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| Subject: Ex-Klan Leader Is Popular in Europe, Mideast, Even as He Heads to Jail Here | |
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Author: JOHN McQUAID - http://www.voy.com/177577/ |
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Date Posted: 08:00:14 06/13/06 Tue In reply to: DAVID DUKE LOST AT THE GAME OF LIFE 's message, "DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE" on 03:46:08 06/11/06 Sun Ex-Klan Leader Is Popular in Europe, Mideast, Even as He Heads to Jail Here BY JOHN McQUAID Newhouse News Service White supremacist David Duke visited the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain in November at the invitation of Discover Islam, a local organization whose mission is, ironically, building cross-cultural understanding between Westerners and Muslims. Discover Islam paid Duke's travel expenses and lodging at a five-star hotel in Manama, Bahrain's capital. Local papers carried ads announcing the appearance of "Dr. David Duke" (the title thanks to a Ukrainian honorary doctorate). Over three days Duke gave a news conference and two speeches in packed hotel meeting rooms. Then he flew to nearby Qatar and appeared on the talk show "Without Borders" on the Al-Jazeera satellite network seen throughout the Arab world. Duke attacked Israel, Judaism and the U.S. posture toward Iraq. His message included anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have long been a staple of the right-wing fringe and have more recently taken hold in the Arab world: That Israel is actually running U.S. foreign policy and is the shadowy main mover behind the confrontation with Iraq; and the Israeli intelligence agency the Mossad knew of terrorist plans to destroy the World Trade Center with hijacked airplanes and warned Israelis to get out before the planes hit. That corner of the Persian Gulf region was abuzz, briefly, over the visit. The U.S. State Department protested to Al-Jazeera. Bahrain's expatriate community was outraged. "In a nutshell, he is a racist who does not deserve the notoriety he was initially given here in Bahrain. He will never be invited to Bahrain again, because we won't be fooled again," said Tony Nazzal, an American communications technician who lives in Manama. In a world plagued by spectacular terrorist attacks and religious and ethnic hatred, Duke can still find audiences for his brand of extremism. In fact, it's much easier for him to grab the spotlight abroad now than at home in the United States. He has spent much of the past several years traveling and making speeches, mostly in Europe and more recently in the Middle East. The international arena is rife with hostility toward both the United States and Israel, and that offers plenty of platforms for Duke's views, which are harshly critical of both countries. In Duke's universe, the Jews and Israel are the roots of all evil, and the United States bears the ultimate blame for Sept. 11 because of its support for Israel. U.S. foreign policy -- including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is the result of Israeli manipulation. For Duke, supporting it amounts to treason. But here, Duke is in political eclipse -- and a felon soon to be behind bars. he will report to the Federal Correctional Institution in Big Spring, Texas, to start a 15-month sentence after pleading guilty to charges of tax and mail fraud. Duke admitted to sending letters begging money from supporters that exaggerated his financial problems, then going out and gambling the money away in casinos in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast. The prison term marks a new personal and political low for Duke, who had already fallen far from his days of political prominence of a decade ago. Running as a Republican, Duke won a seat as a Louisiana state representative in 1989, took 59 percent of the white vote in his unsuccessful challenge to Sen. J. Bennett Johnston the next year, and knocked incumbent Gov. Buddy Roemer out of the runoff in the 1991 governor's race. The Louisiana political and business establishments trembled before the threat posed by an extremist becoming a major officeholder. National Republican officials worked overtime to dissociate their party from him. National and international media were riveted on his every move. But Duke was never able to abandon his extreme ideology or overcome his personality flaws. Instead of trying to build on that relatively brief moment in the limelight, he squandered it with repeated financial chicanery and a migration back to the far fringes of anti-Semitism and white supremacy where he had started his career. Partly to escape his legal troubles, he began spending most of his time abroad. He found his fame opened doors and the media attention was less skeptical. The key event was the 1998 publication of his book "My Awakening," its title evocative of Hitler's "Mein Kampf," German for "My Struggle." The self-published book is part autobiography, part pseudoscientific tract about the supposed genetic roots of racial disparities, part conspiracy theory alleging the Jews control various U.S. and global institutions. Above all, it is a call to action for "Aryans" to protect the white, European heritage by whatever means necessary -- through politics first and if that ultimately fails, through violence. Also in 1998, an apparently fed-up former girlfriend approached authorities with evidence that Duke had been lying about his financial situation in fund-raising letters and then gambling with the "personal gifts" sent in by supporters deposited in her bank account, according to news reports and sources close to the investigation. With his finances under scrutiny, Duke decided to seek more sympathetic shores and headed overseas. Duke said he visited Ukraine, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, France, Germany and Austria, among other places. Mostly, he did the same things he did in America: speechmaking, writing and meeting with far-right political leaders and organizations, and partying when possible. When in Moscow, Duke stayed in a downtown apartment and frequented a popular disco and striptease bar called the Hungry Duck, according to Lev Krichevsky, then