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  • 2014-12-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Steve Scalise Attend a White Supremacist Convention? (en)
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  • On 28 December 2014, the web site CenLamar published an article titled House Majority Whip Steve Scalise Was Reportedly an Honored Guest at 2002 International White Supremacist Convention. According to the site, current House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, then a Louisiana state representative, was a guest speaker at an event hosted by the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), a group headed by former Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke, at the Landmark Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana, in May 2002. (EURO was a renamed version of Duke's NOFEAR group that advocated fighting for white civil rights for Europeans and Americans wherever they may live.) The dozen years elapsed between the EURO event in 2002 and the article's publication in 2014 made it markedly difficult to investigate the article's claims. At the time of the convention, much internet-based political discussion occurred solely on message boards, many of which have long since been retired due to inactivity, abandoned, or became otherwise inaccessible for a variety of reasons. Following the article's publication, the claim was circulated and reposted on a number of left-leaning web sites. This repetition created the impression multiple sources were documenting the claim, but the information all pointed back to the same single source: Stormfront.org, a white supremacist message board with a lengthy and notorious history on the web. A 2002 post claiming Scalise attended the EURO conference held in Metairie that year became suddenly notable in late 2014. In that post, the writer stated: Aside from the single mention by a single user on one internet forum back in 2002, no other record of such an appearance by Scalise emerged. A newsletter of indeterminate origin appearing to be the work of David Duke, EURO's founder, listed the May 2002 event's speakers but did not mention Scalise: On 29 December 2014 Moira Bagley Smith, a spokeswoman for Scalise, addressed the controversy by releasing a statement seemingly acknowledging Scalise's appearance at the 2002 EURO event (without actually stating that he was there), maintaining that Scalise spoke to a number of diverse groups at the time in order to publicize his political platform and that Scalise held no affiliation with or sympathy for EURO and its objectives: Scalise himself also seemingly confirmed that he addressed a EURO group (again without actually stating that he did) in an interview with the New Orleans Time-Picayune, asserting that he didn't remember speaking at the event: Kenny Knight, a longtime associate of David Duke who said he booked space for the 2002 EURO conference, asserted that Scalise didn't actually speak at the EURO conference itself, but rather to a contingent of people (including some EURO attendees) who had gathered earlier in the day prior to the EURO conference kick-off: However, the Times-Picayune then poked holes in a number of Knight's statements, namely his claims that he was not himself a member of EURO, did not line up speakers for the 2002 EURO conference, and was not himself present at the conference: EURO head David Duke himself stated in a Washington Post interview that Scalise had indeed been invited to address the EURO gathering and had accepted that invitation and was present at the conference (although Duke was not himself present at the event and therefore didn't personally witness whatever Scalise may have done there): (en)
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