Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (2:39)

Is David Duke over there? Yes, he is.

David Duke (2:42)

This is David Duke.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (2:43)

This is David Duke.

David Duke (2:44)

Who is this?

Joanna Burnett (2:45)

Huh?

David Duke (2:46)

Yes, this is David Duke.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (2:47)

This is David Duke.

Christopher Johnson (2:48)

Yes.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (2:50)

I'm like, oh wow.

Joanna Burnett (2:51)

Like, this is David Duke.

Rakuten Announcer (2:52)

Really? Finally.

Eli Saslow (2:53)

Okay.

Joanna Burnett (2:54)

And then I just immediately start asking questions.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (2:58)

How do you think you got elected?

David Duke (3:00)

Huh?

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (3:01)

How do you think you got elected?

David Duke (3:03)

I got Elected because people believed and agreed with what I talked about.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (3:07)

Okay, but. Okay, you say you're not like, you know, like a bigot anymore.

David Duke (3:15)

I never was a bigot, man.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (3:16)

Okay, but you call yourself a racialist.

David Duke (3:19)

No, I don't. I call myself a white civil rights activist because I believe in equal rights for everybody. That's what I call myself.

Christopher Johnson (3:29)

Joanna is black, and she knew that Duke had been in the Ku Klux Klan. But she says she wasn't afraid of him.

Joanna Burnett (3:36)

I think I was just still really puzzled and trying to understand, you know, this person's type of thinking.

Christopher Johnson (3:47)

Duke, in turn, wanted to get inside Joanna's head. To do that, he needed to know who he was talking to.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (3:55)

Do you think that you should be removed from the Louisiana legislative?

David Duke (3:59)

Of course not. I was elected legally. Is this for a report or what's this all about?

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (4:04)

It's for my social studies project.

David Duke (4:06)

Oh, okay. What school do you get from?

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (4:07)

Ottoman Montessori.

David Duke (4:10)

How old are you?

Joanna Burnett (4:11)

12.

Christopher Johnson (4:13)

Duke spoke in a calm, even tone. He told Joanna that he opposed forced integration of education. He said that the best qualified people should get jobs and promotions and scholarships, and that racial discrimination goes on today in America against white people in those areas. When Joanna asked if he'd really changed since leaving the Klan, she He turned the question back around.

David Duke (4:39)

Well, I think that we all change and I think that we all grow. And I think that my statements have been recorded and photographed.

Topher Grace (4:48)

I think.

David Duke (4:49)

I'm sure there are some things in your life that maybe you change if you could, that you've done, whether to individuals or to parents or teachers or friends.

Christopher Johnson (5:05)

Joanna was skeptical. She'd heard a lot of stories about Duke's past and she wanted answers. She asked him about his use of racial slurs, whether he'd been affiliated with a Nazi group, and if his wife had left him because he was in the Klan. Duke denied everything. He was defensive and cagey and manipulative. He also criticized the 12 year old's interviewing technique. You see?

David Duke (5:32)

Let me tell you something. All you're doing in this interview is repeating allegations and attacks made against me by the media.

Christopher Johnson (5:45)

Duke went on a three minute diatribe, complaining that the media didn't focus on positive things like his academic record. He said that any important person has things in their past that. That would be controversial.

David Duke (5:58)

I'd never compare myself to Jesus Christ, but imagine what you could have written about Christ, all right, if you were a person that didn't like him, and in fact, Christ was so lied about that they crucified the man they made people hate him so much.

Christopher Johnson (6:18)

Duke told Joanna that she needed to have an open mind. He suggested that she place an order at his bookstore, the same place where Beth Rickey would purchase Nazi books a short while later. The title he recommended was Race and Reason. Duke had read it when he was about Joanna's age. The author, Carlton Putnam, believed that black Americans were genetically inferior to whites. Did you ever pick up the book Race and Reason?

Ann Levy (6:48)

No.

Joanna Burnett (6:48)

No, I haven't. No. No.

Christopher Johnson (6:54)

Duke talked to Joanna Burnett for 20 minutes that night. She's not sure why he stayed on the phone that long. She thinks that Duke may have thought she was white and that she'd pass on his talking points to her parents. Joanna's parents weren't Duke supporters. They did believe in good manners, though, and they asked their daughter to write Duke a thank you note. Duke printed Joanna's letter and her home address in the newsletter for the national association for the Advancement of White People.

Joanna Burnett (7:25)

I received at least three letters that I remember from prisoners, from inmates telling me that they were, you know, five foot, whatever, or six foot, whatever, brown hair, blue eyes, and, you know, they're Aryan.

Christopher Johnson (7:47)

There's a moment at the very end of Joanna's tape that really got to me. It comes when her conversation with Duke is over, but before she stops her recorder.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (7:58)

Thank you.

David Duke (7:59)

You're very welcome. You have a nice evening.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (8:01)

You too.

David Duke (8:02)

Bye.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (8:02)

Bye. Bye. You heard it. Got that Kaiser joke? Well, maybe not. He was just getting a point through and he was like, you should look at two sides of every storm.

