David Duke has said a few, ahem, controversial things during his time. In-between successfully running for elected office in Louisiana and failing to capture the presidency of the United States, Duke also was kind of the Grand Wizard of the KKK.
Now, that’s not to say that Duke should have figured that German authorities weren’t all too keen on him delivering a lecture in Cologne scheduled for last week, but, well — actually, he probably should have.Officials in Germany apprehended Duke as he stepped off a plane before his scheduled speech on Friday, citing an expulsion from another European nation years prior; in 2009, Duke was booted from the Czech Republic. Due to the incident, German authorities say that Duke “was not entitled to stay in Germany” and police in Cologne offered a statement that the outspoken “pro-white” figure was “obliged to leave German territory without delay,” according to the Huffington Post.Duke was slated to address a group called Outside the Network, but to the German justice minister, that wasn’t going to happen."We all have a responsibility to ensure that extreme-right, nationalistic and anti-Semitic groups and networks are not able to again come together," says Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, according to the Associated Press.To Duke, however, the barring was uncalled for.“After word went out of my invitation, Zionists put enormous pressure on the university to cancel the lecture,” he writes on his personal website. “It was argued that there might be violence because of my speech. Of course, the only violence was that threatened by the Zionists. If the university honored the very principles of freedom it was founded upon the extremist Jews promised bloodshed!I arrived inPrague only to be informed that the Israeli extremists had succeeded in getting my lecture stopped.”Duke adds that his imprisonment resulted from “a gross twisting of travel laws” that served as “a blatant attempt by the government to prevent a private and peaceful gathering of about a 100 German citizens eager to hear my message of heritage and freedom.”And that message? According to a copy of the text made available by Duke, one of his talking points included reanalyzing the Holocaust:“Any historical event should and must be allowed to be examined without fear, for the complete truth and details of any historical event can only come from free inquiry, the right to question, and the right to debate every issue,” reads Duke’s intended speech. In 2006, Duke traveled to Iran to speak at a conference that hosted several Holocaust deniers. Years earlier he told Hustler magazine, “I question whether 6 million Jews actually died in Nazi death camps. There are two major sources for Holocaust stories. One is the Nuremburg war-crimes trial, which has been shown by all honest historians to be a farce of justice. Another source is the great body of literature and media work, and at least 90% of that material is from biased Jewish sources."Another excerpt from his would-be speech reads: “I have dared to tell the real truth, the whole truth about Israel, and if you do that in a world that represents enormous power of Jewish extremists in world finance, in media and in government, you will be gang attacked like a lamb in a lake of piranhas.”In order to counter his charges in Europe, Duke is now asking his fan base of loyal “white nationalists” to donate to help out his legal fees. He served prison time during the ‘90s for defrauding his supporters out of hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover his personal gambling debts.