David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white supremacist, white nationalist politician, white separatist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. A former Republican Louisiana State Representative, Duke was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988 and the Republican presidential primaries in 1992. Duke also ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana State Senate, United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, and for Governor of Louisiana. In 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud. Specifically, he defrauded his political supporters by pretending to be in dire financial straits, and asking them for money to help him pay for basic necessities. At the time, Duke was financially secure, and he used his supporters' money for recreational gambling. He subsequently served a 15-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring in Texas.Duke speaks against what he alleges as Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. federal government, and the media. Duke supports the preservation of what he considers to be Western culture and traditionalist Christian family values, as well as abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, voluntary racial segregation, anti-communism, and white separatism.
