Launched TUESDAY December 18, 2019 on zReportage.com Story #718: Legacy Of Hate: White Supremacist groups emerged early-on in the history of United States. They usually operated clandestinely, in an attempt to avoid the attention of law enforcement and the media. Historically, these groups relied primarily on word-of-mouth notoriety to intimidate their intended targets. Their numbers were sporadic until recently. Now there is unprecedented growth in the number of and membership in, white supremacist groups. According to the Florida Gang Investigators Association (FGIA), a group that includes members of law enforcment, lawyers and Judges, about 25,000 Americans are hardcore ideological activists for the white supremacist movement, and though their numbers area tiny fraction of the population, they appear more visible today than a decade ago. They range from seemingly innocuous religious sects or tax protesters to openly militant, even violent, neo-Nazi skinheads and Ku Klux Klan Klaverns. Every morning, Chester Doles, a fourth generation Ku Klux Klansman, former leader of the white supremacist National Alliance, and convicted felon, begins the day around 5 a.m., sometimes doing the laundry and folding the clothes for the family, or else heading to the gym. The 59-year-old, a direct descendant of a Confederate General named Chester Pierce Doles, considers himself above all a mainstream white American. As he sees it, his own project is no different from that of a long line of white American leaders, even though these days, Doles' claims he has softened his own description of it. The self-declared white nationalist now says he is simply fighting against the extinction of what he considers to be the 'white race.' He said he is a 'God, country and family man' who shares 95% of President Trump's goals and is considering a run for Georgia's legislature, to replace retiring state Rep. Doug Collins. Despite his violent past, Doles' day to day reality these days is ordinary, more conventionally American than revolutionary. He likes his coffee with Creamora and Stevia. He is loyal to Harley Davidson motorcycle brand. He is known for his chili and omelets and hot, homemade salsas. He works at a job loading five-gallon water containers into trucks for distribution around his hometown of Dahlonega, in northern Georgia, and has a side job training body builders. He is a father of 13, a grandfather of 27, a man who clings to his old beliefs even as he tries to make them palatable to the changing world around him.
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CHESTER DOLES, a longtime white nationalist leader, hands out American flags to supporters before leading what he billed as an 'American Patriot Rally' to honor President Trump. Doles said the event was 'not a so-called white nationalist rally' and that 'anyone' was welcome to attend.
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CHESTER DOLES, a self-declared white nationalist who said he shares 95 percent of Trump's agenda, smokes a cigarette in Helena, a Bavarian tourist town popular with exiled-Nazis in the 1950s and more recently, Doles and his colleagues.
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CHESTER DOLES works out a local gym iwhere he also trains fellow body builders. His physical appearance is important to him, and he has won awards including Male Middle Weight First Place in the 2010 National Physique Committee (NPC) Eastern Seaboard body building contest, which Doles saw as an award for 'the most balanced and beautiful body.' He also got a 1st Place award for men over 50 at the 2011 NPC in Atlanta.
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CHESTER DOLES holds two of his five dogsâ Biscuit, Saga, Blue, Roo and Chevyâ outside his inherited home on top of a hill.
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CHESTER DOLES checks on his Harley Davidson motorcycle, which he considers part of American culture. He said that 'America means the continuing of Western civilization, a way of life, to be patriotic, to hang on to our institutions as they had been' to hang on to the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman, that life starts in conception. These things are the very fabric of western civilization, and the world as we know it, and on the horizon is a growing trend of liberalism, socialism, that will erode our institutions and destroy our very way of life.'
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CHESTER DOLES reclines and reads in his living room with his wife, TERESA. His reading habits include the local newspaper, as well as white nationalist literature such as 'The Conservative Action Report,' and the Temple of Wotan. He also treasures 'The Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes' by Ron McVan, which is wrapped in a leather cover Doles carved with the title, 'Doles Family Odin's Folk.'
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CHESTER DOLES sits in his living room, and displays a book he treasures, 'The Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes' by Ron McVan, which is wrapped in a leather cover Doles carved with the title, 'Doles Family Odins Folk.'
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CHESTER DOLES treasures 'The Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes' by Ron McVan, which has a leather cover Doles has carved with the names of each of his children.
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CHESTER DOLES and his wife eat dinner, which often includes Lasagna, Chinese food and Mexican meals. He said that he has mellowed a bit since he's gotten older but his essential views about what he calls 'the white race' have not changed: 'We are definitely becoming a minority in our own country, and that is even more of a reason that we should stand up now, as American Patriots coast to coast, and hang on to our way of life and our culture, which includes everyoneâ It's not limited to race.'
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CHESTER DOLES shows his old Imperial Wizard, Ku Klux Klan hood and gown. He calls the Klan 'one of the most American organizations in the country and one of the oldest. And I guess even Klansman can get older and wiser. I mean we have Robert Byrd the Senator (from West Virginia) who was a Democrat and served as a full member of the Klan.'
© Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMA Wire