the church of the creator part i: ben klassen and the critique of christianity

The Church of the Creator Part I: Ben Klassen and theCritique of Christianity

George Michael*The University of Virginia’s College at Wise

Abstract

This essay examines the origins of the Church of the Creator. Founded by Ben Klassen in 1973,the racist cult aspired to unite the white race into a global community with a shared religioncalled ‘Creativity.’ To that end, the organization sought to proselytize elements of the extremeright to its ideology, which included a strident critique of Christianity. Although this approachalienated many rightists who were Christians, it appealed to those who became increasingly appre-hensive to Christianity, such as the followers of neo-paganism which has found a following in theracialist movement. Moreover, the nihilistic tone of Creativity resonated with the more radicalelements of the extreme right, most notably the fledging genre of ‘white power’ music.

Throughout its turbulent history, the Church of the Creator has garnered a substantialamount of notoriety. For instance, over the July fourth weekend in 1999, the small racistcult made headlines, when a former member embarked on a shooting spree that left twopersons dead and nine others injured. Still other sporadic episodes of violence linked tothe group, preceded and followed that event. Under the leadership of Matthew Hale dur-ing the late 1990s and early 2000s, the World Church of the Creator was at the center ofseveral free speech controversies that strained communities and divided legal scholars.Although the Creativity movement has attracted only a small following, it has had aninfluence far beyond what its relatively small membership would suggest. In particular, itcontributed to the extreme right’s radicalization and movement away from Christianity.

At first blush, it seems surprising that non-Christian religions would take hold in theAmerican far right. After all, Christianity has been an enduring theme in the history of theAmerican far right from the Anti-Masonic Party of the early 19th century to the contem-porary Christian Identity movement.1 However, after World War II, mainstream Chris-tian denominations began to distance themselves from racial bigotry. Moreover, thefundamentalist congregations adopted a more philo-Semitic attitude toward Jews, as theysaw in the creation of the state of Israel the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. In his studyof the history of anti-Semitism in America, Leonard Dinnerstein observed that one of themost far-reaching breakthroughs in the post-World War II era has been the enormouschange in Christian beliefs and behaviors concerning Jews. Not only the Catholic Church,but also leading academic theologians, reexamined Christian perspectives and teachingsabout Jews in a much more favorable light.2 Rather than anti-Semitism, philo-Semitismhas come to characterize the attitude toward Jews in many American Christian churches,most notably, the evangelical denominations. What is more, the legacy of World War IIand the Holocaust severely stigmatized the far right, which came to be associated withwartime fascism. Finally, monitoring groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League and theSouthern Poverty Law Center, have effectively delegitimized the views of extreme rightin contemporary political and social discourse.3 All of these factors discouraged many

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would-be followers from joining far right movements or at least encouraged some tochoose more respectable conservative vehicles for their political activism. As a result, thesmall numbers of radicals and true believers that remained were more amenable to fringemovements, such as neo-paganism, Christian Identity, and Creativity.

The origins of the Church of the Creator can be traced back to late Ben Klassen whofounded the organization in 1973 with the release of his book Nature’s Eternal Religion.The creed he formulated – ‘Creativity’ – rejects all metaphysical beliefs and supernaturaldeities. Instead, it offers an all-encompassing Weltanschauung based on the veneration ofthe white race. Although often dismissed by critics as a ‘pseudo religion’, Creators main-tain that their creed is authentic and an appropriate belief system for racial activists, whoseek an alternative to the ‘Jewish-inspired’ faith of Christianity.

This essay chronicles the early history of the COTC. First, the early life of thechurch’s founder, Ben Klassen, is explored followed by an examination of the theologyand ideology of Creativity. Next, there is discussion of the early history of the church,which began in North Carolina in 1982. The church suffered a setback with the death ofKlassen in 1993, but its message survived in the skinhead scene in large part to GeorgeBurdi.

The Early Life of Ben Klassen

Bernhardt Klassen was born into a Mennonite family on February 7, 1918. His familylived for many generations in a Mennonite community in southern Ukraine.4 As aninfant, Klassen was subjected to the turmoil of the Russian Civil War, as his village wasfrequently ravaged by the Red Revolutionary Army and assorted brigands that werereleased from the Russian penitentiaries following the Bolshevik Revolution. Under-standably, his early life experiences left the young Klassen with a disdain for Bolshevism.

Faced with such grim prospects for the future, the Klassen family fled the fledgingSoviet Republic in 1924, when young Ben was 6 years old. First, they settled in Mexico,but in 1925, the Klassen family moved to Canada and settled in Herschel, Saskatchewan.5

According to his autobiography, Klassen was a bright student.6 About a year after com-pleting Normal school, Klassen enrolled in the University of Saskatchewan in 1935.While in college, he developed an intense interest in history. After learning about themultitude of religions in human history, he came to the conclusion that they were allcontrived and hence without any basis in fact.

