David Duke
Mark Berman in the Washington Post:
News emerged this week that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) gave a speech in 2002 to a group of white supremacists. Scalise confirmed Monday that he appeared before a convention of the group, but said that he did not know about its affiliation with racists and neo-Nazi activists. (He also issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for this “mistake.”)
Most of the attention surrounding this story has focused on Scalise, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. But this story has also brought new attention to the white supremacist movement in the United States, which remains out of most mainstream news coverage and is an unknown, amorphous quantity to many readers.
[…]
[The group Scalise addressed] is called the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO. It was founded in 2000 (under a different name) by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader.
IPR note: David Duke was the 1988 Presidential candidate of the Populist Party. He has also run for various levels of public office many times as a Democrat and Republican, and served as a Republican state legislator in Louisiana.
Paige Lavender at HuffPo writes that Duke has threatened to release a list of other Democratic and Republican politicians with whom he has ties:
Duke issued a warning to Republicans who have criticized House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) for speaking to a white nationalist group in 2002, saying they “better be looking over their shoulders.”
In an interview with Fusion, Duke said he has ties to politicians on both sides of the aisle, and he is ready to release names if criticism of Scalise continues:
Overall, Duke was rather flabbergasted by the new focus on Scalise. He said he has hosted both Democratic and Republican legislators at everything from conferences to his children’s birthday parties. He said he has met with Democratic legislators at least 50 times in his political life.
And he delivered a warning to both Republicans and Democrats: Treat Scalise fairly, and don’t try to make political hay out of the situation. Or he said he would be inclined to release a list of names of all the politicians — both Republicans and Democrats — with whom he has ties.
“If Scalise is going to be crucified — if Republicans want to throw Steve Scalise to the woods, then a lot of them better be looking over their shoulders,” Duke said.
Yes, it’s dumb, but we’ve all seen congressmen do dumber.
Somebody dug up Duke’s press release from the event, and it didn’t mention Scalise as a speaker. Apparently Scalise was instead speaking to a regular local civic group in the same hotel earlier in the day, and Duke/EURO extended an invitation to him when they found out. Possibly he stayed around to address the group, but those in attendance all seem to agree that he didn’t. Of course I wouldn’t trust them any further than I could throw a flaming cross.
Scalise and Duke do have a history, though. In 1999 they were both being interviewed for an article about running for the same US House seat, and Scalise basically dissed Duke as un-electable, as if that’s all that’s wrong with him. It’s the kind of answer an establishment Republican might give about if asked about Palin or Huckabee running for President, not exactly an emphatic denouncing on the merits, and a lot tamer than seems advisable if asked about David Duke representing your party and your district in Congress. Then again, Duke did win 54% of the vote in the district for Governor.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/scalise-vitter-talked-to-roll-call-about-david-duke-in-1999/
So what if he spoke to them? Since when is simply speaking to someone some great evil?
What if he spoke to them and told them what a bunch of idiots they are? Would that be evil?
This crazy, ultra-PC guilt-by-association crap has gotten totally out of hand.
Many are speculating that he didn’t have any means to independently verify whether or not he had actually spoke at the EURO event, because he didn’t have keep any record of it, and so was basing his denial on the same news reports the rest of us are going by.
In that case I would say something like “I’m sorry, this was twelve years ago and I speak to hundreds of groups a year, often after little or no briefing as to what the group is about. I honestly don’t remember talking to them, although it’s possible.” Don’t admit to something you did not do, that’s just dumb.
Thank you NF.
Red Phillips mentioned Ayers above. The media gave Obama a pass on Ayers. The media scorns Scalise as if he did something unspeakable by allegedly attending a David Duke event. Scalise has to issue a statement apologizing for his “mistake.” Obama never had to issue such a statement. If Duke was not a white supremacist, but a murderer, there would be no story here. If Ayers was a not a violent criminal, but a neo-Nazi, Obama would not be president.
I passed no value judgements in the article.
Was there something in this article that said Ayers is better than (or for that matter not worse than) Duke? If so, I missed it.
Good post, William. You nailed it!
There’s a big difference between David Duke and Bill Ayers. Ayers’s bombings caused significant property damage and could have easily killed someone (in fact, three of his followers accidentally blew themselves up while making a bomb). Duke has not committed any known violent acts. The media (and perhaps the people now as well) think it worse to associate with someone with “racist” or “homophobic” views than to associate with an unrepentant criminal who committed violent acts. This is why a “hate speech” ban is on the horizon. It may not even come from an act of Congress, the President may just issue an executive order to make it so. Of course, it will be covered in a small blurb on page 23 of The New York TImes.
Same here.
Many are speculating that he didn’t have any means to independently verify whether or not he had actually spoke at the EURO event, because he didn’t have keep any record of it, and so was basing his denial on the same news reports the rest of us are going by.
I find it unlikely that any Louisiana state legislator could speak to a David Duke event and not know exactly what he was doing, but at the same time it’s not totally implausible
Idk, it was a while back and he may not actually remember.
Then why would he say he did? From article above:
Scalise confirmed Monday that he appeared before a convention of the group, but said that he did not know about its affiliation with racists and neo-Nazi activists. (He also issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for this “mistake.”)
He probably didn’t actually address Duke’s group according to a Duke aide.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-30/former-duke-aide-says-scalise-spoke-to-neighbors-not-white-supremacists
These Congress critters know who they are speaking to. Everything is planned on getting re-elected.
“Third highest ranking Republican in US House tied to David Duke?”
And the highest ranking Democrat and President of the United States is tied to left-wing terrorist Bill Ayers (Ayers may have even ghost written Obama’s memoir.), and black racialists Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright among others.
Personally, I think we should use people’s past associations for informational purposes, but we shouldn’t play the gotcha taint game. Anyone who travels on the periphery of politics in the US is going to run into people that the mainstream considers unsavory, on race, on conspiracies, on outside the mainstream political theories (Communism, monarchism, etc.), etc. The gotcha game of attempting to taint people by their associations has the effect of driving politics toward the center. Plus, it is never done fairly by a biased left-wing press which considers an association with Duke disqualifying but an association with Ayers as ho hum.
And there is news now coming out now that Scalise didn’t even actually meet with Duke’s group.