That Duke's followers believed it was all that mattered. As always it was easy to believe that the failures of today were the result of interlopers and insidious conspiracies by inferior types. Duke was elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 1989. Though the campaign focused to a considerable extent on his Klan connections it ignored his wider philosophical associations and social and political connections. Duke was heavily involved with the American Nazi party. National Socialism represented possibly the ultimate expression of the Klan's principles of racial hatred, these poisonous ideas being brought to their natural apex in the goal of literally exterminating the supposedly inferior races. Following the methodology of Adolph Hitler, Duke began as a revolutionary but then turned to an appeal to "jobs and bread," thus linking his virulently racist campaign to the most fundamental human needs (Moore, 1992, pp. 94-95). Duke claimed to represent the true,...
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