David Duke Net Worth

What Is David Duke's Net Worth?

David Duke is an American white supremacist and neo-Nazi politician who has a net worth of $600 thousand. David Duke is best known for being the former grand wizard of the white supremacist organization the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Duke has been a member of several political parties, including the American Nazi, the Democratic, the Populist, the Republican, and the Reform parties. From February 1989 to January 1992, he served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the 81st district. David was the 5th Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 to 1980. He has unsuccessfully run for many positions, including Governor of Louisiana as well as for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud in 2002 and served a 15-month sentence. He is a Holocaust denier, a white separatist, and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. The Anti-Defamation League has referred to David as "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite." He published the autobiography "My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding" in 1998, and he was portrayed by Topher Grace in the 2018 Spike Lee-directed film "BlacKkKlansman."

Early Life

David Duke was born David Ernest Duke on July 1, 1950, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the son of David Hedger Duke and Maxine Duke, and his father worked as an engineer for Shell Oil. The family moved around frequently, and in 1954, they briefly lived in the Netherlands before relocating to New Orleans, Louisiana, in an all-white area. David's mother was an alcoholic, and his father decided to permanently leave the family to take a job in Laos with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1966. Duke attended the conservative Clifton L. Ganus School, which was sponsored by the Church of Christ, then he studied at Warren Easton Senior High. He was later sent to Georgia's Riverside Military Academy, and he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans. By the time he finished high school, he had joined the Ku Klux Klan. In 1964, David got involved in radical right politics after he attended a Citizens' Councils meeting and read Carleton Putnam's books that advocated for segregation. Duke began attending Louisiana State University in 1968, and two years later, he formed the White Youth Alliance, which was affiliated with the National Socialist White People's Party. He was known for wearing a Nazi uniform on campus and throwing parties on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday. In 1971, he joined his father in Laos and taught English to Laotian military officers. After returning to New Orleans, he was arrested for inciting a riot.

Political and Ideological Activities

Duke founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKKK) in Louisiana in 1974, and he became the group's "grand wizard" in 1976. He began receiving public attention around this time, and he started promoting legality and nonviolence in the organization. He left the KKK in 1980, and he said he made that decision because he disliked the group's association with violence and couldn't prevent members of other chapters from doing "stupid or violent things." However, in a 1992 issue of The New York Review of Books, Julia Reed wrote that David was actually forced out of the KKK after he sold a copy of the membership records to a Klan leader who turned out to be an FBI informant. Duke ran for state legislature as a Democrat during the '70s and '80s but was unsuccessful, so he switched to the Populist Party and secured the party's presidential nomination. In late 1988, he said that he was a born-again Christian and claimed that he had renounced his racism and anti-Semitism. David ran for the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Republican and won, serving from February 1989 to January 1992. He unsuccessfully ran for United States Senate in 1990 and for governor of Louisiana the following year. Several Republican leaders denounced Duke's campaigns.

By the late '90s, David returned to openly promoting neo-Nazi and racist viewpoints. He was a member of the Reform Party from 1999 to 2000, and in 2004, he served as the head advisor of Roy Armstrong's losing campaign for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Armstrong was Duke's roommate and bodyguard. David ran for the United States Senate again in 2016 to "to defend the rights of European Americans," and he earned just 3% of the vote. In 2018, he was banned from Facebook for participating in the white supremacist rally Unite the Night, and in 2020, he was banned from Twitter for hateful conduct and from YouTube for violating policies against hate speech.

Personal Life

When David worked for the White Youth Alliance, he began a relationship with Chloê Eleanor Hardin, a member of the group. The couple married in 1974, and they had two daughters together before divorcing in 1984. Hardin later moved to Florida to be closer to her parents, and she married a friend of Duke's named Don Black, who was also a member of the KKK. Chloê and Don launched a bulletin board system, Stormfront, which became a prominent online forum for racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and neo-Nazism. In the late '90s, Duke began renting an apartment in Moscow and spent five years living in Russia. As of 2016, he was living in Mandeville, Louisiana.

Legal Issues

In late 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false tax return. The New York Times reported, "Mr. Duke was accused of telling supporters that he was in financial straits, then misusing the money they sent him from 1993 to 1999. He was also accused of filing a false 1998 tax return… Mr. Duke used the money for personal investments and gambling trips." He received a sentence of 15 months in prison, was fined $10,000, and was ordered to pay the IRS the money he still owed them. David was released from prison in May 2004. In April 2009, he went to the Czech Republic after being invited there by the neo-Nazi organization Národní Odpor ("National Resistance") to give a few lectures while promoting the Czech translation of his autobiography, "My Awakening." Duke was arrested there on suspicion of "denying or approving of the Nazi genocide and other Nazi crimes" as well as "promotion of movements seeking suppression of human rights." These charges can result in a prison sentence of up to three years, but the authorities released him two days later on the condition that he leave the Czech Republic by midnight. When David was living in Valle di Cadore, Italy, an Italian court ruled that he should be expelled from the country in 2013. The Italian embassy in Malta had issued him a Visa to live there, but Italian police later discovered that a residence ban issued by Switzerland included Europe's Schengen Area.

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