Today, Duke sees Trump as a kindred spirit. In the two statewide races, he won an astounding 55 to 60 percent of the white vote. He ultimately fell short, but he delivered a powerful race-based message that created a mass movement by tapping into the frustration of working-class whites who were angry with the status quo and the political establishment. “Send them a message,” he said, and they roared with approval.īack, then, having stowed his white robe, Duke won national attention when he was elected as a legislator to the state House of Representatives from a suburban New Orleans district, followed by campaigns to be a senator and then governor of Louisiana. Then, I heard similar chants-“Duke! Duke! Duke!”-from white men and women who stomped their feet and punched the air in an us-versus-them atmosphere. “Mexico!” they yelled.Īs I walked out, I remarked that I hadn’t seen such fervor for a political candidate since I covered Duke 25 years earlier. I could feel his supporters’ seething anger, especially when he asked rhetorically who ought to build the wall. “Trump! Trump! Trump!” the nearly-all white crowd chanted repeatedly, many of them on their feet throughout the entire speech. Of course, no one is accusing Trump of harboring such feelings.īut when I saw Trump address 10,000 people at an arena in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a month ago, it brought back memories of the earlier Duke campaigns. He revels in being politically incorrect-and you can’t be any more politically incorrect than not distancing yourself from Duke as quickly as you can.Īs a reporter, I chronicled Duke’s political rise in Louisiana, and I decided to write his biography to explain in detail that the focus by the media and the public with his Klan past obscured his true obsession-combatting Jews who he believes are bent on using blacks and brown-skinned immigrants to undermine the white race. He says trade with China kills American jobs. Trump rails against Washington and the political elites. As he campaigns for president, Trump demands a wall to keep out the illegal immigrants, just as Duke did during his Klan border watch. As Duke’s biographer, I find many echoes of Duke in what Trump says and does, and in their similar appeal to disaffected white voters. I don’t think Trump equivocated over Duke by chance. It is your job now to get active.” In a CNN interview, Trump at first did not disavow the one-time Klan leader, sparking an even greater round of headlines. “His candidacy is an insurgency that is waking up millions of Americans. “I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action,” Duke said on his radio show. In the lead vehicle was David Duke, the mediagenic grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and attached to his sedan was a white hand-painted sign: “Klan Border Watch.” Trailing Duke were three dozen reporters, photographers and TV cameramen who captured a carefully manufactured scene that resonated with those who feared, then as now, hordes of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States.ĭuke made headlines again last month when he cheered on Donald Trump, who is waging his own sensationalist war against immigration. On a moonlit night 39 years ago outside of San Diego, three sedans sped along back roads to pass on claims of illegal alien sightings to federal border agents. He is the author of The Rise of David Duke and Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards. Tyler Bridges, a freelance writer based in New Orleans, is a former Nieman Fellow and reporter for The Miami Herald and The Times-Picayune.
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