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Should Congress Pray for David Duke? Should the State Department Mourn Him? David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a political gadfly who ran for U.S. president as a Democrat but then won a seat in the Louisiana House as a Republican, is a bipartisan embarrassment. He never abandoned his racist and anti-Semitic views. Indeed, while voters ultimately punished Duke when they realized for what he stood, he found a new constituency in Iran.

In November 2005, Duke traveled to Syria, where he sang the praises of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at a Damascus conference. He gave Syrian journalist Nidal Kabalan a copy of his book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question. Kabalan reportedly then gave the book to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Duke credited this for awakening the firebrand Iranian president to the “falsehood” of the Holocaust. Perhaps this was self-aggrandizement on Duke’s part, but there is no question he impressed the Iranian leadership. The following year, Ahmadinejad invited him to Tehran to keynote a Holocaust Denial conference.

Duke today languishes in obscurity, and one day he will perish in the shadows. When he dies, few will mourn let alone eulogize him. Some men are better gone and forgotten.

How ironic, then, that both Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a man who seeks moral legitimacy from his stepfather’s Holocaust experience, and the chaplain of the U.S. Congress respectively offered condolences and prayers. “The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran,” the State Department press statement declared. Some diplomats dismissed the statement as pro forma and pointed out its subsequent declaration of support for the Iranian people, but this is nonsense. Diplospeak should never trump reality. In the real world, the passing of enemies deserves little more than silence. Indeed, there is something very wrong when the United States government not only sends condolences on the death of a man who wished nothing but ill on the United States and Americans, but also one whose passing Iranians celebrated with fireworks. 

On May 21, 2024, Chaplain Barry Black took to the podium of the Congress to declare, “Lord, we pray for the Iranian people who mourn the death of their president.” Iranian regime propagandists took such commemoration to the bank. That Black, an African American retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, made such a statement doubles the irony. After all, the disdain Raisi’s regime has for blacks is second only to its disgust for Jews.

Simply put, there is little difference ideologically between the hatred Duke espouses and that which the Iranian regime does today. They are equally odious. To pray for the Islamic Republic or treat the late “Butcher of Tehran” with even an iota of respect is akin to praising Duke and his noxious racism. The only real difference between the two is that Raisi accumulated the power to put his murderous vision into action; Duke remains a carnival sideshow.

The State Department and U.S. Senate Chaplain’s disgrace should be a wake-up call. America is at its strongest when it roots its policy morally, and when it differentiates between democrats and dictators, allies and enemies. If the State Department believes respect for Raisi is diplomatically proper, perhaps the broader question for Blinken and Congress would be when the State Department began to normalize and legitimize hate, racism, and antisemitism. 

Iranians today deserve to know: Does the State Department not know the true character of the regime against which the Iranians struggle? Do they not care that Raisi served on a death committee that condemned thousands to execution without a fair trial? Do they not care that Raisi’s men raped women in prison to humiliate them before carrying out their death sentences?

Perhaps it is time for a U.S. diplomatic litmus test: Would David Duke be worthy of honor or even acknowledgement? Is the KKK a legitimate organization? If the answer is no, the same disdain with which American view Duke and the KKK should be applied to foreign entities that embrace and amplify similar ideologies.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin 

Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005). He writes opinion pieces for this publication. Rubin is also director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.