the Moscow director of the Jewish organization the Anti-Defamation League, who monitored Duke's activities. Duke said he partly paid his own way, but also received travel and other expenses from various host groups. The overseas audiences were larger and the venues often more respectable than the fluorescent hotel meeting rooms and small book and pamphlet fairs where American extremists gather. In January 2002, for example, Duke spoke at a conference held at the Moscow Social Humanitarian Academy, a private high school favored by Communist Party members. Titled "Global Problems in World History," it featured revisionist historians and conspiracy theorists. Duke spoke on "The Zionist Factor in the U.S." Among other things, he said Israeli scientists were genetically engineering viruses to use as weapons. "Only the Jews will be immune to them," he said, according to a story in the newspaper Novy Peterburg. The press attention was also generally more favorable than he gets in the United States. Sometimes the mainstream press ignored Duke, sometimes it treated him with respect, sometimes with criticism. But he wasn't the political pariah he is in the United States. "My Awakening" was translated into Russian and retitled "The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of an American." Duke appended several new chapters on the importance of preserving Russian heritage and the threat of "Jewish oligarchs." For a time it was put on sale for 50 rubles -- about $1.70 -- in bookstalls in the basement of the Russian parliament building, where it sold at a brisk pace, Krichevsky said. Still, Duke had the capacity to cause embarrassment. In Ukraine, he received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, a prominent university with a student body of more than 30,000 at its central campus and affiliates elsewhere. According to various sources, the top management of the school has taken a strong anti-Zionist position and produced a series of articles in a university-published magazine called Personnel condemning the Jews and Israel for international mischief-making. Duke's visit contributed to an ongoing uproar over the university's leadership and its alleged anti-Semitism. Several prominent politicians on the board of the academy have been pressured to resign, including former President Leonid Kravchuk and former Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko. "President Kravchuk has made some steps to distance himself, publicly and privately. The former prime minister Yuschenko has made some too," said Jed Sunden, publisher of the Kiev Post, an English-language newspaper that called for them to step aside. "But they have not made the clean break as you see with politicians in the States." The world's intense focus on the Middle East after the events of Sept. 11 gave Duke's anti-Zionist activities a boost, and he churned out polemics on the topic. His Web site focuses heavily on the issue, with a long screed against Israel and what Duke calls its role in Sept. 11. Duke also claims that the U.S. war in Iraq is done at Israel's bidding. These sentiments are quite common now across the Arab world, and before long Duke's writings were being picked up by newspapers in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere. Duke's Internet postings on Israel also led to his invitation to Bahrain, according to Essam Eshaq, a director of the group that hosted him, Discover Islam. He said that the group knew of Duke's racist views -- among them his belief in the intellectual superiority of people of European descent over dark-skinned people, including Arabs -- but that they decided they still wanted to hear an American politician criticize Israel. A month after the Discover Islam appearance, Duke's attorney and prosecutors finally reached a plea arrangement and Duke returned to the United States from a visit to Austria. As he prepares for prison, some supporters are worried he may be a target of violence. A spokesman at the Big Spring prison said no decisions have been made on whether to provide special protection for Duke. "It's certainly going to be I would imagine a difficult period for me, but no, I am not overly concerned about that," Duke said. "I certainly have apprehension, like anyone going into federal custody. But I'll get through it. I can handle it. I want to make sure the experience makes me stronger and better and affords me a time for self-inspection and hopefully embark upon a good path, an effective path for the rest of my life. I've got a lot of life ahead of me." Duke says that the charges he pled to were insignificant and maintains he didn't bilk his supporters. He says he took the plea deal because he feared drawing a heavily black jury. "A man identified as a former Ku Klux Klan leader wouldn't have a chance (in a jury trial)," he said. "I was given a choice of doing that or taking a plea." Duke may find it hard to recover, even on the fringe, which has taken several other hits recently. In the wake of Sept. 11, the FBI and Justice Department have put more pressure on rightist groups. Matt Hale, the head of the hate group the World Church of the Creator, is under indictment for plotting to kill a federal judge. William Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance, died last year. But Duke will likely be viewed as a martyr by some government-hating segments of the far right. And he will probably retain some cachet abroad that he can still exploit. Duke observers caution that he is a very resourceful figure. "Is he washed up as a mainstream figure? I don't know. There were at least three other times when I would have said he's washed up, and he wasn't," said Tim Wise, a senior adviser to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute who monitors the far right. "Now he's going to jail, but I've learned to never say when he might be finished. He always manages to reinvent himself, and the movement he's a part of is so desperate for leaders, they keep coming back to him.' http://www.voy.com/177577/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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| David Duke's Porn | Cindy Sheehan | 17:29:43 06/25/06 Sun |
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