During this period, the events in Europe caught his attention. Fluent in German,Klassen read Mein Kampf, which had a profound influence on the development of hisWeltanschauung. Increasingly, he identified with the new German Reich and he madeplans to study engineering at the University of Heidelberg. His plans were dashed,however, when World War II commenced in Europe in September 1939. Not longafter the German invasion of Poland, Canada stood by England and declared war onGermany, thus rendering Klassen’s plans to study in Germany unfeasible. Stuck inCanada, Klassen made the best of his situation and earned degrees in engineering andarts and sciences from the University of Manitoba and University of Saskatchewan,respectively. While in college, Klassen enlisted in the Canadian Officers Training Corps,but still maintained dreams of moving to Germany to ‘help build the New Order’ andeven entertained the notion of joining the air force so that he could somehow dropinto Germany and join the Axis cause.7 When Klassen first heard of Hitler’s invasion ofthe Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he recalled that he felt ‘exhilarated’. Electrified bythe Wehrmacht’s stunning early battle victories, Klassen saw them as retribution for all of

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the destruction and agonies that the communists had inflicted upon his family andMennonite community.8 However, with the defeat of the Third Reich in the spring of1945, Klassen lost interest in politics and devoted his energies to establishing a career inengineering in the United States.

In late 1945, Klassen made his way to in California and the next year, he marriedHenrie Etta McWilliams. While in California, he went though some odd jobs, buteventually he established a successful real estate firm, which effectively enabled him toretire at a fairly young age. With more time on his hands, Klassen devoted more energyto politics and vacationing, as he made numerous overseas trips and to Europe, Egypt,Mexico, and Hawaii. While there, he paid acute attention to the racial dynamics ofpopulations. By the late 1950s, he and his family relocated to Florida from California.

The specter of Communism and the Civil Rights movement rekindled Klassen’s inter-est in politics.9 Like so many other prominent figures in the radical right, Klassensojourned through the John Birch Society (JBS). In 1966, running as a Republican andan openly avowed Birch Society member, he was elected as a State Representative ofBroward County in Florida. However, not long after the election, the Supreme Courtordered the redistricting of Florida, which necessitated a new round of elections. Klassendecided to run for the state senate, but was defeated in his bid in 1967. He was still activein the Birch Society, but became increasingly disillusioned because of its tolerant positionon Jews.

His final assessment of the JBS was characteristic of so many of his counterparts; thatis, the Birch Society was directed by Jews to deliberately lead the white man down ablind alley. To buttress his claim, Klassen pointed out that Birch Society leaders werealways skittish when discussing the topic of Jews. As Klassen saw it, the Birchers did nothave the temerity to identify the Jews as the true enemy of the white race. Rather, theBirch Society confused its members with Byzantine conspiracy theories that essentiallynullified any meaningful activism. In August 1969, Klassen formally resigned fromthe JBS because, as he saw it, the organization’s leadership did not have the temerity toidentify the Jews as the true enemy of the white race.10

The presidential candidacy of George Wallace attracted elements of the racialist right.Klassen first met Wallace in 1968 and went on to serve as the Florida state chairman ofthe American Independent Party.11 To support his campaign, Klassen served as vice-chairman of the Florida state committee for Wallace.12 However, his anti-Semitismunsettled the state party leadership and they eventually requested his resignation, whichKlassen obliged in 1969.

For a short period of time, Klassen flirted with openly avowed Nazi parties, such asMatt Koehl’s National Sociality White People’s Party (the successor of George LincolnRockwell’s American Nazi Party), but was disappointed in the quality of some of itsmembers. Moreover, he did not believe that an openly Hitlerian approach was viablein America. In his estimation, the shrill approach of the explicitly National Socialistorganizations merely served the interests of Jewish groups in their fund-raising.13

In November 1970, Klassen and his associate, Austin Davis, eventually decided to cre-ate their own organization, which they called the Nationalist White Party NWP.14 Theparty platform included ‘fourteen points’, which were explicitly racialist in character.15 Indoing so, Klassen abandoned the more respectable, conservative politics once and for all.

During the earlier days of his conservative political activism, Klassen actually accusedJews of attacking Christianity, his in-the-closet atheism notwithstanding. By 1971, how-ever, Klassen began expressing apprehension to Christianity. As he saw it, Christianitywas inherently philo-Semitic, and as such, undermined any serious efforts to oppose Jews.

