Slow Burn: David Duke

Season 4: Bonus Episode 2
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The Holocaust Survivor and the White Supremacist

As David Duke’s profile rose in Louisiana and beyond, Anne Levy realized she had to speak up.

Episode Notes

In this bonus episode, Slow Burn’s host Josh Levin and producer Christopher Johnson discuss David Duke’s debate with Jesse Jackson and finding the sources from Episodes 2 and 3 of the series. Then we hear an extended interview with Anne Levy, a Holocaust survivor who confronted Duke in Baton Rouge in 1989 and then continued to speak out against him as his profile rose.

Titles mentioned in this episode: Lawrence Powell’s Troubled Memory

Anne Levy image courtesy of the Levy family. Production by Chau Tu.

About the Show

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a white supremacist became an American political phenomenon. David Duke’s rise to power and prominence—his election to the Louisiana Legislature, and then his campaigns for the U.S. Senate and the governorship—was an existential crisis for the state and the nation. The fourth season of Slate’s Slow Burn will explore how a Nazi sympathizer and former Klansman fashioned himself into a mainstream figure, and why some voters came to embrace his message. It will also examine how activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens confronted Duke’s candidacy, and what it took to stop him.

The season is hosted by Josh Levin, a longtime Slow Burn editor and native Louisianian.

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