Church of the Creator: Creed of Hate
Anti-Defamation League (1993)
Introduction
Since 1973, the Church of the Creator (COTC) has been a
virulently anti-Semitic and racist
organization that uses the rhetoric of religion as a flimsy
camouflage for the promotion of hate. Its
founder and longtime leader. the late Ben Klassen, a far-
right political activist in the 1960s, gloried in
the concept he fervently and frequently proclaimed as his
goal: racial holy war."
COTC propaganda is as hostile toward Christianity as it
is toward Judaism; as hateful toward
Blacks and other people of color as it is toward Jews. At
this time, while its numbers are relatively
small_membership comprises less than a thousand_it has been
growing. Yet the danger it poses
and the concern it merits derive from factors beyond mere
numbers. Disturbing recent developments
include:
several COTC members have been convicted of, or are
being tried for, serious violent crimes,
including murder_most recently, in July 1993, authorities
uncovered two separate plots involving
West Coast COTC members in efforts to firebomb Jewish and
Black institutions and assassinate
prominent Jews and African-Americans;
the group has close ties to other violence-prone
extremist factions, including Tom Metzger's
White Aryan Resistance and William Pierce's National
Alliance, as well as to neo-Nazi Skinheads
two of Klassen's announced successors have been
convicted of felony offenses_one of them
recently completed 6 years in a federal prison, while the
other recently began a federal prison term
following 9 bombing conviction;
COTC activists operate beyond the U.S., in such
countries as Canada, England, Sweden, and
South Africa, extending the group's reach and providing it
with international recruiting and
propaganda outlets.
Over the past three years, COTC membership and
influence appear to have increased among
white supremacists. This increase is particularly
attributable to COTC activity involving the youngest
and most violence-prone segment of the extremist underworld,
the neo-Nazi Skinheads. The
affiliation of these Skinheads with the COTC (and other
established groups, particularly White
Aryan Resistance) has coincided with a marked increase in
violent, racist activity in the U.S. It is
important to expose groups like COTC whose writings shape
the beliefs and inspire the behavior of
many of these young thugs.
It is hoped that this report will enhance public
awareness of the Church of the Creator, a
viciously hateful and potentially violent organization whose
self-expressed aim is nothing less than
the fomenting of a worldwide racially based war.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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