Las Vegas Weekly 10-21-99 The Summer Of Hate When a man like Matt Hale is in town, race is a very important issue By Ken Picard If you didn't know any better, and hadn't been paying too close attention, you might assume that Matt Hale and his band of followers in the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) were nothing more than a bunch of angry social misfits. Dressed in their black T-shirts that read "RAHOWA" (an acronym for "Racial Holy War") and toting red, white and black flags that sport the WCOTC emblem--a large black "W" topped with a crown and halo--they bear a closer resemblance to a gang of prepubescent boys whose clubhouse door reads "No chicks" in drippy paint than to the virulently racist hate group that's been linked to at least a decade's worth of vandalism, arson, assault and murder from Florida to California. Until Hale opens his mouth, that is. That's when the illusion of little boys playing with toy guns disappears. In early September, Hale and a handful of his followers descended upon the ordinarily peaceful town of Superior, some 60 miles west of Missoula, Mont., for their annual meeting at the ranch of Superior resident, and WCOTC member, Slim Deardorff. Hale and seven of his followers gathered at high noon Saturday, on the steps of the Mineral County Courthouse, to exercise their First Amendment rights via Hale's well-rehearsed brand of racist demagoguery. Standing before them were no more than 40 or 50 people, most of us representatives from local and national news agencies, but also a handful of curious onlookers, and a smattering of supporters, not to mention an unknown number of agents from state and federal law enforcement agencies. When Hale began his racist rigmarole, I surmised that most of his onlookers were engaged in some combination of the following: shaking their heads, silently ridiculing him, formulating self-evident arguments in their heads about his ideology, and pondering what better ways we could be spending this fine Saturday afternoon in western Montana than discovering a frightening new reason to lie awake at night. Eradicating the garden variety of ignorance we all encounter on a daily basis can be challenging enough. But how do you combat the deliberate and premeditated ignorance of Matt Hale's arguments? How much breath should you exhaust debating a man who claims that it was the white race who first inhabited the North American continent? Or that the ancient Egyptians and Chinese were originally part of the white race until their blood was "muddied by Negro blood?" Or that the contributions of African Americans to the fields of art, music, sports and literature are "negligible or non-existent?" Or that the Jews have historically been responsible for their own persecution because "there wouldn't be anti-Semitism without Semitism?" Still, I resisted the easy temptation to dismiss Hale outright. The national media and the hate-watch groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, which have been monitoring Hale's activities, have been vigilant in unmasking his followers as hate-mongers with violent tendencies. But despite Hale's reassurances that violence plays no role in his church except as a form of self-defense, the guns he and his followers wore on their belts on the courthouse steps attested to the deadly earnestness of their message. And still, I was still no closer to understanding what makes Hale tick. Despite popular misconception, Hale rejects the label of white supremacist, and instead prefers being called a white separatist. Though the distinction may be a trivial one, as he put it, his "kind" has no interest in ruling over other races. "We do not say that segregation is right," said Hale. "No, segregation was folly. We want separation of the races, and we will campaign to have it. Without racial separation, this nation will one day plunge into civil war." Hale preached that all the non-white races should be repatriated to their country or continent of origin; the blacks to Africa, the "Orientals" to the Orient, the Arabs to Arabia, ad infinitum. Exactly where Hale would "repatriate" the Native Americans to was unclear--he made some nebulous reference to their Siberian origins and their subsequent migration across the Bering Strait--but could offer no specifics as to how such a mass deportation might be accomplished. And when I pointed out that his definition of the white race refers to peoples of northern European descent, and asked why he didn't want to return whence he came, he dodged the question altogether. Hale was equally ambiguous about what spiritual aspects, if any, there are to his church. While he said, "There will not be a god from the sky to deliver us from evil," he nonetheless spoke of holding church services later that afternoon, and said he encourages his adherents to engage in fasting for its "spiritual benefits." Hale appeared more comfortable treading on the scientific realm, though even that ground appeared virtually gelatinous beneath his feet. He talked much about natural law, and accepted most of what Charles Darwin had to say about evolution and natural selection. That much is apparent in Hale's own writings. In the pamphlets that Missoula resident and WCOTC adherent Dan Hassett has periodically dropped on the doorsteps of some Missoula residents, Hale tries to prop up his racist theories by using scientific studies dating back as far as the 1920s, which he said "provide ample evidence that the blacks are intellectually inferior. They have smaller brains, less developed brains, less convoluted brains and lower IQs." When asked if he would renounce any of the benefits he reaps from the other races, Hale said without blinking, "There are no benefits to me or any white person at all from the other races." Nevertheless, he could not say, for example, whether he had ever been vaccinated for the polio virus, an invention by a Jewish scientist. Instead, he attributed the crippling disease to nutritional deficiencies. On the subject of African-American contributions to the field of music, he said, "Well, their music has been almost none." I pressed him further about blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll. "Most of rock 'n' roll is not black," he said, then moved on. And just when I thought Hale's arguments couldn't become any more convoluted, he would lead me around another bend. "Jews are a race, though not in the strict biological sense. ... When one Jew bleeds, they all bleed," Hale said. He wasn't clear on whether he meant that literally or figuratively. He did, however, admit that Jews are intelligent, which he qualified by saying, "But they're not a creative people. They are a people that are very good at manipulating what already exists." Finally, I asked Hale how he would define an intelligent person. "A person who is capable of logical arguments and who can retain