SELECK **** David Duke: White Revolution on the Internet ****
Like Don Black, David Duke first became an active racist as a teen-ager. Soon after, as a student at Louisiana State University, he founded the neo-Nazi group White Youth Alliance. After his graduation, Duke founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and launched a publicity blitz that boosted its membership.
Duke tried to move the Klan into the mainstream, encouraging his Klansmen to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." Heeding his own advice, Duke got himself on network television, where he articulated a subtle brand of racism, skillfully exploiting legitimate issues such as illegal immigration, affirmative action and court-ordered busing as a vehicle for voicing his white supremacist propaganda. Couching his bigotry in pseudo-scientific and sociological terms, Duke attracted audiences with his moderate-sounding approach, leading critical journalists to describe his views as "rhinestone racism" and "button-down terror."
Duke's days as a Klan leader ended abruptly in 1980, after he was accused of trying to sell his group's membership list. Duke left the Klan to establish and head the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), which he himself confirmed was simply a Klan without robes. Though Duke shed his official role in the NAAWP when he became more politically active, he continued to maintain ties to the group and its agenda continued to parallel his.
Running as a Republican, Duke won a Louisiana State Legislature seat in January 1989, despite scrutiny and opposition from national Republican leaders. While in office, he continued to sell neo-Nazi literature. While claiming that he had repudiated racism, Duke made statements such as "Jews
| David Duke has embraced the Internet as a key to the future of the white supremacist movement. |
are trying to destroy all other cultures." Duke won 43.5 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 1990 U.S. Senate race and 700,000 votes in a 1991 race for the governorship of Louisiana.
After an unsuccessful Presidential bid in 1992, Duke retreated from the political arena but continued to concentrate on raising his media profile. He tried his luck as a radio talk show host in 1993, but his controversial program, the "David Duke Conservative Hotline," proved unpopular. Two years after Duke failed to raise the $7,000 needed to continue broadcasting his program, he established The David Duke Report Online, a less costly venue for disseminating his views.
David Duke has embraced the Internet as a key to the future of the white supremacist movement. An article featured prominently at his site, "The Coming White Revolution -- Born on the Internet," outlines his high hopes that the Internet will "facilitate a world-wide revolution of White awareness." In particular, Duke believes the Web will shatter the control of his "unrelenting enemy," the "alien anti-White" media:
Up until now, unless someone met me personally, or read my material, the only way they could judge me is by what the liberal-biased media says. Now, that situation has changed. Millions of people are going online in America. Now, if they want to find out about me and my ideas and issues all they have to do is go into one of the search engines and search for "David Duke." Hundreds of sources will show up.13
Concerned that the "non-white birthrate," "massive immigration," and "racial intermarriage" will "reduce the founding people of America into a minority," Duke boasts at his Web site about the "genetic potential" of "our people," stressing the "innate intellectual & psychological differences" between whites and Blacks. He describes these "differences" in an article entitled "Can You Handle the Truth?"
The differences between Black and White go far deeper than simply the color of skin. They include differences in the most important part of the anatomy, the part that makes us human: the very brain itself. Any forensic investigator can differentiate between a White or Black brain. Among the human races the differences go right down to the soul...The races of mankind have different levels of measured intelligence, different propensities to crime, different esthetic characteristics, and physical differences that lead them to varying representation in different sports.
In another piece posted at his site, "Race and Christianity," Duke writes, "I truly believe that the future of this country, civilization, and planet is inseparably bound up with the destiny of our White race. I think, as the history of Christianity has shown, that our people have been the driving force in its triumph."
Duke's site reprints more articles about racial inequality, many of which are stored in his "Race Information Library," where he urges his readers to download, print, and distribute his work. "Be sure to e-mail your friends and associates about the David Duke Online site," he adds.
Posted at David Duke Report Online are downloadable broadcasts of "The David Duke International Internet Radio Show," which Web users can listen to at any time for free, with just the click of a mouse. Among the subjects of these programs are "The Immigration Disaster Unchecked immigration will destroy America," "'Erasing White Guilt' The most elemental of human rights," and "Black Crime spurred on by hate movies." Duke comments:
Let me ask you a question, how many millions of dollars would it cost me to have a radio station that could broadcast my radio programs to the entire globe-24- hours-a-day? Through the Internet, I do it RIGHT NOW and [at] a microscopic fraction of the cost. To listen anywhere in the world, all it takes is having a computer and simply being connected to the Internet!14
In November 1998, Duke renamed and redesigned his site. The site, now simply called David Duke, pictures Duke amid colorful images of an American flag, the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and the White House. A "David Duke Biography" portrays the former Klan leader as a respectable citizen, listing the awards and degrees he has received and pointing out that he is a "publicly-elected Republican official" (Duke currently serves as the Chairman of the St. Tammany, Louisiana, Republican Parish Executive Committee). Duke's site also sells his autobiography, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding; Duke promises to personally autograph all copies of the book ordered from the site.
Though Duke's site does not possess the depth or breadth of a site like Stormfront, his well-known name may attract curious, potential extremists browsing the Web. This is particularly troublesome considering Duke's expressed belief in the Internet as a white supremacist recruitment tool and his recent offline activities.
After years spent denying his racism in order to advance in politics, Duke has once again openly embraced the white supremacist movement. In a July 1997 article published by The Tallahassee Democrat, he acknowledged that his politics were becoming "more radical" in reaction to what he referred to as a "'growing undercurrent' of white frustration." Most disturbing are his speeches given in 1997 and 1998 at four separate events sponsored by the National Alliance, a group the Anti-Defamation League has identified as the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States today.
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