Saturday, 22 January 2000
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/080-5049.html
The Associated Press
Ex-Klansman David Duke
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke yesterday
launched a civil-rights group for whites, saying they face ``massive
discrimination'' from the nation's growing population of minorities.
``European Americans must band together as a group the same way
African Americans do, the same way other minorities do,'' Duke
told reporters at the National Press Club.
He announced formation of the National Organization for European
American Rights.
About 75 organizers of the new group, which will be based in Mandeville,
La., plan to meet today in Philadelphia, and Duke said there are
already member representatives in 30 states.
``European Americans face a situation where we're going to be
outnumbered and outvoted in our own country,'' said Duke, who
is chairman of the Republican Party in Louisiana's St. Tammany
Parish.
The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that non-Hispanic whites will
drop from 72 percent of the total population in 1999 to 53 percent
by 2050 as immigration increases and the population of minorities
grows more rapidly than the white population.
``I guarantee there are many European Americans who are refugees
in our own cities,'' Duke said during the news conference, where
he lashed out at what he called biased treatment in favor of blacks,
Hispanics, Jews and homosexuals. ``We like our values. We like
our culture. We want to preserve it.''
Ken Jacobson, assistant national director for the Anti-Defamation
League, called Duke's announcement a transparent effort by ``a
leading racist and hater'' to recast himself as a civil-rights
leader.
``This is just one more manifestation in a different guise,''
Jacobson said. ``He may not have his robe on and he may not have
his mask on but it's the same old David Duke.''
This is not Duke's first time starting an organization geared
toward whites. After resigning in 1978 as national director of
the Knights of Ku Klux Klan, Duke formed the National Association
for the Advancement of White People. He left that organization
in 1989 when he was elected to Louisiana's House of Representatives.
Duke cited low white birth rates, interracial marriages and immigration
rates as key factors reducing the white share of the population.
Affirmative action and immigration are two issues the group will
tackle, Duke said, adding that a team of lawyers was being assembled.
``The destruction of a specific entity of people, it's called
genocide,'' Duke said. ``If the present immigration rates continue
. . . the European American people will basically be lost as an
entity. We are losing our heritage and our way of life.''
------------------------------------------------------------------------