NCJ Number
179744
Journal
Intelligence Report Issue: 95 Dated: Summer 1999 Pages: 23-29
Editor(s)
Mark Potok
Date Published
1999
Length
7 pages
Annotation
The racist organization, the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), has fewer than 150 dues-paying members, but it attracts both headlines and sociopaths under the leadership of Matt Hale; in summer 1999 it received extensive publicity when Hale associate Benjamin Nathaniel Smith murdered a black man and an Asian man and wounded nine other people.
Abstract
WCOTC was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen. Hale assumed leadership in July 1995. The organization's world headquarters is a spare room in Hale's father's place in Illinois. Hale's racist activities date from his childhood. He has demonstrated organizing skills and has revitalized a once-moribund group by setting up chapters in some 22 States and using the Internet to bring his message to tens of thousands of people. However, WCOTC has revolved around a small group of Hale's friends. In interviews after Smith's shooting rampage, Hale has changed his story about his relationship with Smith and Smith's membership. WCOTC follows Klassen's views that white people are the creators of civilization, that all others are its destroyers, that Christianity is a Jewish plot, and that God is a phantom super-spook. The organization's current internal divisions relate mainly to its youthful membership, which includes racist Skinheads interested in racist and other rock music and classicists such as Hale. The group's future is unclear, but it had 46 chapters at the end of 1998 and has left a trail of blood across the country for much of its 26-year life. Photographs