Bikers for Trump – Atlanta Antifascists

Whitewash: “American Patriots USA” Enlists GOP Candidates to Launder White Nationalist Agenda

8/10/2020: update on Matt Gurtler and Marjorie Taylor Greene here.

As this report was being prepared for publication Thursday evening, far-Right militiaman and 9th Congressional District candidate Michael Boggus released a video on Facebook, stating that he is the new State Director for American Patriots USA. Since neo-Nazi Chester Doles and the white supremacists around Doles remain in the organization, we assume this is a shell game.

Summary: American Patriots USA (APUSA) was formed last year in north Georgia by Chester Doles, a longtime neo-Nazi. As documented in this and earlier reports, the organization is a thinly disguised front group for white supremacists. APUSA has spent the last few months building a broader front of “constitutionalist” Republican candidates, including several people of color, which it uses to mask its agenda. The white power organization even hosted a current State House Representative, Matthew Gurtler, at their March meeting. We document APUSA’s “Trojan horse” effort and highlight the complicity of GOP candidates and networks in normalizing white supremacist organizing.

*Chester Doles (circled) at “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, VA, 2017* – footage here.

Report-Back: Opposing September 14th Far-Right Trump/“Patriots” Rally in North Georgia

Update 3/27/2020: We have now identified the International Keystone Knights of the KKK supporter discussed in this article as Robert Timothy Dickenson.

Update 12/1/2019: We have also discovered that Doles’ September 14th rally was attended by a convicted child molester, Archie Lee Atwell.

On September 14, white power organizer Chester Doles held an ostensibly pro-Trump “American Patriots” rally in the small city of Dahlonega, north Georgia. Doles’ rally, organized and promoted with other white supremacists, attracted somewhere between three dozen and fifty participants. An anti-racist counter-protest on the other side of the downtown square attracted three times that many.

*Anti-racist protest, Dahlonega, 9/14/2019*

Over six hundred police from 36 different agencies swamped the area, with multiple cops for every person in the protests. During the rally, Doles blamed “antifa” for driving down numbers for his event.

*Mass presence from police and corrections officers, September 14^th*

A report from the September 14 counter-protest on the IdaVox anti-racist news site provides a good overview of the day. Here, we discuss Dole’s organizing efforts and how they were resisted, beyond just the day of the rally.

*Chester Doles’ group – containing several Klansmen and white nationalists – marches in on 9/14*

Tell Georgia’s 9th District Republicans: Silence on Neo-Nazi “Trump” Event in Dahlonega is Complicity

Update 9/8/2019: Yesterday evening, the Lumpkin County Republican Party issued a statement which did not formally endorse but also did not condemn the white supremacist rally in Dahlonega.

Update 9/4/2019: After two weeks, Rep. Doug Collins has denounced the white supremacist rally. Still no comment from the Lumpkin County Republican Party.

On September 14, 2019, longtime neo-Nazi and “fourth-generation Klansman” Chester J. Doles aims to hold a “Salute to President Trump” rally in Dahlonega, Georgia. The event is being promoted by the ShieldWall Network, a white supremacist group. It is also promoted on Stormfront, a white power website linked to almost one hundred murders.

The initial invitation for the Dahlonega “Trump” event featured antisemitic imagery. A new flyer has now been produced to better mask the nature of the event. Doles has clearly indicated that the Dahlonega rally aims to intimidate his perceived political enemies in North Georgia, in particular liberal activists who Doles portrays as “antifa”. Doles is organizing a “security” team who are readying for violence and has made a special appeal for his old associates from the National Alliance (once the foremost neo-Nazi group in North America) to attend. For further information on the rally and on Chester Doles’ history, see our longer alert here.

*Chester Doles, on right, wears shirt with logo of the Nazi SS*

The national director of Bikers for Trump, Dale Herndon, has now withdrawn support for the Nazi-organized rally. However, Chester Doles is still attempting to swell his rally’s numbers with Trump Republicans while simultaneously working closely with militant white supremacists.

ALERT: Neo-Nazi Organizing “Salute to President Trump” Rally, September 14 in Dahlonega, Georgia

Update 8/21/2019: Bikers for Trump have withdrawn support for the Dalhonega event.

Chester Doles, a longtime neo-Nazi and “fourth-generation” Klansman, is organizing a pro-Trump rally in downtown Dahlonega, Georgia, scheduled to take place on the afternoon of Saturday, September 14. The Dahlonega rally is an attempt by Doles to draw pro-Trump rightists closer to his own neo-Nazi politics, seemingly with some success. The planned rally is also promoted on Stormfront, a white supremacist website which has been linked to almost a hundred murders.

*Flyer for Chester Doles’ September 14 rally in Dahlonega, Georgia. Note the caricature Jewish head on the giant spider – classic antisemitic imagery.*

Dahlonega is a small city in north Georgia, approximately an hour and a half northeast from Atlanta and home to the University of North Georgia. In 2017, Dahlonega made headlines when a Ku Klux Klan sign was prominently displayed on a building in the downtown area – an attempt by an angry property owner to embarrass the city. Chester Doles – who lives in Dahlonega and has a past as a real Klan leader – was seemingly in on the 2017 stunt.

Doles has a long history in the white supremacist movement. While in Maryland, Doles led a Klan group. After serving prison time for assaulting a Black man (followed by a burglary conviction for which he got probation), Doles moved to Georgia, where he led the Georgia unit of the National Alliance, which was once the foremost neo-Nazi organization in the United States. In 2003, Doles was arrested for being a felon in possession of firearms. Doles eventually pled guilty and was released in 2008. More recently, Doles organized with Crew 38, which is the supporter group of the violent Hammerskin Nation racist gang. Doles gave a speech at the Hammerskin Nations’ 2016 national gathering at a Klan bar outside Atlanta.