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By 1971, Klassen decided to take a closer look at the Christian Bible, to ‘see what all thefuss was about’. After a close rereading of the Bible, he concluded that the Sermon onthe Mount as preached by Jesus Christ was full of ‘suicidal advice’ (e.g., ‘turn the othercheek’, ‘resist not evil’). With this new perspective, Klassen began to reinterpret historyand observed that Christianity had been responsible for some of the worst fratricidal con-flicts in Europe. Further, he believed that the egalitarian message of Christianity laid thegroundwork for Communism in the 20th century.16 What was needed was a new para-digm, a comprehensive worldview to lead the white man out of the wilderness. Hedecided that he would look to the laws of nature for guidance in his effort to create acreed for the salvation of the white race.

The Theology and Ideology of Creativity

Ben Klassen designated 1973 as the first year in the history of the Church of theCreator. In that year, he published Nature’s Eternal Religion, which outlined his newreligion – Creativity – and applied for incorporation papers to establish his church asa legally recognized religious institution. At this time, Klassen resided in Lighthouse,Florida.

In a sense, Klassen offered a critique of Christianity reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Twilightof the Gods and the Anti-Christ, but much more scathing. Not unlike Nietzsche, Klassendescribed Christianity as a ‘slave religion’ that originally appealed to the dregs of society.According to Klassen’s theory, Jews and whites have been involved in a struggle extend-ing back several millennia. Far from being the white man’s salvation, Klassen argued thatChristianity was concocted by Jews to confuse him and thus weaken his sense of tribalidentity. Christianity, according to Klassen, was woefully inadequate as a guiding mythosfor the white race and could no longer be ignored.

Nature’s Eternal Religion advanced a thoroughgoing deconstruction of Christianity. Vir-tually every story in both the Old and New Testaments came under Klassen’s scathingscrutiny. He expounded on the historical unlikelihood of events such as the story ofAdam and Eve, the Great Flood, Jonas and the whale, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho,and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Book of Revelations was derided as ‘a Jewishnightmare in Technicolor’. To Klassen, Christianity was a self-imposed handicap insofaras it encouraged whites to recognize Jews as ‘God’s chosen people’. Moreover, itinstructed whites to love their enemies, which he reasoned amounted to a suicidaldemand.17 Finally, he posited that the religion imposed a substantial psychological toll onits followers as well. Inasmuch as Christianity often makes contradictory demands, itcould ultimately lead to frustration and even mental breakdown.18

According to Klassen, those who professed a belief in Christianity never reallybothered to seriously question the religion’s tenets and plausibility. For example, hequestioned the historicity of Jesus and found no real corroborative evidence of hisexistence.19 As he pointed out, the ‘Christ’ myth could be found in numerous religioussagas and legends.20 As far as spirituality was concerned, he found nothing uplifting aboutthe ‘Good News’ offered in the New Testament, which consisted mainly of threats ofdamnation. Christianity, according to Klassen, was highly divisive, as sectarian differencesoften provoked wars in the history of Christendom. According to his reasoning, this wasdeliberate, as he believed that Jews systematically instigated wars between the whitenations of the world in an effort to weaken them and dwindle their populations. Notunlike classic anti-Semitic narratives, Klassen believed that Jews were masters at thestrategy of divide and conquer.



After reviewing the scriptures, Klassen came to the conclusion that Christianity was aJewish concoction and that ultimately is was extremely harmful to the white race. Hetheorized that Christianity was originally based on the Essenes cult, which prevailedaround the first century C.E. According to Klassen’s thesis, Jews had observed this cultand came to the conclusion that it was highly destructive. Saul of Tarsus – the Saint Paulof Christianity – later repackaged the Essenes cult as the religion of Christianity and soldit to the Romans. Thus, Christianity was deliberately crafted as a weapon with which tosubvert the Roman conquerors.21 After contributing to the downfall of the RomanEmpire, Christianity plunged Europe into the Dark Ages in which it wallowed for athousand years of ignorance, poverty, superstition, and disintegration.

In Klassen’s estimation, religion was like fire, in that it could be used for good or badpurposes. Ultimately, Klassen judged religions by how well they served their followers onearth, and not the hereafter. In this respect, Klassen frequently characterized Judaism as apowerful racial religion that had worked wonders for its people. Why were Jews able topersevere for so long as a distinct group? The principal reason, Klassen argued, wasbecause of their religion, which he regarded as the most powerful ever created.

