Chester Doles, a North Georgia man who has spent decades in white supremacist groups, was a vocal champion of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene ever since she posed for a photo with him earlier this year. But when he showed up to a rally in Ringgold Saturday, he was escorted out on Greene’s orders.
“Yes, I asked him to be removed. He is not welcome at any events that I attend. Period,” Greene said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday.
In the statement, Greene did not mention Doles by name or refer to his history of racist activism. Doles has a long history with extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. In 2017, he marched with the Hammerskins, a racist biker gang, in the violent and chaotic “Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Credit: Submitted
Credit: Submitted
Recently, Doles has claimed to have repudiated those past affiliations and concentrated on a new group, American Patriots USA, which has tied itself close to the militia movement. Doles regularly refers to Greene as “our friend Margie” on his social media accounts, but in May when the AJC asked Greene what she knew about him, she attacked the question as “silly and the same type of sleazy attacks the Fake News Media levels against President Trump.”
After Saturday’s rally, Greene was more direct.
“I don’t know him and have no relationship with him,” she said. “He’s not a donor and has never worked for the campaign. He shows up at events to get publicity for himself, as the AJC is doing with this piece.”
For Doles, the ejection from what was billed as a Second Amendment “unity rally” was a betrayal.
“It’s just unbelievable. This is their unity rally, except for me," said Chester Doles. “She hasn’t even gotten out of the state of Georgia and has done turned into a politician. ... I wasn’t going to put her in no awkward situation. Everybody’s got a past. It is what it is.”
Sen. Kelly Loeffler briefly appeared at the rally with Greene, but a spokesman for her campaign said the senator was unaware of Doles or the controversy over his attendance.
Greene effectively wrapped up the contest for northwest Georgia’s 14th Congressional District when her Democratic challenger withdrew earlier this month after a raucous and controversial campaign. Prior to her run for the House seat, Greene spent years on the political fringe as part of the cult-like QAnon conspiracy theory community, which believes the world is run by a cabal of Satanic elites who kidnap children and sexually torture them.
Credit: C.B. Schmelter/Chattanooga Times
Credit: C.B. Schmelter/Chattanooga Times
At Saturday’s rally, Greene and Loeffler talked with constituents ringed by a protective circle of far-right militia members who call themselves the Georgia III% Martyrs. Greene said the security was needed to protect her from “multiple violent, disgusting death threats” she said she has received from left-wing groups.
“Along with the Catoosa County Sheriff’s Department, there were dozens of individuals with firearms in attendance to make sure nothing like this happens to me," she said. "And I thank them for that.”
The Georgia III% Martyrs is one of several small, far-right militias to have organized in the state in recent years, although their name raised eyebrows even among others in the patriot movement.
“We picked that name because we are willing to die for our beliefs and cause. Not everyone is prepared for that," an organizer said on a militia forum earlier this year.
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