David Duke | 1. White Knight

Slow Burn

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Politics

4.6 • 25.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the first half of the 1980s, it looked like David Duke’s career as a professional racist was over. But the former Ku Klux Klan leader had a comeback plan: He was going to keep quiet about his most hateful beliefs—and run for the Louisiana House of Representatives. On the first episode of Slow Burn’s fourth season: the campaign that changed David Duke’s life, and that made him a threat to take control of Louisiana. Want more Slow Burn? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately access all episodes of Slow Burn (and your other favorite Slate podcasts) completely ad-free. Plus, you’ll unlock subscriber-exclusive bonus episodes that bring you behind-the-scenes on the making of the show. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen. Season 4 of Slow Burn is produced by Josh Levin and Christopher Johnson. Mixing by Paul Mounsey. Slow Burn’s production assistant is Madeline Ducharme and Sophie Summergrad is the podcast’s assistant producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast contains language that some listeners might find offensive.
0:06.1	White supremacist love talking to Evelyn Rich.
0:09.9	Maybe it was her talent for flattery.
0:13.1	All right. Well, you better face around the other way.
0:16.7	Because you sound like a kind of an interesting person.
0:18.8	So maybe you better give me some background on yourself
0:21.2	and how you got involved in it.
0:24.2	Rich was born in England and she was getting her PhD at Boston University.
0:29.4	Her dissertation was on the Modern Ku Klux Klan, what they believed and why they believed it.
0:35.1	On February 17th, 1986, she put her tape recorder in front of a neo-Nazi named Joe Fields.
0:44.0	So how did you get into this?
0:46.0	From the time I was probably four or five,
0:50.0	I was attracted to national socialism. I used to watch these Hollywood movies and I
0:57.0	moved for the Germans. Rich and Fields got together in Southern California at a conference hosted by the Institute for Historical Review.
1:07.4	The IHR called itself a think tank, but it was really a hate group.
1:12.0	Its main goal was to so doubt about the Holocaust, to spread the lie that Germany hadn't really
1:17.2	killed 6 million Jews.
1:20.4	The doctoral student and the neo-Nazi wouldn't be alone for long.
1:24.0	A few minutes into their conversation, they got interrupted by a knock on the door.
1:29.0	She's probably the only one in my family who I can really talk to.
1:34.0	Yeah, who is it?
1:37.0	It was David Duke, America's best known white supremacist.
	...

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