A glaring omission in Klassen’s historiography is his failure to acknowledge episodes ofanti-Semitism associated with the Christianity. In fact, anti-Semitism first appeared in a sig-nificant incarnation in the West with the establishment of the Christian Church. Accordingto the research of Kevin MacDonald, by the third century, Judaism had come to be seen as apowerful competitor vis-a-vis gentiles. The church sought to counter the influence of Jewsand anti-Semitism was given an official imprimatur. For example, Jews were accused of dei-cide and eventually were barred from certain influential professions and government service.Moreover, they incurred legal and civil liabilities as well. These anti-Semitic overtones inChristendom carried over to later centuries, as anti-Semitism experienced a revival duringthe medieval period when the church worked vigorously to exclude Jews from economicand political influence. By the 13th century, the church’s position toward Jews became evenmore hostile. Anti-Semitism figured prominently in the Spanish Inquisition as well.22 Asthe historian of anti-Semitism, Robert S. Wistrich, observed, during the medieval period,Jews in Christendom were often portrayed as agents of Satan. On occasion, the Churcheven postulated that both the Anti-Christ and his main supporters would be Jews.23

Rejecting the principle of faith, Klassen believed that it was important for beliefs tobe supported by evidence. In this regard, he found the laws of nature to be far morepredictable and reliable than beliefs based on superstition or metaphysics. To Klassen,man was not above nature, but rather, an integral part of it. Ultimately, survival was theforemost imperative of nature. Perpetuating the species is the principal objective of life.Furthermore, he believed that conflict inhered in nature and was thus unavoidable:‘Eternal struggle is the price of survival’.24

Expanding on the Creativity theology, Klassen published The White Man’s Bible in1981. After deconstructing Christianity, Klassen outlined the foundation of his newreligion. In a sense, Klassen sought to create a creed, which contained the functionalistfeatures that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim saw as the underpinnings of religion– i.e., beliefs and rituals that enhance solidarity in the community.25 Essentially, Klassensought to develop a religion in the Durkheimian sense shorn of all supernatural elements.Creativity presents itself as a totalistic religion in that it seeks to answer all of the impor-tant questions of the white race’s predicament. As Klassen explained, the creed consistedof four dimensions: ‘a sound mind in a sound body in a sound society in a sound envi-ronment’.26 Toward this end, Klassen advocated ‘salubrious living’, which encompassedoccasional fasting, exercise, clean environment, and a vegetarian diet.27

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The Creativity theology, or ideology, seeks to synthesize disparate themes in historyincluding Roman classicism, German National Socialism, and the American Westernfrontier. Klassen drew much inspiration from ancient Rome which he recognized as themost exemplary and enduring of white civilizations. He was especially fond of Romanlaw and the Latin language as well as Roman architecture, government, pragmatism, andmilitary prowess. However, he criticized the Romans for failing to recognize the salienceof race. To Klassen, ‘Adolf Hitler was the greatest leader the White Race ever had’.Despite this admiration, he emphasized that Creativity was not just another variant ofneo-Nazism. Klassen averred that Creativity was superior to National Socialism insofar asthe latter was basically a political movement, while the former was a religious movement.Religion was far more potent and enduring. Moroever, Klassen criticized Hitler for notattacking Christianity head on. By contrast, Creativity was explicitly and vehementlyanti-Christian. For Klassen, the settlement of the western frontier was the apogee ofAmerican history. The Alamo was a fine example of white martial prowess vis-a-visnon-whites. He regarded James Polk, who led the American nation during the Mexican–American War, as the greatest American president. In that conflict, Klassen found aparadigm for white expansion all over the world.

The strident and explicit racism of the Creator creed notwithstanding, Klassen rejectedthe label ‘white supremacist’. Rather, he preferred no social intercourse between whitesand non-whites. Klassen believed it was the destiny of whites to exclusively inhabit allthe desirable areas of the planet. Concededly, this would not happen overnight, butKlassen articulated this as a long-term goal to be systematically pursued through a pro-gram of settlement into new territories and expulsion of non-whites that reside therein.For Klassen, there could be no middle ground. Either the white race must establishdominion over the entire planet or face inundation from the non-white races. Whiteswere approaching the eleventh hour in the struggle for their racial survival and must actquickly or else face oblivion.

Reaching out to the Right

After creating his religious creed, Klassen set about finding followers to his new beliefsystem. Right from the beginning, Klassen experienced resistance. His abrasive personalityoften strained his relations with other rightists. With his irreverent critique ofChristianity, Klassen alienated many like-minded persons, who basically shared his racialistphilosophy, but rejected the atheism of Creativity.

To establish a more solid institutional basis for his religion, Klassen ordered the con-struction of a church in North Carolina. By the early 1980s, Klassen decided to winddown his active management in real estate to devote all of this energy to Creativity.28

After several years of disseminating Nature’s Eternal Religion and corresponding with right-ists around the country, Klassen decided that his religious movement needed a headquar-ters. To that end, in 1982, he established the first Creator church in the town of Otto,North Carolina, located in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. By the late1980s, the church experienced moderate growth. However, the church attracted an inor-dinate number of dysfunctional personalities, which would plague the organization andcontribute to its demise.