Christopher Johnson (8:19)

He was just getting his points through. You should look at two sides of every story. Joanna Burnett was puzzling through her conversation with David Duke in real time.

Joanna Burnett (8:30)

Like, I mean, he's saying I should get the book Race and Reason and you should learn and listen to both sides of an argument. Yes, but should I really be letting David Duke tell me this? Yeah.

Christopher Johnson (8:54)

Should we be letting David Duke give us his side of the argument? I've thought about that question a lot as I've been doing my own research. It's standard practice in journalism to reach out to any subject you're reporting on. For one thing, people have a right to respond to accusations you're making against them. Plus, a story typically benefits from the perspective of its main subject. But David Duke is not a typical subject. Consider Tom Snyder's interview with Duke on NBC's Tomorrow show in 1974, the one you heard in episode two where the host and the white nationalists sounded almost chummy.

David Duke (9:35)

I got about five of the biggest Klansmen that I know of, including a couple on the LSU football team. Do you mean we saw your brothers playing football here over the holiday in the bowl game? Well, he may have. He wasn't one of the black ones on the team, I can tell you that. No, you don't have to tell me about anything. Go ahead.

Christopher Johnson (9:55)

Snyder introduced Duke to a huge new audience, and I don't think he understood the gravity of that choice. The 37 year old late night host wasn't as prepared as the 12 year old Joanna Burnett. He allowed Duke to define himself and to spread his white nationalist message nationwide. Other TV anchors have done a much better job confronting Duke. You'll hear about one of them later in our series. But sometimes the best choice is to keep someone like Duke off the stage entirely. And that's why I won't be interviewing David Duke for this season of Slow Burn. In the episodes we've already released, you've heard plenty of Duke's voice. I don't think there's any doubt about what he believed in the 70s, 80s, 90s or today. Duke told Joanna Burnett that we all change and grow, but he's still using whatever platform he has to foment racism and antisemitism. Duke is also congenitally dishonest. He made himself a mainstream political candidate by lying about his views and his background. His goal in interviews isn't to explain himself, it's to manipulate the record. I'm doing this series because I think the Duke phenomenon warrants close scrutiny and because the ideas he espouses are still with us and still dangerous. But Duke the politician is not currently a threat. Yes, he attached himself to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. And yes, he supported Donald Trump's run for the presidency. But the last time he ran for office, in 2016, he got 3% of the vote in a run for the U.S. senate. Talking to him now would serve no one's interest but David Duke's. We'll be sure to include Duke's responses to allegations leveled against him. But his core beliefs that black people are inferior to whites, that the Holocaust never happened, don't deserve to be debated. And so on this podcast, we're not going to hand him the microphone. We'll be back in a minute. Making a show like Slow Burn requires a lot of research and interviews, material that we sift through and distill to produce our series. When it's all done, we have a ton of stuff that doesn't make it into our final episodes. But there's A huge amount of treasure in the Slow Burn vaults. Amazing archival finds, loads of anecdotes and fascinating conversations. That's what we bring you in our bonus episodes for Slate Plus. In these weekly shows, Slow Burn producer Christopher Johnson and I give you a behind the scenes peek at what it's like to make the show. We also run extended interviews with some of our sources so that you get to hear their stories in their own words. Today we're going to give you a preview of what we cover on Slate plus and hopefully you'll like what you hear and sign up to become a member. When I started working on this season, I knew I needed to talk to Ann Levy. Levy is a family friend who I knew growing up in New Orleans, and I'd always heard about her famous confrontation with David Duke. What I didn't realize until our interview was how that run in changed her life and how it transformed the anti Duke movement. In this clip, you'll hear Levy talk about continuing to stand up to Duke as he threatened to win higher office.

Ann Levy (13:32)

After that, he started going around the city. You know, he'd be on the radio and I remember I was in the car driving from the grocery store and I pulled up in front of our store and I told him, I walked in, I said, stan, guess what's on the radio? David Duke's on the radio. And he turned around and says, okay, go get him. And so I went where he was speaking. And the funny part is I was sitting in the audience and as he came down, he nodded to me to say hello. Evidently I look familiar. And I said, I'd like to talk to you afterwards. But he ignored me again. He left. He didn't want any part of me.

Christopher Johnson (14:27)

He was afraid of you or he.

Ann Levy (14:29)

Didn'T want the confrontation again. You know, to me, when I think about it, had he been smart, maybe he would have sat down and asked a few questions. Why was I following him? But he didn't want any part of.

Christopher Johnson (14:46)

It because at that time in his life and trying to be a politician, he was very actively trying to conceal what his beliefs were and what his past was. And you were kind of this reminder of who he really was.

Ann Levy (15:02)

Well, that was the whole idea. You know, he was portraying himself as one thing and we knew his history as something totally different. How could you get him to get away with that? A lot of people spoke out. I never thought I'd made such a big impression, but I guess I did.

