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Robb lives deep in Arkansas' Ozark Mountains, off a dirt road that winds through the defunct hamlet of Zinc, past dilapidated mobile homes, rusting farm equipment and rocky pastureland. Chickens and goats pause in the road along Sugar Orchard Creek, and neighbors glare warily at unfamiliar visitors. The Grand Wizard's home, a weathered cedar dwelling and several ramshackle outbuildings, is built on 100 forested acres. Inside, Robb's pleasant wife, Muriel, prepares dinner while Oprah chatters away on a TV set in the cluttered living room. One son, Jason, 18, ponders his homework; another son, Nathan, 21, hauls in the groceries; and Robb's 11-month-old granddaughter, Charity, toddles around in her walker. The only jarring note in this domestic idyll is two Klan prayers hanging on a wall.
Just a short stroll from Robb's home lies an oak-rimmed pasture, where the Grand Wizard hopes to fulfill his grandiose vision of the future. Shortly after Duke lost his bid to become Governor of Louisiana last year, Robb drew national attention to his idea for building a high-tech propaganda mill, complete with training on how to appear on television, history lessons and political instruction, even a drum-and-bagpipe corps. It would become an assembly line cranking out articulate, blow-dried Duke clones. "They always have these pictures of people in the Klan, flies buzzing around the head, teeth missing, wiping manure off their feet," says Robb. "Louisiana has one David Duke. We plan to give America 1,000 of them."
Robb was first attracted to the Knights after meeting Duke in New Orleans in the mid-1970s. But his racist roots run deep. Born in Detroit, Robb was the son of a builder and a department-store sales clerk. His family moved to Tucson while he was a teenager. There he devoured his mother's right-wing political tracts and joined the John Birch Society. After studying at a Colorado seminary under Kenneth Goff, a minister with anti-Semitic views, Robb became a Baptist minister, opened a print shop and started publishing his own right-wing tracts and pushing white-supremacist causes. In 1979 he joined Duke's Klan (one of many different Klan organizations), and soon moved up the ranks. Shortly after Duke stepped down as Imperial Wizard in 1980 to found the National Association for the Advancement of White People, Robb and another lieutenant staged a coup to topple Duke's successor, Don Black, then in prison for trying to engineer the takeover of a Caribbean island. In 1989 Robb became Grand Wizard.
Since then, Robb has taken up where Duke left off, using modern marketing methods to enhance the Klan's image. The Klan sells itself on tabloid TV and on business cards emblazoned with three large red Ks. There is even something for Klan kids: balloons depicting a hooded night rider on horseback. "We're selling white pride, white power, whatever," Robb says. "It doesn't make any difference if you're selling the Klan or used cars or toothbrushes."