By the early 1990s, Klassen described himself as ‘tired, burned out’, and without ‘theenergy to propel [his] great movement forward at the increasing momentum that itdeserved’. Compounding his misery, his wife of many years, Henrie Etta, became seri-ously ill around this time. She was first diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 1991.



Despite his disdain for the medical establishment and conventional treatments for cancer,Ben Klassen submitted to the judgment of her physicians and approved her surgery inmarked contrast to the regimen he advocated in his book Salubrious Living, whicheschewed conventional cancer treatments. Finally, at 8:30 AM on January 24, 1992, shesuccumbed to the disease, with Klassen at her bedside.29

Considering all the bad fortune that had befallen him, Klassen believed that it was nowthe appropriate time to move the COTC’s headquarters from the isolated rural area ofOtto, to a larger urban area where larger groups could assemble and meet on a regularbasis. Mark Wilson, the leader of the ‘Skinhead Army of Milwaukee’ (AKA NorthernHammerskins), was the next candidate chosen to replace Klassen. Wilson’s organizingefforts in Milwaukee impressed Klassen.30 Soon, rumors abounded that Wilson and hisskinhead friends were squandering the church’s money and behaving recklessly. As aresult of his indiscretion and mismanagement, Klassen dismissed Wilson after only6 months and in his stead, appointed Dr Rick McCarty as the next Pontifex Maximus.At last, Klassen thought he had found a suitable successor in Dr McCarty, a psychologist,who practiced in Florida. Not long after assuming leadership, McCarty moved the churchheadquarters to Niceville, Florida.31 Klassen was pleased with the direction of theCOTC under McCarty’s stewardship. At last, a semblance of stability seemed to settleover the COTC. However, around this same time, numerous COTC members wereimplicated in sporadic acts of violence and criminality, which once again jeopardized thefuture of the church.

First, On May 17, 1991, a COTC member, George Loeb, shot and killed HaroldMansfield, Jr., a Black Gulf War veteran, in a parking lot altercation, which took place inNeptune Beach, Florida near the Mayport Naval Station.32 Loeb was later convicted offirst-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison on July 29, 1992, with no chance ofparole for 25 years. One of the most ambitious terrorist plots in which COTC memberswere implicated transpired in July of 1993. COTC members, along with elements ofWhite Aryan Resistance and the Fourth Reich Skinheads, were arrested for theirinvolvement in a bizarre plot to bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church inLos Angeles and kill its pastor, Reverend Cecil Murray.33 Allegedly, the conspiratorsplanned to foment a race war.34

With the death of his wife and the failure of his church, Klassen slipped into adeep depression. On August 6, 1993, Klassen took a number of boxes of documentsto a local recycling center. Probably, sometime between late August 6 and earlyAugust 7, he consumed four bottles of sleeping pills, which resulted in his death. Heleft a suicide note, which invoked a section of The White Man’s Bible that assertedthat suicide was an honorable way in which to end a life that was no longer worthliving.35

In addition to the death of Klassen, other mounting troubles took their toll onMcCarthy. The whole Los Angeles affair was an embarrassment for the new PontifexMaximus, who sought to dissociate himself and the COTC from the affair. The laststraw came in March 1994, when a Florida court ruled that the COTC bore responsi-bility for George Loeb’s murder of Mansfield, whose family won a one-million dollarlawsuit initiated by Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center. McCarty didnot contest the suit. Seeking to extricate himself from the mess, McCarty dispersed theCreativity books and other church assets and terminated his leadership.36 With Klassen’sdemise, the church entered a phase of rapid decline. However, a young Canadianwould spread the message of Creativity to skinheads through the fledging genre of‘white power’ music.

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George Burdi and RAHOWA

Although the COTC languished after the death of Klassen, George Eric Burdi, a youngCanadian musician from Canada, drew inspiration from Creativity and kept the idealalive. He formed a white power musical band called RAHOWA named after an acro-nym, which Klassen had coined that stands for RAcial HOly WAr. It is meant to be acall to arms not unlike the Arabic word Jihad used by Islamic militants.37 Burdi’s rise toprominence in the 1990s, nearly defined him as the seminal figure of the white nationalistmovement of the decade.38

Born in June 1970, in a Toronto suburb, Burdi was raised as a Roman Catholic andonce served as an altar boy. One day, he discovered a copy of George Lincoln Rock-well’s book, White Power, and was fascinated by his exhortations of white racial solidar-ity.39 Around that same time, he discovered Ben Klassen’s Nature’s Eternal Religion andThe White Man’s Bible.40

