DAVID DUKE: Evolution of a Klansman

by Mich Zatarain ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1990

In 1989, voters in Metarie, Louisiana, made history by electing David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK, to the state legislature. In this only partially successful biography, Zatarain (Fellow of the Loyola Univ. Institute of Politics) tries to explain Duke's rise to fame. Yet he also depicts Duke's childhood as relatively idyllic, and emphasizes the future Klansman's exceptional childhood abilities in literature and the sciences. Moreover, Zatarain fails to adequately account for Duke's extraordinary success in recruiting adherents for his racist causes, attributing the white-rights leader's popularity to his charisma, but failing to analyze fully the frustrations of his constituents. What underlying social forces are pushing middle-class white Americans into the arms of extreme racial ideologues like Duke? However, through his conscientious recapitulation of the many beatings, jailings, and roustings that Duke has suffered at the hands of authorities who simply did not like his message, Zatarain does effectively demonstrate that extremists on the right as well as on the left are easy game for governmental abuse; and he also underscores the hard political truth that alienated voters, when sufficiently angry, will elect extremists. Timely, given Duke's current, high-profile campaign to unseat 18-year incumbent US Senator J. Bennett Johnston. Zatarain's smoothly written but not terribly perceptive text includes photographs, including one of the young Duke in full Nazi regalia.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pelican

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION