The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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.


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