After completing only 1 year of university studies, Burdi dropped out of school anddecided to devote all of his time and energy to the racialist movement. Music is whatseemed to finally impel him to become a true believer of the racialist movement. Spear-heading the ‘white power’ musical genre in North America, in 1989, he, Jon Latvis, andother local COTC members formed a white power musical band called RAHOWA,based on a formula of similar bands based overseas, most notably, Skrewdriver inEngland. Burdi assumed the surname ‘Hawthorne’ while he was a member of the band.Their most famous CD recording, Cult of the Holy War, was released in 1995 andsupposedly sold 45,000 copies.41

To disseminate their music, in 1993, Burdi and Mark Wilson launched their mostsuccessful enterprise – Resistance Records – a recording company that produced CDs forwhite power bands. They chose Detroit, Michigan as their location because it was anequal distance between Milwaukee and Toronto. Furthermore, by operating in theUnited States, Resistance Records enjoyed First Amendment protection and could thusavoid the more restrictive speech codes in Canada.42 In just a few short years, ResistanceRecords established itself as a major producer of white power music and had assumed therole in America which Ian Stuart had played earlier in England.43 As Burdi saw it, whitepower music gave the youthful segment of the racialist movement a tremendous boostof confidence.44 This visceral approach appealed to the fledging skinhead scene in theUnited States. He garnered considerable publicity for his cause, as he was interviewed onmajor media venues, including CNN and MTV. The New York Times once referred tohim as a ‘Neo-Nazi Mogul’.45 Perhaps more than any other figure, Burdi was responsiblefor giving white power music and institutional basis.

It was not long, however, before setbacks occurred. After a RAHOWA concert thatwas held in Ottawa on May 29, 1993, Burdi got involved in a fracas with anti-racistcounter-protestors and was subsequently arrested for assaulting a female activist after hegave a speech. In connection to that incident, in 1995, he was convicted of assault andsentenced to a year in prison.46 Although, he was released on appeal after 1 month, in1997, his conviction was upheld and he was ordered to return to prison to serve theremainder of his sentence. At around this same time, he and the other members of hisband decided to split up.

Still other problems followed. In April 1997, Michigan authorities raided the offices ofResistance Records near Detroit to execute a warrant as part of an investigation for non-payment of taxes.47 In Ontario, just across the border, Canadian authorities raided Burdi’shome as part of an investigation on whether the company was using the US address to



circumvent Canada’s stringent hate speech laws.48 The tax case in the United Statesturned out to be minor insofar as most of the Resistance Records’ customers were out ofstate and thus not required to pay state sales taxes on purchases through the mail. Eventu-ally, the matter was settled with a fine, but the management of Resistance Records wasshaken.49

Eventually, Burdi tired of the movement and decided to leave. After his release fromprison in 1998, Burdi cut off all his ties to the movement. At the present time, Burdilives in Toronto and is married to an East Indian woman whom he described as ‘verywell educated’ and having once worked for anti-racist groups.50 Continuing with hismusical pursuits, he plays in a band called Novacosm, which includes two black mem-bers. Despite Burdi’s departure and the demise of his band, the Creativity idea would notdie. Just a couple of years before he left the movement, a young law student would setout to revive the Church of the Creator.

Short Biography

George Michael received his Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School of PublicPolicy. Currently, he is an associate professor of administration of justice and politicalscience at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Prior to his career in academia,he served in both the US Air Force and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. He wasalso a Presidential Management Intern and worked as an operations research analyst forthe US Army. In May 2005, he was the recipient of UVA-Wise’s OutstandingResearch Faculty Award. In 2007, he was included in Marquis Who’s Who in Amer-ica. His first book, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA,was published by Routledge in 2003. His second book, The Enemy of my Enemy:The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, was publishedby the University Press of Kansas in 2006. His third book, Willis Carto and the Amer-ican Far Right, was published in 2008 by the University Press of Florida. His fourthbook, Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator, was pub-lished in 2009 by the University Press of Florida. Dr Michael has twice appeared onC-SPAN’s Book TV segment. In addition, his articles have been published in TheChronicle of Higher Education, Terrorism and Political Violence, Small Wars & Insur-gencies, Defence Studies, Middle East Quarterly, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Journal of Church and State, Patternsof Prejudice, Population and Environment, Middle East Policy, and the Fort WorthStar-Telegram.

Notes

* Correspondence address: George Michael, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Department of SocialSciences, One College Avenue Wise, Virginia 24293-4412. E-mail: [email protected].

