failing to gain any traction within the Democratic Party, he gained the presidential nomination of the minor Populist Party.

In 1970, he formed a white student group called the White Youth Alliance that was affiliated with the National Socialist White People's Party.

He appeared at a demonstration in Nazi uniform carrying a sign reading "Gas the Chicago 7" (a group of left-wing anti-war activists William Kunstler had defended) and "Kunstler is a Communist Jew" to protest Kunstler's appearance at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Picketing and holding parties on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, he became known on the LSU campus for wearing a Nazi uniform.

While a student at LSU, Duke took a road trip to an American Nazi Party conference in Virginia with white supremacists Joseph Paul Franklin (later convicted of multiple acts of racial and antisemitic terrorism and executed for serial murder) and Don Black.

Duke says that he spent nine months in Laos, calling it a "normal tour of duty".

He joined his father, who remained working there, and had asked his son to visit during the summer of 1971.

In December 1988, he became a Republican and claimed to have become a born-again Christian, nominally renouncing antisemitism and racism.

He soon won his only elected office, a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party.

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.

He then ran unsuccessful but competitive campaigns for several more offices, including United States Senate in 1990 and governor of Louisiana in 1991.

His campaigns were denounced by national and state Republican leaders, including President George H. W. Bush.

By the late 1990s, Duke had abandoned his pretense of rejecting racism and antisemitism, and began to openly promote racist and neo-Nazi viewpoints.

He then began to devote himself to writing about his political views, both in newsletters and later on the Internet.

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.

During the 1990s, Duke defrauded his political supporters by pretending to be in dire financial straits and soliciting money for basic necessities.

At the time, he was in fact financially secure and used the money for recreational gambling.

He mounted a minor challenge to President Bush in 1992.

In December 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud and subsequently served a 15-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring in Texas.

In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite".

He continued to run for public office through 2016, but after his reversion to open neo-Nazism, his candidacies were not competitive.