Christopher Johnson (15:25)

Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow was another person I really wanted to speak with he wrote the book Rising out of Hatred, which tells the story of Duke's godson and heir apparent, Derek Black. Saslow reveals what happened when Derek began to question his worldview and chose to leave white supremacy behind. As he followed Derek's journey, Saslow also learned a huge amount about the modern shape of white nationalism. In our conversation, which was exclusive for Slate plus, we discussed how Duke still influences that world today. Here, Saslow talks about the strategies and language that Derek Black and David Duke used to try to build a white supremacist movement.

Eli Saslow (16:08)

I think the scary thing that's at the foundation for both of them is the realization that that audience is massive in the United States. I mean, polls in the country consistently show still that about 40% of white people in the United States believe that they suffer more discrimination, more prejudice than people of color or Jews. That is insane. It's inaccurate by every measure that we have. But the fact that that degree of false white grievance continues to exist in this country, that means that there is a huge audience for these racist ideas if they're packaged in a way that doesn't announce themselves as explicitly racist. The truth is, and it remains true for Derek now, even now that he's a prominent anti racist on the other side, he still feels sure, frighteningly sure, that the ugliness within our country exists that make these ideas powerful enough to drive movements and to get people elected to the biggest office in the country.

Christopher Johnson (17:02)

So one of the things that I kept kind of rolling around in my head was is this just a small group of people talking to each other? Is this a massive movement? How scary and dangerous is it?

Eli Saslow (17:19)

I would say that white nationalists, that sort of politically active group, I think it's a fairly small group. I also think that it's a group that is growing in its own ways and that also is becoming more and more dangerous. I mean, we've had many massive terrorist attacks in this country by young white people who have radicalized in the darkest corners of the Internet for the most part and have done awful things and then are talking to each other through their manifestos. So even just as sort of like an activist terrorist group, I think it shouldn't be underestimated because the consequences are real and scary. But I think the, the bigger thing, frankly, is that it's a group that is by a few degrees removed from a lot of white America that continues to share a lot of the same ideas that are talked about on Stormfront, Whether those are ideas about immigration and building a wall or the United States becoming too diverse or changing fundamentally from what it's been. There's a wide sense in the country that this is a white country and that white culture is the priority, and that's because our history bears out. That's what we've been. And reconciling with these white supremacist ideas means reconciling with what this country is foundationally.

Christopher Johnson (18:30)

Finally, I'm going to share something from next week's Slate plus episode, which will feature my interview with actor Topher Grace. Grace played David Duke in Spike Lee's 2018 film BlackKklansman. Here he is talking about the research he did to prepare for the role, including reading Duke's autobiography.

Topher Grace (18:49)

Yeah, I mean, I did a lot. I read My Awakening, which was just a terrible experience. If someone wrote a full book, that gravity doesn't exist. It's just every page is like, you know, you're like. I'm pretty sure it does. Just me sitting here is evidence of it. So it's weird to read something that you feel like even just by reading it, you're complicit or something. But I thought the film was great, and I wanted to do the best job I could. And I hadn't played a lot of characters that were not fictional, and even the ones I'd played that were based on real people weren't people that many people were aware of or were infamous. So I listened to his radio show, even though he was older when he did that, he, you know, kind of taught me a lot about how he spoke. You know, I watched old clips of his in the 70s, read a lot of articles about him. But then it was really. I saw he had a couple appearances on Donahue. I don't. I'm sure you've watched some of those, right?

Christopher Johnson (19:48)

Yeah.

Topher Grace (19:48)

That taught me the most about him because it was him interacting with a crowd. I mean, he was there for people to hate. You know, that's why Donahue brought him on. But what I noticed by the end of these episodes is that it wasn't like they were cheering for him, but he changed the temperature of the room. They were listening to him. And I thought, oh, man, this guy is a different kind of evil. Like a new form of racism. And that, you know, it's not like whatever at the time was like, the conception of a racist. It's like a different thing where people are really starting to listen to him. Which is the same thing blackkklansman was trying to show is how that changed the course of racism in America.

Christopher Johnson (20:31)

To listen to all of these interviews in fall and to learn more about the history we're uncovering this season and how the show gets made, you've got to sign up for Slate Plus. It's $35 for the first year, $59 after that, and your membership helps keep Slow Burn running. You'll get bonus episodes for this and every other season of Slow Burn. And you'll get to skip all the ads on all Slate podcasts. Sign up now@slate.com slowburn that's slate.com slowburn this week's episode of Slow Burn was produced by me, Christopher Johnson and Chow Tu, with editorial direction by Lo and Liu and Gabriel Roth. Madeline Ducharme is our production assistant. Sophie Summergrad is Slow Burn's assistant producer. Our mix engineer is Paul Mounsey. David Gross composed our theme song. The artwork for Slow Burn is by Lisa Larson Walker. Special thanks to Jordan Hirsch, Jessica Seidman and Slate's Katie Rayford, Laura Bennett, Allison Benedict and Jared Holt.

Joanna Burnett (Interviewing David Duke) (21:38)

Thanks for listening.