1 Several historians and observers cite the Anti-Masonic Party of the early 19th century as the first right-wing reac-tionary movement in American politics. The party sought to remove the influence of freemasons from Americanpolitics. For more on the party, see Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab. The Politics of Unreason: Right WingExtremism in America, 1790–1970. (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), Paul Goodman, Towards a ChristianRepublic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–1836. (New York: Oxford University Press,1988). Christian Identity – a religious creed that contends that whites are the true descendants of the ten lost tribesof Israel – has exerted a strong influence over the American extreme right. For more on the Christian Identitymovement, see Michael Barkun, Religion and The Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement. (ChapelHill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

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2 Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 239.In 1989, at the behest of Pope John Paul II, the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace published a book titledThe Church & Racism, which condemned white racism, most notably, the policy of Apartheid which was stillextant in South Africa at that time. Oddly enough, the document defended ethnic exclusivity of indigenous peoplesin other parts of the world.3 George Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. (New York and London: Routledge,2003).4 Dave Jackson and Neta Jackson. No Random Act: Behind the Murder of Ricky Birdsong. (Colorado Springs, CO:Waterbrook Press, 2002), p. 9.5 Jackson and Jackson, No Random Act, p. 11.6 ‘Letter to Mr. H. L. Snider from Ben Klassen, January 9, 1978’, in Ben Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume Two:1976–1981. (Otto, North Carolina: Church of the Creator, 1989), pp. 123–127.7 Ben Klassen, Against the Evil Tide: An Autobiography. (Otto, North : Church of the Creator, 1991), p. 121.8 Klassen, Against the Evil Tide, p. 121.9 Klassen, Against the Evil Tide, p. 293–294.10 Ben Klassen’s letter to Robert Welch, November 4, 1969 in Ben Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume One:1969–1976. (Otto, North Carolina: Church of the Creator, 1988), pp. 16–18.11 ‘Letter to Mr. George Lukick from Ben Klassen, February 13, 1976’, in Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume One,pp. 132–134.12 Jackson and Jackson, No Random Act, p. 63.13 Klassen claimed that for every dollar that had been raised by Nazi parties, Jewish organizations had probablytaken in one hundred because of the latter’s efforts. Ben Klassen’s letter to Matt Koehl, September 18, 1973, inKlassen, The Klassen Letters Volume One, pp. 123–125.14 Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume One, p. 34.15 Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume One, pp. 35–41.16 Klassen expressed these ideas in a letter to Eleanor Kramer, August 5, 1971. See Klassen, The Klassen LettersVolume One, pp. 69–73.17 Ben Klassen, Expanding Creativity: an idea whose time has come. (Otto, North: Church of the Creator, 1985), pp.89–96.18 Klassen, Expanding Creativity, p. 96.19 Ben Klassen, Nature’s Eternal Religion. (Niceville, Florida: Church of the Creator, 1992), p. 171.20 It is worth noting that some scholars have impugned the historicity of Jesus as well. See for example, Robert M.Price, Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.21 Ben Klassen, On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War. (Otto, North : Church of the Creator, 1993), pp. 354–359.22 MacDonald, Kevin. Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. (Westport, CT:Praeger, 1998), p. 108.23 Robert S. Wistrich, Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), pp. 29–42.24 Klassen, Nature’s Eternal Religion, pp. 4–20.25 Ian Robertson, Sociology. Third Edition. (New York: Worth Publishers, Inc., 1988), p. 401.26 Ben Klassen, The White Man’s Bible (Second Edition). (Otto, North: 1992), pp. 39–43.27 Klassen, The White Man’s Bible, pp. 35–89.28 Ben Klassen, The Klassen Letters Volume Two: 1976–1981. (Otto, North Carolina: Church of the Creator, 1989),p. 5.29 Jackson and Jackson, No Random Act, pp. 137–138; and Ben Klassen, Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs. (Niceville,FL: Church of the Creator, 1993), pp. 278–286.30 Klassen, Ben, ‘Transfer of Leadership, in Klassen, Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs, pp. 289–293.31 Klassen, Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs, pp. 305–310.32 Anti-Defamation League. Church of the Creator: Creed of Hate. (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1993), p.14.33 Kathy Marks, Faces of Right Wing Extremism. (Boston, MA: Branden Publishing Co., 1996), p. 132.34 See Sally Ann Stewart, ‘FBI: LA race war plot ‘‘despicable’’’. USA Today, A-1, July 16–18, 1993; John Farley,Christopher, ‘Today Los Angeles, Tomorrow…’ Time, July 26, 1993; and Jim Newton and Ann W. O’Neill,‘Alleged White Supremacists Seized in Assassination Plot’, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1993.35 Jeffrey Kaplan, ‘Right Wing Violence in North America’, In: Tore Bjorgo (ed.), Terror from the Extreme Right.(London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 66.36 Jackson and Jackson, No Random Act, p. 159.37 Ben Klassen, RAHOWA! This Planet is All Ours. (Otto, North : Church of the Creator, 1987), p. 123.38 Jeffrey Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. (New York: AltaMiraPress, 2000), p. 123.39 ‘Present at the Creation’, Intelligence Report, Fall 2001, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=179.