a good deal of information," he said. And would intelligence involve open-mindedness, I asked? "No, not necessarily." When Hale had delivered enough sound bites to fill the evening news, we reporters closed our notebooks, packed up the cameras, turned off the tape recorders, and walked away. And the good people of Superior, Mont., especially the folks in local law enforcement standing nearby, seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief to see this guy from Illinois leave without incident. And yet, we turn our backs on people like Matt Hale, knowing full well that while his message has not reached us, it will--and does--reach someone, somewhere, every day, with consequences that can explode in a deadly plume of rage. Just as it did in early July, when WCOTC adherent Benjamin Nathaniel Smith decided that "RAHOWA" wasn't simply a nifty slogan adorning his T-shirt, but a deadly call to arms that took the lives of two innocent people. "Those who would say that racism, as they call it, is a thing of the past, are very wrong," said Hale. "Race is the issue, in this land and in this world. ... We all know that race does matter." The Origins Of Hate Just how does an organization like the world Church of the Creator get started By Mel Parkinson According to the Anti-Defamation League, the World Church of the Creator is one of the fastest-growing hate groups of the 1990s. Based in East Peoria, Ill., its members believe their goal to be "making this an all-white nation and ultimately an all-white world." The brainchild of Ben Klassen, a former Florida state legislator, the WCOTC was formed in 1973 and immediately published a 511-page manifesto titled Nature's Eternal Religion. On those pages Klassen proclaims, "We completely reject the Judeo-democratic-Marxist values of today and supplant them with new and basic values, of which race is a foundation." Unlike other hate groups who manipulate Christianity to justify their racism, WCOTC attacks Christianity as the "tremendous weapon in the worldwide Jewish drive of race-mixing." Klassen asserts Jews "concocted" Christianity "for the very purpose of mongrelizing and destroying the White Race," and the main focus of the WCOTC's venom are the Jews, whom they accuse of being "parasites" who "control and manipulate the finances, the propaganda, the media and the governments of the world." Klassen named his new religion "Creativity," and derided Christianity as a "suicidal religion." Klassen began publishing a monthly tabloid called Racial Loyalty in 1983, later publishing a number of compilations of his newspaper articles in book form. The most notable of these books is Rahowa! This Planet Is All Ours. In that book Klassen declares, "Rahowa! In this one word we sum up the total goal and program of not only the Church of the Creator, but of the total White Race, and it is this: We take up the challenge. We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races of the world--politically, militantly, financially, morally and religiously. ... We regard it as a holy war to the finish--a racial holy war." While the WCOTC has been responsible for--or at least connected to--numerous violent acts in this decade, the event that pushed the organization into the national spotlight and led to its temporary undoing was the murder of African-American Gulf War veteran Harold Mansfield Jr. in a Neptune Beach, Fla., parking lot. George Loeb, a WCOTC "reverend" with a history of racist harassment, was arrested along with his wife, Barbara, on June 6, 1991, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and charged with the crime. George Loeb was extradited to Florida where he was convicted of first-degree murder on July 29, 1992, and received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. Barbara Loeb was sentenced to one year in jail on weapons possession charges. In March 1994, the family of the murdered veteran filed and subsequently won a lawsuit against WCOTC, resulting in a $1 million damage award and the dissolution of the organization for vicarious liability in the murder. Klassen appeared to anticipate this lawsuit, and spent the last years of his life in a frantic attempt to unload WCOTC assets--like selling his North Carolina compound, which housed WCOTC's headquarters--and divest himself of responsibility for the organization. His search for a successor settled on Richard McCarty, a telemarketer previously unknown in hate group circles, who moved the group's headquarters to Niceville, Fla. Soon after appointing McCarty in the summer of 1993, the 75-year-old Klassen committed suicide by swallowing the contents of four bottles of sleeping pills. Under McCarty's control, the group's decay continued. On July 15, 1993, federal and local law enforcement authorities in Southern California arrested eight WCOTC members on charges of plotting to instigate a race war by bombing the largest black church in L.A. and assassinating Rodney King. In 1996, the group was resurrected by Matt Hale. Hale was appointed "Pontifex Maximus," an ancient Roman title designated for the Church's supreme leader. Today, the WCOTC has more than 35 post office box addresses throughout the U.S. and two overseas. The group also operates 22 websites, including a site designated specifically to teach "racist thinking" to young children and another geared toward recruiting women. Until this past February, says Sue Stengel, ADL Western states counsel, the WOCTC also had a chapter in Reno, though the ADL believes the group's members have now been folded into the Redding, Calif. chapter. Closer to home, activity seems to have died down of late. While both of the stories accompanying this one mention a skinhead/white supremacy rally taking place in Las Vegas over the Independence Day weekend, local authorities say it either didn't happen or they "stayed real quiet." "If they did hold a rally, they didn't do it here in town," says Det. Tony Plew of Las Vegas Metro's robbery division. Part of Plew's duties includes receiving all crime reports that may have hate-crime elements, and reviewing them to determine whether they deserve hate-crime status. "When skinheads start to surface in Las Vegas, Metro's real good at staying on top of it and taking care of it. That's why they don't live here. They're all up in Utah." Stengel says a concert did take place in the Las Vegas area that weekend, featuring five skinhead/white-power bands, and that, although the event seems to have passed without incident, photographs from the event are now being featured on white supremecist websites. "It appears that the Internet is, as always, playing a huge role in spreading the word of extremists," says Stengel. "Even if only four people show up for the show, the pictures are shown to people all over the world. It's yet another demonstration of the power of the Internet in the world of white supremacy."