40 Author interview with George Burdi, August 14, 2007.41 ‘Hate Rock to Spiritual Revelation – The Transformation of George Burdi’, http://www.engaged-zen.org,downloaded June 27, 2006.42 Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of White Power, p. 127.43 Helene Loow, White-Per Rock ‘n’ Roll: A Growing Industry’, in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjorgo (eds.). Nationand Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture. (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1998), p. 138.44 George Eric Hawthorne, ‘We Must Heed The Call’, Resistance, Issue 2 (Summer 1994), p. 4.45 ‘The Making of a Neo-Nazi Mogul’, The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 25, 1996 in Anti-Defamation League, High-tech Hate, p. 69.46 Quoted in Anti-Defamation League, High-tech Hate, p. 70.47 Nicholas, Goodrick-Clarke, The Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. (New York:New York University Press, 2002), p. 211.48 ‘The Making of a Neo-Nazi Mogul’, The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 25, 1996 in Anti-Defamation League, High-tech Hate, p. 70.49 ‘Resisting Arrest: Racist Resistance Records isn’t slowing down’, Intelligence Report, Winter 1998, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=452.50 Anthony Parsonno, ‘I am not my DNA!’ Acid Logic, n.d. http://www.forbisthemighty.com/acidlogic/georgeburdi.htm.

Works Cited

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North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.Dinnerstein, Leonard. (1994). Anti-Semitism in America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Farley, John Christopher. (1993). Today Los Angeles, Tomorrow… Time, July 26.Goodman, Paul. (1988). Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–

1836. New York: Oxford University Press.Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. (2002). The Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New

York: New York University Press.Hate Rock to Spiritual Revelation—The Transformation of George Burdi, http://www.engaged-zen.org, down-

loaded June 27, 2006.Hawthorne, George Eric. (1994). We Must Heed The Call, Resistance, Issue 2 (Summer).Jackson, Dave & Jackson, Neta (2002). No Random Act: Behind the Murder of Ricky Birdsong. Colorado Springs, CO:

Waterbrook Press.Kaplan, Jeffrey. (1995). Right Wing Violence in North America, In: Tore Bjorgo (ed.), Terror from the Extreme

Right, pp. 44–95. London, Frank Cass.——. (2000). The Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. New York: AltaMira Press.Klassen, Ben. (1985). Expanding Creativity: an Idea Whose Time has Come. Otto, North: Church of the Creator.——. (1987). RAHOWA! This Planet is All Ours. Otto, North: Church of the Creator.——. (1989). The Klassen Letters Volume Two: 1976–1981. Otto, North Carolina: Church of the Creator.——. (1991). Against the Evil Tide: An Autobiography. Otto, North: Church of the Creator.——. (1992). The White Man’s Bible, 2nd edn. Otto, North: Church of the Creator 1992.——. (1993a). On the Brink of a Bloody Racial War. Otto, North: Church of the Creator.——. (1993b). Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs. Niceville, FL: Church of the Creator.Lipset, Seymour Martin & Raab, Earl. (1970). The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790–

1970. New York: Harper and Row.Loow, Helene. (1998). White-Per Rock ‘n’ Roll: A Growing Industry, In: Jeffrey Kaplan, Tore Bjorgo (eds.).

Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture. pp. 126–147. Boston, MA: Northeastern Univer-sity Press.

MacDonald, Kevin. (1998). Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. Westport,CT: Praeger.

Marks, Kathy. (1996). Faces of Right Wing Extremism. Boston, MA: Branden Publishing Co.Michael, George. (2003). Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. New York and London:

Routledge.Newton, Jim & O’Neill, Ann W. (1993). Alleged White Supremacists Seized in Assassination Plot, Los Angeles

Times, July 16.Parsonno, Anthony. (n.d.). I am not my DNA! Acid Logic, n.d. http://www.forbisthemighty.com/acidlogic/

georgeburdi.htmPrice, Robert M. (2003). Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? Amherst, NY: Prome-

theus Books.

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Present at the Creation, Intelligence Report, Fall 2001, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=179.

Resisting Arrest: Racist Resistance Records isn’t slowing down, Intelligence Report, Winter 1998, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=452.

Robertson, Ian. (1988). Sociology, 3rd edn. New York: Worth Publishers, Inc.Sally Ann, Stewart. (1993). FBI: LA race war plot ‘despicable.’ USA Today, A-1, July 16–18The Making of a Neo-Nazi Mogul, The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, February 25, 1996 in Anti-Defamation

League, High-tech Hate, p. 69.Wistrich, Robert S. (1991). Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred. New York: Pantheon Books.



the church of the creator part i: ben klassen and the critique of christianity

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